Tiger Woods 09

If you’ve liked previous Tiger release there is nothing here that you’re not going to enjoy. Once again you will be offered the choice of sixteen of the world’s greatest golf courses that look truly stunning with holes almost being blade of grass perfect, this along with the realistic characteristics of the golfers. However you’re extremely unlikely to spend much time playing as Darren Clarke, Justin Rose or Tiger Woods as you will undoubtedly be creating yourself with the ingenious, if ultimately frustrating photo importer.Create a golfer tools are extensive and almost offer unlimited possibilities, but problems occur when your attempting to upload a less than perfect photo to the EA servers. If the photo subjects are poorly or harshly lit golfers can appear emaciated and lacking facial definition, whereas near professionally lit photos can produce unsettlingly realistic digital representation.

The Tiger Woods golf series has always been hailed for its once revolutionary ‘Swingstick’, but with each release the finesse needed to strike the perfect drive had become annoyingly difficult, and you would be punished for any deviation in your thumb swing motion.TW’09 has a far friendlier ‘Swingstick’ system and the new onscreen gauge displaying in real time your motion, will allow you to modify your thumb action.

In addition to the friendlier control system the introduction of the club tuning feature means you should rarely hit a hook or a slice; if you have a frequent tendency to hook your drives by extremely deviating to the right on the down up motion on the swingstick, you with Tiger’s own coach Hank Haney can set your clubs to compensate for your swing tendencies.

If you like a real challenge you should select the pro-tour difficulty, this offers a far more realistic golfing simulation as it strips the game of all arcade style power ups and assists.Now you are left to your own devices. To create backspin you need to subtlety modify the angle of the club face, and the art of putting relies on your ability to read the contours of the green.Pro-tour difficulty offers a true golfing challenge which takes time to master but produces a genuinely rewarding game-play experience.

However if you’re not a fan of the analogue stick method, the trusty three button click from golf games of yesteryear makes a triumphant return. This simplistic control system has been handicapped in the way of shot power, as to not give users an additional advantage as hooks and slices are far harder to produce.

The PGA Tour calendar (Career mode) is where you will spend the vast majority of your time and once again TW’09 has a full, although American Tour heavy, calendar. As with all career modes you will start out with a bare bones golfer then with dedication, time and a sprinkling of talent you will soon be challenging Tiger for his golfing crown.

Hank Haney features heavily during your career, after each round Hank will offer you the ability to improve your statistics in the four core areas – Power, Accuracy, Short Game and Putting.The custom drills will be based around your previous round of golf.If you shot a double bogey on a par 3 hole, Hank will challenge you to drive your ball into a large circular area, complete this challenge and your statists will receive a small boost but over the year Hank’s challenges become tiresome and as you improve steadily as a golfer you will find yourself just skipping the challenges altogether.

One of the major tweaks to this years game-play is the dynamic skill progression system which really spices up the challenge of perfecting the perfect round of golf. Abilities now are far more volatile and will raise slowly with solid below par rounds. But you can be heavily punished for continually missing the fairways and not performing well with the putter. You need not fear however as you can still artificially improve your ability with the usual assortment of golfing paraphernalia which will have you looking like a mobile advertising hording before you can shout “FORE!”.

Golf games have always suffered from poor announcers and Tiger ’09 is no different.Golf when presented well on TV can be a joy to listen to but to capture the banter and knowledge of an announcing team is no easy feat.The main problem is that TV announcers talk about many things as well as the actions being shown.

TW’09 announcers Kelly Tillman and Sam Torrance are simply horrendous and add absolutely nothing to the game.They sound detached and disinterested regardless of how well you are playing. Torrance greets a hole in one with the same dreary and docile tone of a ball hit into a water hazard and the less said about Tillman’s nasal “Fingers down the blackboard annoying” voice the better.EA Trax is back albeit now with a weird easy listening funk/ jazz vibe, it is an improvement but still seems out of place in a golf game.

Online game-play options are essentially unchanged from last years game with the usual choice of game play styles, but you now have the ability to play simultaneously with up to 4 players.Simultaneous play is as described, players compete simultaneously which drastically reduces the length of time takes to play a round of golf with 4 players to little more than 15 minutes, this is a massive improvement over last years enjoyment sapping hour plus rounds.

One of last years underachieving modes has this year been fully realised and comprehensively integrated into every single round of golf.The Gamernet challenge allow every single Tiger Woods golfer to post challenges, whether they are longest drives or nearest the pin, right down to the other end of the scale of hitting X number of spectators with your ball.Challenges are randomly triggered but feel totally natural to the gaming experience. If you are addressing the ball on a monster 400 yard plus hole the chances are you will have the prospect of a longest drive challenge. 150 yards to the hole will challenge you to nearest the pin and so on.The downright bizarre challenges tend not to appear in the PGA Tour mode, if you want to hit a spectator in the groin from 200 yards away or bounce the ball off the path and land within a 5 meter radius of the pin, you can do so via the gamernet challenge channel.

Despite the game being as good as ever the same problems persist. EA sports golfers are fair weather golfers as it never rains. There is still a limited amount of golf courses and EA have taking the annoying stance of offering you an additional golf course for a costly 600 point download on the day of release. Putting has never been easier with an overly simple system which makes holing long putts far less intimidating than they should be. But the biggest frustration of all is the inability to skip your opponent’s turns and you can’t turn off their practice swings or celebrations. True this only applies during the Tiger Challenges but since the challenges are used to unlock new golfers and courses, the time required compared to the ultimate pay off is hardly worth the effort.

Overall Tiger Woods 2009 is more of an evolution than a revolution. It corrects the numerous problems with last years lacklustre release and adds a more forgiving control system. The introduction of the dynamic skill progression, on-top of the slickly integrated gamernet challenges, creates a fun and extremely addictive game which will satisfy all your golfing needs well beyond next years release.