Tiger Woods PGA Tour

The Good
The idea behind the game is good. It's the sort of game I could play either with the family or with a few mates and several drinks. You don't have to be a golfer to enjoy a game like this - in fact not being a gofer probably helps. It comes in a nice shiny tin box which makes it the kind of game to give as a present or to get for a family get together, say at Christmas.

The controls are simple and easy to master and you can be playing very quickly. It's a doddle. There's no music but there are ambient sounds, birdsong etc, and a commentary that jumps in every now and again.

So it sounds half decent, it looks half decent, it comes well packaged and it's easy to play and that's about all that's good about it.

The Bad
This is so close to being a good game and I really wanted it to work 'coz I thought I'd enjoy playing it but for me it just didn't tick all the boxes. Oddly enough it played better on my computer than it did on my DVD player.

To start with on my 32" television screen the graphics looked really blocky especially when there was movement. It is a fairly modern TV but it's not super big and 32" TVs would not have been uncommon in 2007 when the game was released, (being LED not LCD shouldn't make a difference -should it?).
Then there were glitches:

• When played on my DVD player the game failed to keep score accurately - I bogeyed most par 4 holes and it kept telling me I'd taken one shot and was three under par.
• After teeing off it always seemed to show my ball in the same place on the fairway and it continued to show my ball in the same position until I got onto the green.
• There were a couple of other glitches when played on my DVD and ultimately, after seventeen holes, it crashed.

Glitches aside I feel that the game has been simplified to the point where it is a ghost of the EA golf games I'm used to. In this game there's no fine control which in some ways is fair enough because a DVD remote was never intended to delver the precision that a mouse or a game-pad can deliver. This means the game has been reduced to a few simple choices, for example when teeing off or playing from the fairway there is only ever a choice of three clubs and there are only eleven choices when aiming a shot, straight ahead and each four to the right and left. Now that's not of choice given that the outer ones will only be used to make allowances for the wind when there's a hurricane blowing in directly from one side.

The limitations of the DVD format also showed in the commentary where on some occasions there was none and if it did say something, say after a player had teed off it seemed to have just two lines to offer. What I was most surprised about was my hole-in-one. I was surprised for two reasons first because it happened and secondly because there was no celebration and no word from the commentators, the ball went into the hole and then the score for the hole was displayed. It was the same with my hole-in-two on a par four hole which points to either a fault on my system or a glaring omission in the game.

Other limitations show up in the game-play, for example in seventeen holes I chipped onto the green and for twelve, maybe fourteen of these I was twenty-two feet from the pin. After I'd made and missed my long put I was usually fifteen inches from the pin. This lack of variety made each hole very samey and thus the game was predictable and a bit boring.

However the big problem when playing the game was the lack of response when taking a shot. After setting the direction the player's viewpoint changes and they are shown a side-on view with a power meter whose bar immediately starts to climb. There's just not a fast enough response to stop the power bar with any precision and that can affect the game. On one hole especially I remember I knew that I was making a mid-distance shot, I pressed the remote, I pressed again, and again, and eventually it stopped and because I had too much power I overshot the green and went off into the rough.

The Bottom Line
Whether it's some kind of incompatibility with my DVD player & TV or a problem with the game itself I cannot say for certain. However the game did not work for me. I could put up with the graphics, I could keep my own score, but the lack of precision when making a shot and the overall predictability means this is not a keeper