Reviews
It’s that time of year again. With the run up to the silly season fully underway you’d rightly expect a deluge of games on the way all vying for the pre-Christmas rush and therefore perfect timing for EA Sports to yet again deliver their cash cow sports titles brimming with official licences and real world stars. Much like what John Madden is to NFL, Tiger Woods is to Golf, perhaps even more so given his sheer domination of the sport to date and high profile appeal to golfers and non-golfers alike. With that in mind EA Sport could have rested easy on their laurels and re-hashed the franchise with small updates and tweaks, but no, thankfully EA Sports appears to be in a transition of sorts and wanting to reclaim some of their former glory. As a result Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’09 may still be something of an evolution of the tried and tested formula but it is also quite easily the best golf game to come out in years.
Over the past 5 years EA appears to have slowly been tweaking the core gameplay of the title, most notably the controls with its now standard analog shot swing and in Tiger ’09 its fair to say they’ve pretty much got it as good as its going to get. Though in an effort to keep both amateur and hardcore gamer camps happy they’ve even kept the more tradition 3-click shot swing mechanics available as well (albeit only up to a certain difficulty level). Here in ’09 the analog swing is the same as in previous games, the left stick is swung back and then forward in time with the animation of the onscreen golfer. Pull left or right and you’ll draw or fade the shot but here it’s simply more accurate than previous years due to the inclusion of a real-time swing meter shown in the bottom left of the screen. As a result you can no longer whinge that you hit the ball straight as the meter never lies. It’s quite possibly the best inclusion to the franchise to date as its underlines that the control scheme does actually work, you just need to practice and master it. Once mastered it then really affords a level of control that reflects the real-world shot repertoire of a professional. Even in the short game requiring chip shots and measured strength on approach with practice this control scheme feels natural and gives a great level of accuracy.
This is essentially the key to later difficulties in the game, requiring more power, control and accuracy to really compete. If the control scheme wasn’t up to scratch you’d be left floundering against the AI. Here though it just feels “right” where in previous iterations it sometimes felt more of a hindrance. Real-time shot meter? Good work EA sports! As such, given the sport and more specifically the simplicity of its videogame representation there really isn’t much more to say about the core gameplay itself. Golf games generally live and die by their control schemes and here it delivers in spades. Aside from this not much has changed this year at all. You can still add more power during the swing by tapping the A button, add spin, draw or fade during the flight of the ball and angle the club for more control over the height and arc of the ball on shots if desired but its all been seen and done before. What has evolved considerably here is the feature set around the core game.
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