Review: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007
Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 12:53 pm
I briefly mentioned the 2005 version, and wrote a review of the 2006 version of EA’s Tiger Woods PGA Tour game. In my review of the 2006 edition, I noted that it seemed like it just wasn’t quite up to the challenge of filling the shoes of the 2005 edition. I believe I said something to the extent of “2005 was a par, 2006 was a bogey.”
That being said, the new 2007 version is something like a double bogey that is saved from being a triple bogey only by its beautiful graphics. (Full disclosure: both of my previous games were for PS2; I’m now playing the new game on an Xbox 360, which probably goes a long way towards explaining why the graphics are so much more amazing.)
It seems to me like the game keeps getting smaller and smaller with every new iteration. I made note of this last time, saying that the Pro Shop seemed exponentially smaller in 2006 than in 2005. Even still, when looking at my “resume” stat sheet, 2006 supposedly had something like 3000 items available for purchase – my guess is that this number was artificially inflated because any given watch/bracelet/ring/earring/etc could be purchased for both the right and left hands separately, and these types of items constituted the vast majority of all available items. Now, though, there are apparently only 600 (six hundred) items available. Which seems pretty lame, to me. Gone also are the sponsorships from various golf-related companies that you could earn by being a good player. This sort of makes sense, I suppose, given the dearth of purchasable items. What good are sponsorships from 20+ different companies if you can only purchase 10 different drivers (and half of them are EA-branded)? It’s still obvious that certain companies have given EA money to get their names into the game – Nike and Oakley, primarily – probably because the real-life Tiger is actually sponsored by these and it wouldn’t make sense to leave them out.
Playing the game is more difficult this time around. The little aiming marker that pretty much guaranteed where your ball was going to hit the ground is gone, replaced by a distressingly big circular target area that may or may not have anything at all to do with where your ball goes. Perhaps the circumference of this target zone will shrink as I get my character’s skill points higher (not to mention the ball actually landing within the circle, no matter how big/small it is)… but right now (with all my stuff at 27%) it’s pretty worthless for anything but a very general estimation of what postal code your ball is going into. And it’s almost impossible to gauge distances with it, as well. With one club, your ball may end up falling 50 yards short of the circle (with what you thought was a pretty damn good swing), and with another club (or even the same club for all I know) it may overshoot it by 50 yards. In short, at least until I’ve gotten my stats raised quite a bit, my only suggestion for now is that you should not trust the aiming circle for any reason whatsoever. It means nothing.
Putting works pretty much the same as it did in 2006. The biggest difference is that the Ideal Putt Camera is turned off by default in all but the easiest difficulty level. You can turn it back on in the game options, though, so there’s not much to write home about here. The only other issue I take with putting is that it seems to be much more touchy about elevation than in previous games. I’m actually pretty good at putting, but sometimes it’s extremely difficult to estimate how far to over- or undershoot based on how far above/below the hole you are.
Training your character and raising stats works quite a bit differently than in any previous version. You can no longer purchase stats with any form of currency – be it money or points. Instead, you compete in little training challenges that automatically raise specific skills at a set rate based on how well you did. The annoying part here is that there is also a limiter bar that sets a hard limit on all your stats until you compete in the second arm of training: matches against the AI characters. You can do all the training things you want, and get your driving skill up to 100%, but until you compete in a few matches against AI players, your driving skill will be artificially held back. This is why currently every single one of my skills is at 27%. Most of them actually are quite a bit higher than that, but I haven’t competed in enough matches to raise the limiter bar yet. It’s somewhat disappointing to raise your skills and earn the points but still be held back from using points you’ve earned fair and square.
With all that being said, the game does have a couple saving graces. First and foremost are the graphics. It’s absolutely beautiful – probably because it’s on a 360 instead of a PS2. I have no desire at all to go back to playing any of these games on last-gen hardware now. Truth be told, I first got to play this on my father-in-law’s 37″ LCD HDTV, and I’m rather unhappy that I have to go back home and play it on my plain old tube TV.
Also, there is now a crowd to watch you play (it’s called “tournament atmosphere”). And the best thing about this is that you can actually hit the crowd with your errant shots. Always before, there were a couple random animals such as deer and squirrels floating around certain courses, but you never could hit them. Now, people in the crowd can be hit, and can react in different ways depending on where and how hard they got it. Hit someone in the head, and they’ll fall down and start twitching. Hit a poor sap in the cojones and he’ll double over in pain. Hit someone in the shin and they’ll start hopping around on one leg. It’s awesome – probably one of my favorite parts of this game. This does come with a caveat, though: when you hit someone, your ball drops, meaning you lose your chance to save it by rolling it back onto the fairway. Of course, if it was that bad to begin with, it may help you by keeping it from flying farther into the rough.
So yeah, I guess that’s about all I’ve got to say. I still say the 2005 version was the best so far. But you could argue that the game isn’t necessarily getting smaller, it’s just getting more focused. But other than the great graphics, this new edition seems like merely a shadow of its former self.
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Madlibs, Christmas carols, and immaturity!
Posted on Saturday, December 23, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Rudolph, the red-nosed HOMO (noun -s)
Had a very shiny BUTT (noun -s)
And if you ever SMELLED (verb -past) it
You would even say it SMELLED (verb -past)
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Silver NUTSACKS (noun -pl)
Silver NUTSACKS (noun -pl)
It’s Christmas time in the LANDFILL (place)
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Frosty the FAST FOOD WORKER (noun -s)
Was a PIMPLY (adjective) MENTALLY RETARDED (adjective) soul
With a corn-cob TACO (noun -s)
And a button BURRITO (noun -s)
And two ENCHILADAS (noun -pl) made out of snow
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Grandma got run over by a M1 ABRAMS TANK (noun -s)
Walking home from our house COLUMBUS DAY (holiday)
You may say there’s no such thing as THE KING FROM THOSE BURGER KING COMMERCIALS (fictional character)
But as for me and JESSICA ALBA (person), we believe!
===
Have yourself a merry little LABOR DAY (holiday)
Let yourself be DRUNK (adjective)
From now on, our INHIBITIONS (noun -pl) will be out of sight
===
Merry Christmas, everybody!
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Still a Heretic.
Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 9:21 pm
Yeah, yeah. Last year I admitted my heresy of daring to put an Xbox 360 on my Christmas wishlist – at the time, I justified this partly with the excuse that I had about a snowball’s chance in hell of getting one.
This year, though, I think I’m actually going to score one. Because my wife loves me. Lots. Obviously, she has to, if she is willingly relinquishing the television to yet another game console.
I still believe that, in theory, PS3 will beat the hell out of the 360, hardware-wise. If Sony could actually chug out enough working Cells to stick into the boxes, the console would beat the hell out of pretty much anything. Unfortunately, for me and for Sony, they can’t seem to get the thing right. Give them a year or two to get the kinks out of their chip foundry, and we might start getting somewhere. This, of course, says nothing of the price. $399 vs $599 is a pretty steep hike. Hell, even $399 is relatively high compared to previous generations. But Sony’s price is still just a bit too steep for me at the moment, even if they did have enough supply on-hand that I could get within 40 feet of one.
So yeah. Heretic am I. I’m changing sides, at least for a little while. I’ll still get a PS3 eventually. Probably not this coming year, maybe not even the year after that. I guess it depends on how fast the price drops, and how fast my salary goes up.
And, if nothing else, Gears of War looks fucking awesome. Totally getting that one.
