Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
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Publisher: EA Sports Genre(s): Sports / Racing Home Page: http://www.easports.com/tigerwoods...
No Shortage of Gameplay Popular PGA and LPGA players are available right from the start While the game can be played in pick-up mode by selecting a PGA or LPGA pro and jumping into a random 18-hole jaunt, the heart of Tiger Woods PGA Tour is the career system. Dubbed the Tiger Challenge, the career mode offers a unique take on traditional ladder systems. Laid out on a hexagonal grid are various challenges, from one-shot tests of skill to head-to-head matches with PGA pros. Successfully completing a challenge earns experience points, which can be spent to improve various player skill areas. Once a challenge has been completed, neighboring challenges on the grid are unlocked. The hexagonal layout allows for some leeway with regards to choice, and it's a welcome take on fixed-path career modes. The Tiger Challenge is available only to custom amateur profiles, ensuring a gradual progression from weekend warrior to PGA tour veteran. The Tiger Challenge is the main game mode, but there are other single-player game modes as well, including the tried-and-true PGA Tour and FedEx Cup, designed for professional profiles (both custom and shipped profiles may be used in these modes). Practice mode is a free-form affair, with open course selection, selectable ball placement, shot tracking and course condition customization. All together, the single-player experience offers dozens of hours of gameplay. Coupled with the various pick-up games and skill challenges, there's also plenty of variety to keep things interesting.
Online play is handled through EA Sports own matchmaking service, which requires creating an online profile. Game types range from quick pick-up games to scheduled tournaments, and players are ranked by skill based on previous performances. Online play shows promise, but EA's servers were experiencing connectivity issues during my testing (a result, according to EA, of the popularity of the Photo Game Face feature on the Xbox 360 version of the game). Additionally, the fixed-resolution Flash-based interface is difficult to navigate and prone to crashing, and having to constantly swap between the matchmaking application and the game is clunky. In the short game I did manage to join, lag was a problem, and other players would come and go mid-round, hampering the enjoyment. A scheduled match with a friend would likely provide more entertainment, but EA doesn't allow for direct-connect Internet games.
Just like real golf, perfecting a swing in Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08 takes time. EA's True Swing technology, which mimics a golf club swing with mouse movements, requires some time spent in Practice mode before any consistency in shots can be attained. Setting the profile difficulty to Novice or Intermediate is a must when using a high-DPI optical mouse – the Advanced setting is far too sensitive with a fast-tracking mouse. Using a mouse with adjustable sensitivity, I found it necessary to turn the sensitivity down to an extreme degree using the mouse's driver software. My shots were more accurate, but navigating the interface became difficult with a cursor that moved so slowly. Old-school golf simulation stalwarts may prefer the classic three-click swing option. I also tested the gamepad swing option using a Microsoft Xbox 360 Controller for Window. This worked well for swinging, as the analog stick is less sensitive than a mouse. However, the mouse and keyboard are still required to navigate the interface and menus, which makes for a peripheral-juggling round of golf.
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