EA pushes out sports games on a
yearly basis. Every year some of the
franchises are better or worse.
Every three or four years there are
some drastic changes. Again,
sometimes the changes are good or
bad. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 is a
minimum transition year for the
franchise. Some minor tweaks have
been made to a game that has been
pretty solid with the last few
installments.
Some slight changes and add-ons have
been made to the game. The new modes
are mostly online related
tournaments, and that stuff is cool
to be sure. But cooler than the
online-related tournaments is the
play against the pros feature. You
can play in any event- even one
that's going on this week and you
can compete against Furyk's, Woods',
Garcia's, or anyone else's score for
a particular event. Say Tiger is
drills an impossible Eagle putt at
the U.S. Open on hole 12- you have
to compete against that. That is
awesome.
The other big feature added to this
year's game is the live weather
feature. We've seen this for awhile
on NCAA Football and Madden for a
few years now and it's alright-
nothing amazing. When it snows in
Cleveland and you have a game
there... it snows there. With golf
it gets a little trickier... you
have to compete against high-winds
and downpours with some super-wet
greens. The shots aren't made too
much more difficult with the
feature, and honestly it doesn't
really add a bunch to the game.
The add-ons are fine and the
gameplay remains strong. What needs
to change with the franchise is the
presentation. Simulation golf is as
fun as it can be, but I miss
competing against the fat Scotsman
like in '02 and '03- I miss some of
the arcade flavor that the game had
and now lacks. The big presentation
things that need to change-
graphically the textures and
characters haven't been updated in a
few years, and moreover the audio
presentation of the play-by-play is
awful. We can't get play by play on
Madden when we want it for a few
years but we gat Scott Fan Pelt and
the other commentator arguing with
each other about whether a shot made
it into the sand trap or the rough
over and over again? Yeah, that
needs to change too.
Apart from the yearly gripes this
year's Tiger is just as good and
just as much fun as previous
installments. It's worth your 50-60
bucks if you're an avid golf fan and
it's a fun experience to play here
and there if you're not really
hardcore about the golf experience.
All for some, some for others, Tiger
Woods 10 is a lot of fun in the golf
simulation genre.
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