Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (PS3)

The Tiger Woods PGA Tour game series is by far the most popular golfing game available on all the major consoles, and every year the developers do make a significant amount of difference with new features to the latest release of the game to make it worth buying it.


For this year’s version of the game, EA have added a couple of new features like adding Tiger Woods’ coach, Hank Haney to help you develop you skills from the start ...
...were you can play as Tiger himself, or the Tiger challenges were you have to complete a set of challenges set then beat 9 separate pros until you have to beat Tiger Woods.


Overall, I have really enjoyed this game and the new features make it well worth buying, as some sports titles will release an almost identical game to one the previous year, whilst charging £40 for it. However, for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, I don’t think this ... more

The Tiger Woods PGA Tour game series is by far the most popular golfing game available on all the major consoles, and every year the developers do make a significant amount of difference with new features to the latest release of the game to make it worth buying it.

For this year’s version of the game, EA have added a couple of new features like adding Tiger Woods’ coach, Hank Haney to help you develop you skills from the start of your career. In the first practice you get, he will give you attributes for how well he thinks you have down, and these attributes can be improved by completing challenges and through equipment, however most equipment boosts mean you have to unlock certain equipment by completing challenges and then buy them. So you start off with regular EA golf balls for example, and then as you progress and defeat the challenges you can buy better golf balls, up to a Nike golf ball that gives you a 2.5 boost to an attribute (I can’t remember with one though I think it is power) and this costs about £32,000.

Another new feature added is the club tuner, were you can fine tune every available club you have to get the best out of every club. You can choose between tuning the club for best performance, or making the club easy to use. By adding more power to a driver in the tuner, you increase the chances you will be able to drive the ball further down the fairway, but you also risk playing the ball poorly and hitting it into the rough. I have found the club tuner a little confusing though, as there aren’t any instructions on how to simply adjust each club so you have to find out for yourself.

The final new feature to the single player game is a Dynamic Skills feature. After every round, depending on how you played, your player will either see a rise or fall to their attributes for power, accuracy, short game and putting. I have found power and putting to be pretty easy to develop, but the short game can be quite difficult, as to get the ball close to the pin can mean you have to hit the ball just right or you will overshoot or completely undershoot the pin.

To the online game, which I have never tried, they have added a new EA Sports Gamernet, where you can earn points and climb to the top of the online leaderboard by completing instant challenges in rounds. Another new feature to the online game is simultaneous play, so rather than waiting for each player to play their shot up to 4 players can play a hole, with ball trails showing where other players are. If you finish the hole first, then you can set to spectator mode and wait for other players to finish the hole before moving on to the next one.

Graphically, the game is amazing in terms of the quality of the graphics, almost every element in the game looks realistic and very true to life, and from the last version (2008) the graphics in my eyes at least have really improved, which was hard enough but somehow EA have managed it. All players look like an incredibly well made computer image of themselves, including the custom made player whom you play with.

The career mode is by far my favourite game mode of them all. In the career mode, you can compete in an event calendar, and on my setting of easy, I have found it reasonable, as putting it on a harder mode when you start out would make the game very difficult to improve your attributes and many shots would end up not being able to clear the bunkers or simply end up in the rough instead of on the green. The only problem I have found with the game is that often the ball will not rise well into the air, so sometimes you may have to play around objects like trees. Also, the spectators can be annoying. One drive I had would have made it past the rough and onto the green from the fairway on a par 5, but the ball instead hit a fan in the stomach, although this was quite funny to watch, it didn’t do my scorecard any good. At least though this does maintain the games realism, as normal golfers may face hitting spectators with shots in the real world.

Due to the career mode, the playability of the game means that you can play this game for a long time. Your attributes would change all the time depending on how well you played, and within 2 or 3 years of career mode you can easily achieve a level were you are one of the best players in the world. I have always found adding prize money and winnings make the game more fun, as you have to earn the money to buy new equipment that increases the quality of your golfer, and other challenges also help to extend the life of the game. Without the career mode, the game would be really boring as the only other playable features are play now, were you can play as Tiger himself, or the Tiger challenges were you have to complete a set of challenges set then beat 9 separate pros until you have to beat Tiger Woods.

Overall, I have really enjoyed this game and the new features make it well worth buying, as some sports titles will release an almost identical game to one the previous year, whilst charging £40 for it. However, for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, I don’t think this is the case, as the game will bring hours of gameplay without becoming boring. Other elements like graphics are also superb, so I would give the game a 95% overall rating.

Thanks for reading
 

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