Introduction
EA Have been making Tiger Woods games since the end of the 1990's. Although I'm not really a golf fan, I have tapped into this series on a couple of occasions previously with the 2004 and 2008 editions. Both these editions were on the PC so I decided to take the plunge and buy Tiger Woods 2010 on the Xbox 360. I was reluctant to pay the full asking price of £40, so when I saw it reduced to £30 in Game I decided to buy it.
Real Time Weather
For the first time, Tiger Woods 2010 boasts realtime weather. This means that if its raining on your selected course at the time you are playing your round, it will be raining in the game. This is a nice touch and is very appropriate when playing online tournaments as people who have the better conditions will have more of a chance of posting a decent score, sadly, this doesn't apply to me as I am equally as bad at this game whatever the conditions.
Creating your golfer
In order to play Tiger Woods to its full potential, you need to first create your golfer. There are two ways of doing this, the simplest way is to go through a series of attributes for skin colour, hair colour/style, eye, colour style, etc. This is relatively simple to do but doesn't create a golfer that bears much resemblance to yourself. Tiger Woods 10 uses something called Photo Game Face which has appeared in the last 2 or 3 versions of the game. Photo Game Face allows you to upload front and side face photos of yourself to easportsworld.com and the game will then try and create your face based on the facial features on your photos. I found this wasn't all that accurate as my golfer looked orange, like he'd spent half the day on the tanning tables. I think in time, Photo Game Face will be a great addition to the game but there is still a lot of work to be done to get accurate results. Whenever you play a round of golf with your custom golfer, all parts of your game are analysed and rated. These are broken down into power, accuracy, short game and putting attributes. The higher your rating, the easier it becomes to hit quality shots during your round. After most rounds, your coach will analyse your performance and give you training drills to complete in order to improve your attributes even more. These stats are vitally important if you are to stand a chance online, more of that later.
Game Modes
Tiger Woods 2010 has a whole array of game modes which should keep the player interested for a long time. In most of the modes, you get the choice to either play as one of the PGA tour pros included in the game or as your own created golfer.
Career Mode
Career Mode takes you through an entire season on the PGA tour, playing in all the events throughout the year. The aim of this mode is to become the FedEx Cup champion. You have upto five years to try and achieve this prize and be the number one golfer in the world. You get to play against all the real tour pro's who are extremely difficult to beat. I would recommend playing a few non-competitive rounds before starting this mode as you need to improve your skill attributes greatly to stand a chance on the pro tour.
Single Round
This option allows you to create a round of gold with any custom settings you wish. You can choose to play as a tour pro or your own custom golfer, you can decide the weather for the round and also the rules of the round, be it strokeplay, matchplay or any of the other variations of golf although some of these such as best ball can only be chosen if there is more than one player taking part. As a self confessed novice, this game mode was ideal for me to get into the game for the first time. It enabled me to get to grips with how much power was required and what club I needed before having the pressure of playing in a proper tournament.
Challenges
Each course in the game offers you four challenges, each one more difficulty than the previous. Examples of these challenges could be to match Tigers birdie on the 17th at Sawgrass in 2001 or to equal Paul Casey's 5 under on the outward 9 at St Andrews. Passing each of these challenges unlocks better items of clothing or clubs which will boost specific elements of your game. The early challenges are very simple and can be completed on the first or second attempt. In order to pass the more difficult ones however, you will need to improve your golfers skills greatly.
Mini Games
In my opinion the mini games don't really add much to the game but might give you a welcome distraction after another abysmal round. It is worth noting that some of the mini games require more than one player which is a bit of a shame if you are playing this game on your own.
Target - There are several holes within pitching distance and you have to see how close you can get the ball to each hole. There are targets around the hole and you get more money, the closer you get to the hole. This money can be used to buy items from the PGA shop in the game. In total, you get 20 balls to hit in this game.
Target to Target - This game is similar to Target, the only difference is that you have to take the holes in a defined order.
T-I-G-E-R - I find this game confusing, although the rules are very simple. This is a 2 player game where you have to hit a better shot than the other play in order to avoid being given a letter, the first person to spell out the name TIGER is the loser. In my opinion this is a pretty weak game as the golfer with the better stats will almost certainly win every time, giving it a short lifespan if you want to play with a friend who won't have as much chance as yourself to build up their golfers stats.
Capture the Flag - This again is a 2 player game where you take turns at hitting targets in order to catch them.
Putting Contest - I quite like this game, yet again it's a multi player game but the objective is simple. Each player has three putts from the same location and the one closest to the hole wins.
Approach Contest - Similar to the putting contest but this time, shots are hit from the fairway, making the margin of error greater.
Closest to the Pin Contest - This game follows the same rules as the previous two, this time however you will be hitting your shot from either the rough or from a bunker.
Long Drive Contest - This game in my opinion is very disappointing as the individual players stats will decide who wins. The person who has the highest rating for power will win every time. It would have been nice if a handicap system had been implemented to give weaker players a fairer chance of winning.
Control Method
I find the control method for Tiger Woods 2010 very intuitive, all you do to take a shot is pull back on the controller for the backswing and then push forward to bring the club down to hit the ball. The controller is very sensitive however so if you don't come down straight, just like in proper golf, you will either hook or slice the ball. You can also attempt to increase the power of your shot by continuously tapping the A button whilst making your backswing.
Once you have hit the ball and it is in flight, you can use the A button and any direction to put spin on the ball. I find it difficult to know where to put topspin or backspin on the ball as normally, I cannot figure out where it will land in relation to the flag. This is a very good feature however and one, if used to its full potential which will knock several shots per round off your final score. The putting style in Tiger Woods 2010 has changed from previous versions. Now, putting uses the same down then up movements on the control pad as driving does. As I haven't really got into the series on the Xbox before now I think this works really well but some of my friends who have played previous versions still prefer the old method. This is still available from the options menu.
Online Play
Online play is where Tiger Woods 2010 really excels. You can play a single round as described above with your own options set. This game could be against a friend or a total stranger. As golf is an individual sport, the chances are, you are not going to want to watch a stranger take their shots in between yours. EA to their credit have realised this and have introduced simultaneous play. This means that you can play a hole, almost as you would offline, without worrying about waiting for the other player. You are able to track how the other person or people are doing as their shots are traced on your screen with colourful lines to track the flight of the ball. This works really well and speeds the game up greatly. The game does support voice communication but this works best when playing with friends as a bit of banter adds a bit more bite to the competition.
Tiger Woods 2010 now introduces online tournament play for the very first time. I like this feature a lot, in fact, its probably my favourite part of the game. There are a multitude of tournaments for players of all abilities here, ranging from daily tournaments to weekly tournaments. Daily tournaments consist of one round only so there is very little room for error. I have to say, I am staggered at the winning scores in this tournament as they are usually, 25 under par or something similar whereas I am struggling to even get under par.
This can be a little disconcerting when I tend to finish in the bottom 20 of a 1200 player tournament but at least there is room for improvement. The weekly tournaments are more like a proper golf tournament where your total after four rounds represents your final score. These four rounds can be played at any time during the week. I started one of these tournaments but then forgot to complete my other three rounds which is an easy thing to do as there is no in-game reminder that the tournament is about to close. There are also EA Sports and PGA Tour online tournaments but as it stands, I am not good enough to enter these so I cannot comment on their content.
EA Gamernet
If you are connected to the internet whilst playing then you are eligible for EA Gamernet points. I am still not entirely sure what these points represent, but I think it is Ea's way of coming up with some kind of ranking system to see who is the best golfer around. You are awarded Gamernet points for long drives and getting the ball close to the pin from distance. What I like about Gamernet is that, if you manage to produce an awesome shot you can upload it onto the Gamernet servers so that other people can view the shot. What is even better is that you can challenge other players to reproduce your shot or even try to better it, you get Gamernet points too for doing this and extra bonus points if people fail to beat your challenge.
Extra Content
As this title is on a Microsoft console, there is extra downloadable content as you might expect. For 600 Microsoft points each, there are five additional courses you can download. I don't agree with the fact that you still have to pay extra for more courses after the initial outlay of the game but I would assume that a lot of people would be happy to do this after mastering the courses that come with the game as they would need a new challenge.
Verdict
Tiger Woods 2010 is an excellent golf simulation. This is a game where you are rewarded for the effort you put in and you'll have to work exceptionally hard in order to create a golfer that can live with the experts when playing online. I found that the learning curve wasn't too steep and a novice like me was able to make a birdie after a couple of rounds. As this is a title that comes out each year, I am not expecting to buy Tiger Woods 2011 as these games do have a tendency to be very similar to the previous years offering, a criticism I have heard labelled at Tiger Woods 2010. Online play on this game really is excellent and I would recommend anyone who has this game and an Xbox Live gold account to give it a go and participate in a tournament. This is a fun game, even for non golfers like myself, I would sincerely recommend it to any sports loving gamers out there.
Will you be the next Tiger Woods? 
