Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004
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First off, I felt right at home switching from PGA 99 to Tiger 2004 (very similiar menus/displays). I'm also guessing a first time player of the series would find their way around easily as well. Menus are straight forward and work well. Let's just say you can do just about everything you'd want to do in golf with this game. You can just play a round, start a single season with your player, or jump into career mode where you bring yourself to the top of the golf ranks. You start out as a nobody, barely able to hit the ball straight and three-putt, but work your way up the golf world by enterting tournaments and taking various lessons. It's easy at first but gets steadily harder.
Some 18 or 20 courses are included, and vary greatly. From the links style courses in England and Ireland, to the tropical paridise of Hawaii. They've even included a fictional course set in the Amazon rain forest. It is beautiful and challenging.
The ball behaves brilliantly. When I downloaded the demo I was surprised at how realistic the ball reacted. I have yet to question the path or actions of the ball. You can add spin, draw and fade the ball, whatever. Being an avid golfer, I found that the game was very detailed in this aspect, providing realism and depth of play.
Let me gush on the graphics. They are beautiful. We're talking individual blades of grass swaying in the wind along with the trees, birds flying overhead (type of bird depends on what course you're on). You can recreate yourself with the GameFace technology. It's really cool. And my comptuer is only 866mhz with a 64 mb 3d card, yet it all runs smooth. It is the most graphically impressive game I have EVER seen; on any platform.
To sum it all up, you have a realistic, graphically beautiful game that doesn't fail to deliver. 5+ stars!
The PS2 version is a dumb-down version of the PC title, the interface is mouse=club and pushing the mouse on a horizontal or vertical axis (choose either) mimics the strike of the club - sounds technical, but EA is all about sports, and they've been making sports titles for years, so it is very easy to pick up, and they did a very good job of capturing the "stage fright" feeling right before a swing with this interface, but the tried & true 2 or 3 mouse-click interface is present.
You start by building a character a la The Sims - face, body size, clothes, and $5k ($50k if you have another EA sports title on your PC), then a non-linear path trying to earn more money in competitions against computer opponents (who look like they wandered in from miniature golf), buying more skills and equipment, and learning the game. Naturally as skills increase the game becomes more difficult, and the frustration factor can get really high with missing short putts or crashing & burning on a bad round that puts you tied for 4th to 46th.
The announcers with their in-game commentaries are like Mutt & Jeff - you can tell they did the voice-over work as a parody & most of what they say insult only but the best players - perfect if playing two or more players, irritating if playing alone, but I didn't disable it because they give you the only advice on how to hit while on the green.
Worth the $20, but only four stars because the ball or the hole disappears & the camera interface has you trying to make a blind putt from the backstop or a tree if you come to close when it could simply just pan-around, & the nine other camera angles (blimp view, tee box, opponent's view) do nothing to help you make the shot.
Just technical enough for those that buy sports games for PC, sporty enough for fans of golf at any age, & the Sim-like creation of players will have you trying to make either yourself or the perfect golfer instead of hitting the links!