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Tiger Woods tees up for another round. The Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchise consistently delivers a great game of golf and Tiger Woods 08 is no different. While the game doesn’t deliver any radical new changes, it is still quite enjoyable.
Tiger Woods 08 includes the same game modes found in last year’s game, so you’ll find stroke, best ball, skills 18, skins, real time event calendar, battle golf, etc. as well as deeper modes like PGA Tour (where you begin with a rather poor golfer and increasingly get better skills) and Tiger Challenge (which includes more varied challenges this time around). EA Redwood Shores has added bingo, bango and bongo where you are awarded for being first on green, closest to the pin and best score, respectively. While there is no shortage of game modes, it’s a bit disappointing that only one new mode was added. The game’s character creation system can now use a variety of cameras (Xbox Live Vision, EyeToy, USB Cameras, etc) to form a 3D model of your face for your created golfer.
The game includes 16 courses (up from 12 in last year’s game and six in Tiger 06) thanks to the addition of Cog Hill, East Lake, TPC Boston and Westchester. The courses also include favorites like Firestone, Pinehust, St. Andrews, TPC at Sawgrass and The Prince Course. You’ll find 15 professional golfers including Tiger Woods and John Daly, as well as ten fictional characters. All in all, there’s plenty of content here to please golf enthusiasts.
Tiger Woods 08 makes some changes to the game’s swinging mechanism. The analog stick swinging is more sensitive this around and includes the classic analog stick swinging as well as the precision-based swinging from last year’s game (where the character’s precision is factored into your shots). The game also includes the traditional three-button swinging mechanism of yesteryear. The game’s fade and draw mechanisms have been mapped to the bumpers, which add more precision and makes the entire system more intuitive.
Tiger Woods 08 marks the debut of EA Sports Gamernet, where you can save your coolest shots and share them with other players. Aside from sharing your shots, you can also make them into challenges for other players. It’s a pretty cool feature and adds to the community aspect of the game. In addition to Gamernet, the game includes online multiplayer functionality although we did notice some lag here and there.
Tiger Woods 08’s graphics are again good but not great with little changing from last year’s version. The character models are all look pretty good, although as expected more detail went into Tiger’s character model. The courses all look good too, although some of the environmental objects like trees don’t look quite as good as they should. Some new camera angles to spice the presentation up somewhat, though. The game’s audio, from the sounds of golf to the commentary, is solid, too.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 is the best Tiger Woods yet but really feels like an incremental upgrade over last year’s game. That said, there are five new courses, one new mode and some improvements made here and there. Whether that’s worth a full price upgrade depends on how much you like the Tiger Woods series. -- Adam Nunez, PGNx Media
---- Sep 19, 2007
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