- Publisher: EA Sports
- Developer: EA Tiburon
- ESRB Rating: “E" for Everyone
- Genre: Golf
- Pros: The Masters; great features list; caddy is actually helpful; nice presentation; fun gameplay
- Cons: Bad commentary; caddy makes it easy
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 features 16 courses including, for the first time in series history, Augusta National and the Augusta National Par 3 Course along with 4 other brand new ones. There are also 20 additional courses available as DLC.
The main single-player mode is the Road to the Masters career mode. You start out as an amateur and work your created golfer up from an amateur tour, to the Nationwide Tour, to the PGA Tour, and ultimately to The Masters. You earn XP by playing well that you can use to improve your player, and by signing with sponsors and completing specific objectives you earn new equipment. There is also the Fed Ex Cup, World Rankings, and all of that sort of good stuff to compete for as well. It is a satisfying and rewarding career that is meant to be played for the long term (one Achievement asks you to win The Masters 7 times!).
Other modes include Masters Moments where you try to replicate or beat big moments in Masters history. There is also Tiger at the Masters mode, where you try to replicate his 4 Masters wins, and try to earn his 5th this year. The Ryder Cup, a big feature in TW11, doesn't happen this year, but you can compete in the President's Cup, which is similar.
You can also play multiplayer online or off. Live Tournaments to play along with the pros. There are Gamernet challenges on nearly every shot.
Gameplay
EA
What is different is that you now have a caddy on the course with you. Your caddy will present you with a few different options for each shot, or you can make a custom shot. At first, it is kind of annoying to have the caddy (which you can't fully turn off and get rid of completely) always butting in when you just want to play, but the advice they give is actually really good. The shots they pick for you take into account wind and everything else, so all you have to really do is swing. On the greens, they give you great advice on power as well as how much break a putt might have. They aren't 100% accurate, though, so you have to fine tune putts yourself to sink them consistently. Also, they are ultra conservative on approach shots, so if you ever want to get close to the hole you usually need to set things up yourself. Generally, though, the caddie gives you great advice and will even improve as your "Course Mastery" of each course gets better. You still have to work a bit, but there is no question that the caddy helps. It can make things a bit too easy, though, so we recommend bumping the difficulty up a bit.
Graphics
Graphically, there isn't much to say. It looks pretty great all around. Augusta National is the most detailed and best looking of the courses, but all of the other courses look nice as well. Like in years past, courses closed in by trees look better than the more open courses which tend to lack background details. Overall, the game looks nice.
EA
The sound is a bit hit or miss. Sound effects for everything are spot on, but the commentary is really mediocre. Jim Nantz and David Feherty take care of commentary and analysis, but never really have anything all that interesting to say and will repeat the same boring stuff over and over. Better than Scott Van Pelt making fun of you all day like the last few games, I guess.
Bottom Line
Ultimately, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 is a great game of golf all around that offers enough new, never before seen stuff that it is absolutely worth a purchase for golf fans. Normally I wouldn't claim that the addition of one course would make a game worth a purchase, but Augusta National is so thoroughly integrated throughout every aspect of the game, and so well done overall, that it really does make Tiger 12 work picking up all by itself. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 is highly recommended.
