- Title: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09
- Platform: Xbox 360
- Publisher: EA
- Developer: EA Tiburon
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Golf
- Pros: Club trainer; skill advancement; create-a-player; solid gameplay; tons to do; Gamernet Challenges
- Cons: Bland announcers; can’t skip CPU golfers
Tiger Woods 09 offers up sixteen gorgeous real world courses and a stacked roster of both male and female professional golfers. Of course, you won’t really be using the pros all that much, unless you want ruin the online play for everyone by picking Tiger Woods all the time, because of the great create-a-player feature. Using the Live Vision camera or by importing your own photos, you can put your face right into the game. And it isn’t like early Vision Cam characters where your picture was just pasted onto the in-game model, in Tiger Woods 09 the game actually builds a 3D model of your face that is incredibly accurate.
The modes of play include all of the regulars. Quick play, career, and a ton of different game-types ranging from stroke play to skins to battle golf and more. The Tiger Challenge, where you pass challenges, beat the pros, and ultimately take down Tiger Woods, is back and even comes glitch-free this year so you can actually finish it. Online play is also as solid as ever and is improved this year by everyone being able to play at the same time rather than taking turns. The other players’ shots are shown on your screen as colored lines. This is a great feature that keeps the online play fast and fun and there isn’t much waiting around like before.
Gameplay
Another major change comes in how your created player’s skills progress. You start out as a normal duffer, but depending on how you play your power, accuracy, short game, and putting stats will raise or lower. Your stats change after every round but you can also play training games to boost your stats even more. It is a great system that is surprisingly satisfying because you feel like you are really earning your stripes by putting the work in to improve.
The other notable addition is the challenges that pop up while you are out on the course. When you hit a great shot, you can set it as a Gamernet Challenge that is uploaded for other people to try and beat. As you play out on the courses, challenges from other people pop up. You don’t have to beat them, as there is only reward and no penalty, and since it is integrated so seamlessly you really don’t have to pay much attention to it. Very nice.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 are very nice. The courses look great all around, with some particularly nice looking water. The golfers are all nicely detailed and the pros look just like their real world counterparts. Like I said above, created golfers using the Live Vision camera look amazingly good and are truly a step above the created characters in most games.The sound is fairly good and features a decent soundtrack and general “golf sounds”, but the commentary is pretty terrible. Not only is it just plain bland and boring, but it is a few seconds slow on pretty much every shot you take. You’ll sink a long putt and your character will already be celebrating while the announcers are saying “Oh, this looks good. It might make it,” as if they are in a time bubble that is four seconds behind the real world.
Bottom Line
