Tiger Woods 2008 plays a fresh and innovate brand of golf - as long as you haven’t played Tiger Woods 2007, Tiger Woods 2006, Tiger Woods 2005, Tiger Wo... Well, you get the idea. If you’ve played a Tiger Woods game in the last four years, you pretty much know what to expect from this game. And if you expect anything more than what you’ve already seen in the past, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Here’s the extent of new features in Tiger Woods 2008 and what they really add to the game:
Confidence Meter: Tracks your history on each hole along with the type of shot you’re lining up to hit. From an information perspective, this is a handy feature to have at your fingertips. But seriously, do you need the game to model how confident you are in a given shot? Isn’t that something you already feel or not based on your past successes and failures? I know if I go to line up a long putt that I have no notion of how hard to hit, my lack of confidence in it pretty much takes care of itself. I don’t need the game coming up with its own confidence penalties to heap on top of my own shortcomings.
FedEx Championship: The PGA has started a championship playoff format because, well, I guess every other sport has one and Tiger Woods won’t be around forever to artificially give a shot of testosterone to the PGA’s TV ratings. This format has been carried over to Tiger Woods 2008. It’s nice to have, and it’s nice that you can start a FedEx cycle without having to embark on a full PGA tour season, but it’s not something that makes your investment in the game worthwhile if you already own one of the last two or three editions.
Excess Gunk: If ESPN branding floats your boat, well, you can find a little of its flavor if you play online, though it’s nowhere to be found in the single-player game. Of course, with or without the ESPN branding on it, the online interface makes the rest of the game’s menu system look good by comparison. It’s as clunky as a 1978 Dodge Dart. They’ve also shuffled up the Tiger Challenge mode by re-arranging the challenge format a bit, even if the nature of the challenges is the same as always. In any case, the mode plays out pretty much as you’d expect from past editions, with a series of golf challenges –like sinking a long putt, playing a course’s par 5s or beating one of the licensed pros one-on-on- that increase in difficulty until you reach the ultimate “dream” match in Tiger Woods himself.
There you have it. There’s your $40. If you were hoping for clearly improved graphics, you’re out of luck. If you were hoping that the commentary of David Feherty and Gary McCord, which has always been lackluster, had finally been improved, sorry. If you thought that maybe they’d improve ball physics, you’ll be disappointed. If you were hoping for a deeper, more logical career mode, don’t look here. If you were hoping for frills that have been in past editions of the PC version, like say the Course Utilities and Course Architect (which were, themselves, antiquated), you’ll want to send some hate mail EA’s way because they’re inexplicably missing from this edition. And if you’re hoping EA finally took a second look at the fun, but far from perfect TrueSwing model (where your movements of the mouse translate to your club’s swing), just turn off your PC now before you feel compelled to repeatedly bash your head into your keyboard until you lose consciousness. There’s almost nothing new here, and what’s more damning, what was already there has not been improved. That is the reality of the PC version of Tiger Woods 2008.
It’s a damn shame really. PC golf was the one sport that had yet to be outdone by its console counterparts. If nothing else, the annual inclusion (or download) of frills like the Course Utilities gave the PC version something the console variants would never have. And TrueSwing with a mouse was always better than golfing with a game pad, even with the inclusion of analog stick controls a couple editions ago. Not this year. This year there is absolutely no redeeming feature to recommend Tiger Woods 08 PC over its console brethren or prior editions. The only reason to even think of picking it up is if you haven’t played the game in years.
