Anyone who has ever hefted a 3-wood in real life, looked down at the little white ball, and thought “Sure, I can hit that” only to hit a 20-yard grounder moments later knows how frustrating golf can be in real life. At the same time, working through that frustration to hit a shot off of the tee that is so straight and clean that it would make the Golden Bear himself proud, makes all the curse words and broken clubs worth it. This, in a nutshell, is the Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’08 DS experience, moments of maddening frustration elevated by exhilarating victory.
With this version of Tiger Woods for the DS, EA has not only developed the best version of the game for Nintendo’s handheld thus far, but the best golf game for the DS. Gone is the quirky “trace the line” mechanic from Tiger Woods ’07, replaced with an intuitive stylus control that not only allows for an analog stick type experience, but also provides more control over draws and fades. All aspects of the game, from club and shot selection to aiming and shooting are handled with the stylus, making for a streamlined game of golf. For those who long for the days of yore before touching stopped being naughty and started being good, there’s a traditional 2-tap and 3-tap swing mechanic that lets you party like it’s 1989. This mode is perfect for when you’ve lost all of your styluses or broken them in fits of rage.
What makes Tiger Woods ’08 for the DS so frustrating is the new system of making the player pay to enter every event outside of a practice round. Yes, that’s every event. Want to enter a PGA tournament? Pay up. Want to challenge one of the game’s pros to the back 9 at Pebble Beach? Pay up. Want to try your hand at the Close Approach Tiger Challenge? Pay up. Gone are the days of entering a Tiger Challenge and prevailing through dogged determination and sheer force of will. Now, every challenge becomes a risk reward proposition where you have to evaluate whether or not you want to risk losing the money on a failed challenge. For some of the lesser challenges, where only 500 bucks is on the line, it’s not as big a deal as you might hit a close approach shot that wins you back your five bills. As you progress through the challenges though, it becomes riskier and riskier with an 18-hole stroke play match costing $5000 to enter and the first match of the PGA Tour costing a whopping $25k to enter.
While the risk reward system certainly makes the player practice more before attempting challenges it also takes away some of the game’s variety. Sure, you can still win some money by playing a practice round, or by playing well when attempting the challenges but the amount you make is not nearly as much as winning a challenge, nor is it enough to build up your golfer’s stats in order to make the challenges easier. What you end up with is a ‘fish or cut bait’ situation. If you use all your money to make your golfer better, it’s easier to win the challenges, but you have no money to enter challenges. Conversely, if you don’t spend any money to make your golfer better, you run the risk of spending all your money to lose challenges.
Once you get past this system and just decide to play a round of golf, you’ll find that the new touch controls work amazingly well. By “drawing” down on the screen you pull back your golfer’s club, and the back swing is divided into 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% gradations, making it easy to cut that approach shot short. Holding the stylus at 100% just long enough to make your directional arrow turns red will allow for up to 100% boost, perfect for carrying that pond, or blasting past that sand trap. How well you hit is based on how far back you’ve drawn the club as well as the tempo of the swing. The controls are easy to pick up and provide enough consistent feedback to let players learn how to use them.
Putting doesn’t work quite as well, as this version of Tiger Woods still uses the caddy tip system, unlike the putt preview system of it’s non-handheld console siblings, and as such, trying to figure out what 3-inches left translates to on a screen that’s only several inches wide in the first place is next to impossible. You can use the d-pad or the stylus to set the aiming point, and while the stylus requires the steely hands of a surgeon, putts seemed to fall more often when using it instead of the d-pad. Just lay off the Jolt Cola and you’ll be fine.
Graphically, the game is nothing to write home about. The courses are well modeled; however a decent amount of tearing occurs as the camera tracks the ball onto the green or fairway. The pro golfers are similarly unattractive and indistinguishable from each other except for the color of their shirts. Obviously Tiger Woods stands out, but the only way to tell the difference between Annika Sorenstam and Natalie Gulbis is that Annika wears pants and a green shirt while Natalie wears shorts and a pink shirt. The game is similarly unforgiving to your own golfer, so while there is a respectable amount of character customization present, anything other than wardrobe or extreme hairstyle changes (neon green Mohawks for example) aren’t worth futzing with.
Audio is not a factor in this game at all, as you’ll have nothing but the occasional bird twitter as you play. No color commentary on the shots, no course descriptions, nothing. Just you, the “ping” of your driver and some awkwardly clipped applause should you do well. On the one hand, it makes it easy to play this game while riding the subway as you don’t have to worry about missing anything by turning the volume down. On the other hand, playing the game with the volume up has an eerie silence to it, like you’ve decided to take a break from the zombie holocaust by tackling the front 9 at St. Andrews.
The eight licensed courses provide a nice challenge as well as a fair amount of variety. The only issue here is that St. Andrews just isn’t windy enough. Anyone who has played past Tiger Woods games on other consoles relies on those 20 mph tail winds to drive your ball past the 350 yard mark, while the DS version never has the wind break into double digits. On most courses, the wind doesn’t seem to do much when blowing side to side; however it will boost, or impede your ball, depending on whether or not you’re hitting into it or with it at your back. Also, it is possible, on some of the oceanfront courses, to hit the ball into the ocean and then have to take your next shot from atop the waves. You won’t make it back to the fairway, regardless of the club combination you play, and with no option to concede the hole on anything other than Match play, this can be annoying. Granted, if you’re hitting the ball into the ocean, glitches in the game’s graphics engine are the least of your problems.
