When you hear the name "Tiger Woods", you think of words like 'excellence', 'precision', and 'competitiveness’. Unfortunately, the golf game carrying his name bears little resemblance to the character traits personifying his actual abilities. This year’s offering does just enough to be considered a 'next-gen' game, but does relatively little in regards to visuals and game play to distinguish it from its predecessor.

Graphics in this latest installment are below average when compared to other PS3 games. Unsightly 'jaggies' are immediately visible in the opening menu room. There are also visual problems in the game engine itself. Instead of the harsh lines and jaggies seen in the menu interface, the graphics appear fuzzy and unpolished. Trees are blurry and nondescript. Long strands of grass look like they're planted in thin rows and wave in unison. Crowds, which were a welcome aesthetic addition in a previous release, have not improved over their predecessors. In one case, the golfer was under a tree and hit a punch shot. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the spectator that was standing ten yards directly in the line of fire. There should be crowd artificial intelligence that moves the spectators aside so they never stand in the shot line. The golfer hit the punch shot and nailed the spectator right in the knee, which not only looks silly but also killed the shot.

The option to create a golfer's face using a photo is a nice addition. I loaded a photo of myself to my PS3. I used the photo face creation tool to create a golfer that looked similar to my actual face. It was a much better virtual version of me than I was able to create in last year's version of the game. With that said, it's a shame that one of the better additions to Tiger Woods '08 does nothing to enhance the gameplay itself.

Four new additions were made to enhance gameplay, though only two are truly new. The developers have brought back the 3-click swing method. It's a good option for those that who easily frustrated with the analog stick swing method. An option is now available to use "Putt Preview" to view the path the ball will take given the aiming point and putt strength currently selected. It's a good way for beginners to learn how to read putts, but most veteran players will turn it off right away as it feels like almost like a cheat mode (and isn’t even available on the hardest difficulty level). The "new" draw and fade buttons, which allow you to automatically add draw or fade is technically new, but golf games have used this feature for years, and just because Tiger is late to the party doesn't make this a groundbreaking feature.

EA has added a new 'Confidence' rating for the golfer. It takes into account how well your player is striking the ball on particular hole and will adjust gameplay, making it tougher to hit good shots after a few bad shots, and vice versa. Overall, it does not make much difference to the overall level of play. If you are good at using the analog swing, you will have a high level of confidence and play well. If you are not good at the analog swing, you will perform poorly. The confidence rating does not influence play of the golfer nearly as much as the golfer's ability traits. A golfer with bad ratings and high confidence will still be a bad golfer overall. It just gives you more or less room for error.

Difficulty levels in the game received an overhaul for this year's version. Usually, veteran Tiger Woods players would jump right into the game on the highest setting. That is awfully tough to do this year. The swing mechanics are extremely difficult when starting a career with a new golfer with baseline ratings. EA also added a new feature that gives swing feedback to help players diagnose swing issues. This helps to reduce frustration as you can see what went awry in the swing.

Initially, the thought of increased difficulty in the game sounds like an improvement. However, it becomes obvious as players advance that the difficulty settings only make early stages of the career more difficult. The game becomes much easier once a golfer increases his stats to a higher level. As a result, scores in the 50's and low 60's are still common once the player's character stats are 'maxed out'.

The frustrating putting mechanic also remains in the game. The golfer will still take full swings at 4-inch putts. Lack of any precision in the putting game is maddening. The swing mechanism appears to be the main source of errors, rather than misreads or errors by the player. Some players improve the putting game by switching from analog swing to 3-click swing, but that is only available on the lower two difficulty levels. EA may want to consider making the 3-click swing a permanent fixture in the putting game. The current analog putting is suboptimal.