Review by: Brandon "Trophy Ball" Cackowski-Schnell

Let's just get it out of the way and say that yes, this is the best version of the series on any platform. The usual cornucopia of golfing activities has been bolstered with the Ryder Cup, the biennial golfing showdown between Team USA and Team Europe, online disc golf, four mini golf courses and the ability to play the Party Golf games individually outside of Party Golf mode. Oh yeah, there are also five new courses, 12 on 12 online team play and all of the stuff from last year's version including Q School, the FedEx cup, and the usual gaggle of golf modes for up to four local players. All of that stuff alone would make the game worth getting simply because you can play it all year long and consistently have new golfing experiences ranging from a brutal four day match on Bethpage to a simple, 30 minute pitch and putt contest.

Truth be told, we've been spoiled by the Wii version so if you played last year's game you'd expect that this year's version would have all of the aforementioned content and some other new additions. Hell, had they done nothing with the swing mechanics and just added new stuff to do the game would be worth it but it's what they did add to the swing mechanics that really put the icing on the cake. New to the game are two new swing modes, Advanced Plus and Tour Pro. With these modes, the game provides the most realistic video golfing experience ever created and that is not an exaggeration. On the highest difficulty level, every movement of your wrists and arms during the swing are tracked and applied to the swing, for better or worse. Open that club face up too much and good luck finding your ball in the rough. In fact, it's possible to miss the ball completely. When was the last time you saw that in a golf video game?

Combine the Tour Pro swing with the new True View camera and you have one difficult, but realistic game of golf. With True View there is no aiming circle, only yardage markers. The entire game is played from first person view which means that if you can't see it, you don't know about it. After hitting the ball you have only the crowd response to tell you how well or poorly you hit the ball. There are no aiming markers to tell you target elevation or slope or any of that fancy stuff. It's just you, your clubs and the course. I won't lie to you, playing with the combination of the Tour Pro swing and the True View camera is quite a shot to the ego after years of what now feels like arcade golf but when you hit that clean drive and hear the roar of the crowd there is nothing quite like it. As with last year the advanced swing mechanics require the Wii Motion Plus. Why they even bother supporting the lack of the peripheral is beyond me, as it is absolutely integral to the game's best features.

The push for a more realistic golfing experience extends beyond the swing mechanics and camera system and into player management as well. Gone are shirts and socks that make you luckier or more focused or whatever bizarre alchemy was imbued into the plastic of a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Gone too are several attributes such as luck or spin with your player skills boiled down to the more tangible quartet of power, accuracy, recovery and spin. As you play matches these skills will fluctuate based on how well or how poorly you perform. At the end of a match you spend experience points to make your golfer better overall or better in individual areas. Before the match you can spend a few points to focus on a select attribute and give yourself a minor stat bump but I barely noticed a difference as my cruddy swing no doubt drowned out any temporary ability boost.

The best part of the new swing and camera system is how flexible it is so that players can customize the level of difficulty to their own personal comfort level. With the exception of the Pro Tour difficulty level which must be played with the True View camera on, you can choose to have a punishing swing difficulty level but give yourself a break on course management with aiming reticles turned on and only the best weather for your golf outing. Similarly you can turn on True View but leave the swing on Normal and learn how to read a course without having to worry about your swing screwing things up.