Ever since Headgate Studios took over EA’s premier golf game, the series has never been better. Unfortunately all of that stops with yet another EA Sports release that was rushed to market to coincide with the launch of the Xbox 360. This game marks the second time in less than 12 months that a golf game has launched with a console and fails (Sony PSP anyone).

Like Madden NFL 06, EA Sports tried to redo Tiger Woods for the Xbox 360 rather than just bring over a port. Based on what I’ve seen, I think I’d rather have had the ports, because at least they would have been more enjoyable.

The first thing you notice when you fire up Tiger 06 is the text. It is very tiny, even on a rather large screen. When you are brought to the main menu, you are given a limited number of options. You can “play now” which puts you right in the game. Unfortunately, in single player, if you’re just bought Tiger, you only have one option: 18 holes playing as Tiger Woods at Pebble Beach.

In order to unlock other golf courses, you have to fire up career mode. While the idea may work in other games, the fact you are only limited to one of the six courses is just plain stupid. Oh yes, you heard me, I said six courses – as in half as many as are in the Xbox and PS2 versions of the game. I don’t know about you, but in my recreational life, I can often play on more than one golf course. The lack of an ability to pick up and play any of the courses, or even game types, really hurts this game.

Given this, you have to go into career mode. You start off with some contests – chipping contests, putting contests, etc. Finishing these tasks unlocks…more contests! They aren’t totally without merit however, as completing these tasks does indeed build character traits which will help make your player a better golfer.

Some of you are probably thinking, well EA did this to give you a challenge to really explore the game. Well, if playing Pebble Beach over and over and OVER again in order to unlock a 2nd course is your idea of fun, run out right now and spend $60 for this game.

There are some things to like about the game. For one the graphics are mesmerizing. The water looks incredible and at 1080i, the blades of grass look incredible. The animations for Tiger and the other PGA pros are very impressive. It’s a real shame that so much effort went into making the game look pretty and so little went into gameplay. There’s a ‘game face’ feature which lets you customize pretty much everything. A suggestion for future games might be to send a .jpg file of you from your PC to your Xbox 360, however.

The game isn’t broken, nor is it buggy. In the actual game, I didn’t find any problems with the way rules are enforced (unlike a certain football game). You just don’t have a lot of replay value here with the small amount of courses and the way career mode is structured.

Gameplay itself isn’t bad – anyone who’s played Tiger recently will find it very easy to pick up. I did have a concern that using a wireless controller would cause problems with timing of a backswing, but I can rest easy as there aren’t any problems there. I did find the controller to be a lot less forgiving than the Xbox version of the game. You need to hit the ball perfect in order to really launch a drive. There’s a ‘gamebreaker’ mode that seems out of place in a simulation like this (it should stay with the EA Sports Big brand).

Many of the minigames that I enjoy are missing from all this game. One of my favorites was the ‘bullseye’ game where you would have to hit various targets on the course. You’ll have to stick to putting and chipping here.