Graphics
Ok, so we're sitting on the first tee and I have to say that EA really have gone to town on the graphics. The courses just look absolutely stunning. The draw distance is enormous and very, very detailed. I wouldn't go as far to say the graphics are photo realistic, but EA have come pretty close with this effort. It's not just how well the courses have been drawn, it's the extra touches that make the game feel like you're actually playing there. The trees are all animated, swaying gently in the breeze or whipping about madly in a gale, the surf on the seaside courses crashes realistically against the cliff base and should you end up in the rough, take the time to look how all the individual blades of grass are rippling in the breeze. On top of this each course has it's own little touches, such as the butterflies flitting by at Scottsdale, the Canadian Geese flying overhead at Coeur d'Alene or the swallows zipping across the fairway at Spyglass Hill. And if that weren't enough, the water has to be some of the most realistic I've seen so far. Not up to the standards of an nVidia tech demo, but getting close. In short, this game looks the mutt's, and for a reviewer in the middle of winter, it's like looking at a moving postcard of Bali everytime you play.
The movements of your golfer are all based on motion capture technology, all of which link together seamlessly, from the pre-swing twitches as they settle into the shot through to the celebration moves after a good swing. Without being sexist here, the female golfers even cry when they've hit a particularly bad ball into the rough. Fortunately, there is an option to turn these sequences off, as after a while they become repetitive and slow the gameplay down.
When you've hit the ball the movement is fluid and smooth, even on my ageing GeForce3 T500I at 1024x768, 32bit colour. But, and this is my first niggle, the framerate drops dramatically when the volumetric clouds are scudding about. This can cause problems if this happens in the middle of your swing as the game hiccups just for a second, and when you're gauging the power of your swing by watching your golfer, it can really mess things up.