Less golfing options and the same old courses... again
Now the reasons I decided to stick with the standard kit is because I didn’t want to waste my money. Right from the start you’re given a pot of cash which you’ll use to enter tournaments, cover your travel costs and help you work your way up the amateur ranks and into the PGA Tour proper. And here’s where I hit a bit of stumbling block.Being a Brit, I decided to stay true to my roots and picked St Andrews as my home course… BIG mistake. Sure, I can play around St Andrews all day long for next to no cost, but to get on the PGA Tour I have to take part in tournaments over the US. This means my meagre $8,000 balance soon gets whittled away by travel costs and entrance fees and early on you’ll often find that you spend more just getting to and entering the tournament than you receive when you win it, even if you come in first place.
So the lesson here is to base yourself in the US and play from there… which brings me to my next gripe… The courses. We have some terrifically challenging courses all over Europe but other than a nod with St Andrews to the fact people play golf outside of the US, everything else takes place over in the States. Is it too much to ask for some new courses?
Click for larger imageOk, enough on that, how about the courses we do have, what are they like? Well, Pebble Beach was always a favourite of mine and players of previous Tiger Woods PGA Tour games will recognise their favourite courses instantly… mainly because it’s damn hard to tell them apart from previous versions. Ok, perhaps that a bit unfair as the courses do look a lot smoother and realistic than previous Tiger Woods PGA Tour outings. The crowds are now fully 3D rather than those flat sprites we’ve seen in the past but your player is still pretty much as before.
Perhaps I’m being too demanding, perhaps I’m expecting too much but off the back of the vast improvement of the DS version over its predecessor, I was expecting something more from Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08. Yes, I know it’s hard to keep on improving the looks of a game but honestly, it’s hard to tell if EA have done anything at all with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 other than just drop in last year’s courses en masse given them a texture smooth over and then left it at that.
So, just to recap, we’ve got less in the golfer set-up and the same courses as before with a hint of a revamp but that’s about it. Let’s hope the golf itself is better, eh?