Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10
Tags: Tiger, tour, woods
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August 27th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
First, let me say that I really, REALLY enjoy this game. You absolutely must have the motion plus attachment to get the most out of the game, too. I actually did take my motion plus off once and played that way… and not only did I lose a substantial amount of control over what I was doing with the swing, but the feedback is pretty worthless too. With the motion plus you get the club face angle and the direction of the swing. Without the motion plus you get only the direction. Also, one great improvement in my mind is that it’s much more difficult to hole out a shot from the fairway. I played TW 09 about a dozen times (renting it) and had about 15 holes-in-one and numerous other eagles by sinking it from the fairway. When the heart thumps started and the close-up on the ball came on, I learned to leave the spin alone because that thing was going in the hole EVERY TIME. On TW 10 the heart thumps mean it’s getting CLOSE, but I’ve only had one ace in two months of play… and I like it since it’s more realistic.
I have found an oddity in the game as far as game play is concerned. If you are a LEFT-HANDED golfer using the “Play Now” feature, you will be playing as Tiger (who is obviously right-handed), and you will see left-handed draw (with the ball flying left-to-right) show up as a fade for the right-handed Tiger (which makes sense, as a right-handed fade also flies left-to-right), and vice versa. You can make your own custom golfer as a lefty and he or she will appear left-handed on the screen.
So, that being said, there is much to ridicule about this game. Most of it happens if you happen to be pretty good at it. Let’s suppose you’re playing a tournament and (either because you’re that good or have a great round) shoot something like a 61 or lower, and nobody else has shot better than 67 or so. You would think that you have a nice cushion, right? Well, you do until you tee off the next round. The computer AI apparently thinks anyone who shoots 61 is a sandbagger (for the non-golfer, that’s someone who is a lot better than he or she claims to be and shoots much better than his or her handicap). As a result, in the next round (and subsequent rounds in that tournament), the computer-controlled players will start shooting scores like 56 or 57 so that they can catch up to you. The problem is, if you don’t normally shoot as low as 61 and wind up following it with 67 or 68, you’re now behind, and you won’t catch up unless you can shoot 55 or so in the round following. So to win a tournament you must either (a) hold back by missing putts or hitting the occasional shot out of bounds so you don’t beat the AI players by too much, or (b) simply shoot 54 or 55 each round so they can never catch up.
Within all that are the individual updates. It’s interesting to read that someone in the tournament has double-eagled a hole… especially if it’s a par 3, since that means the score on the hole was a ZERO!!!!! Tell me how that works, please? I’ve yet to finish a hole in TW golf (or in real golf, for that matter) with a ZERO! The only thing that was nearly as ridiculous as that was noticing that someone had made a hole-in-one… on #2 at TPC Sawgrass, which is a par-5!
Needless to say, I try to ignore those stupid updates and play my game, but it’s a little annoying to think that for all the effort they put into the game, such stupid things are a part of it. Maybe they’ll fix it for TW 11, but who knows…
Rating: 5 / 5
August 27th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
I thoroughly enjoyed playing Wii Resorts Golf, but got a bit tired of playing the same 18 holes over and over. So, I went looking for a game with more variety. After reading the many rave reviews of TW PGA Tour Pro 10 for Wii, I spent my hard earned $[...]. According to many reviewers, this game accurately mirrors real life golf. Well, yes and no. Yes, because it incorporates the Wii controller technology allowing you to swing a virtual golf club, and no for reasons I’ll explain.
I started the game and selected some basic game options. Of the three play styles, I chose the middle one, which said for experienced golfers. Then, I was asked to select a putting style. One putter or three. THREE PUTTERS? The game then takes you through a set of short tutorials with a virtual Hank Haney. 90% of the time, I was able to complete each lesson with the first shot. The game then starts with you as Tiger Woods.
If you have never played real golf, you’ll find this easy to learn and play. If you ARE a golfer, you’ll immediately realize that good golf shots just don’t come this easy in real life. My first round in TW PGA Tour Pro 10 playing as Tiger was an impressive 4 under par 68, which included an eagle. In real life, my best round ever is an 86 and have never shot an eagle in all the years I have played. If, in real life, I could shoot sub-par golf right out of the box, I would either become a tour pro, or give up the game because of the lack of challenge, which I felt was likely to happen with the TW game. But, after creating my personal avatar, I quickly realized that my game didn’t even approach that of Tiger’s. This was my first disappointment. I played as Tiger and played exceptionally well. Then, played as myself and played considerably worse. Why? It was me swinging the controller in both cases. Here’s the reason. In the TW game, you can purchase power and accuracy with money you earn on the tour. That’s just not right if you are expecting realism from a golf game. In Wii Resorts Golf, your ability to hit good shots is entirely based on your skill with the Wii controller (your club) as it should be.
In my opinion, the Wii Resorts Golf game is a better interpretation of real golf. Here are some comparisons.
If you swing too hard in Resorts Golf, you get a bad shot. In the TW game, you can really muscle the shot and get good results; something that doesn’t work on the real golf course. Sure, the graphics are superior in the TW game, but not exceptional, and you pay the price for this by having to wait up to 8 seconds for the next hole to load. And, that’s not the only time I got impatient waiting for the game to either load or save data. EA Sports hasn’t made any real progess in the qualify of their graphics since I saw TW Pro Tour 05 for XBox 5 years ago.
Hitting draws and fades is possible, especially with the Motion Plus controller add-on. But, to achieve these spins, you open or close the club face by twisting controller, and you have to twist quite a bit; so much that if you did this in real life, you’d hit a really terrible shot.
In Wii Resorts Golf, you take practice swings by addressing the ball (pressing B), and taking as many consecutive practice swings as you like until it looks and feels right. In TW PGA Tour Pro 10, you have to press both A and B together and you get one practice swing. You have to wait for a short reset before you can take another practice swing, but by then you forgot the way the previous swing felt.
Once you’ve made your way to the green with some fairly realistic shots, you’re faced with putting that in no way resembles real golf, despite the claims EA makes. In Wii Resorts Golf, the putting is more realistic because you can actually see the terrain and visualize your putt. You can even get a view of the terrain from knee level, just like in real life. In TW PGA Tour Pro 10, the green always looks flat, but terrain is revealed as a grid with a confusing array of moving, colored dots representing flat, slight uphill, extreme uphill or slight downhill. You have to take your best guess. And, you have the practice swing issue again. The putting alone makes me sorry I bought this game.
One of the fun things about all the TW PGA Tour Pro versions is the ability to customize your avatar so that it looks almost like yourself, but be prepared to spend up to half an hour on this. You also have the ability to select, and pay for with virtual prize money, player animations.
In summary, if you’re a gamer looking for some sports variety, the TW Tour Pro game is a worthwhile purchase. It includes some other fun games, like disk golf and a mini-golf course, but I found the graphics to be too dark. Maybe it’s just my 50″ monitor. If you’re a real golfer looking for realism, the Wii Resort Golf game is a better choice, with the unfortunate limitation of only 18 holes to play, plus a special 3-hole game that is available after you prove yourself by shooting sub-par.
I’m hoping that the Wii people, or a third-party developer will come out with a multi-course golf game resembling Wii Resort Golf.
Rating: 3 / 5
August 27th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Real-life golfers and folks that don’t play golf in real life will enjoy Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘10. But if you are a golfer and you are at all familiar with the players and the classic courses offered in this game, you will find this game most enjoyable.
The courses/players are modeled after the real things, and they are indeed designed to play just like them too. The courses you get are:
- TPC Sawgrass
- Turnberry
- St. Andrews
- Bethpage Black (where the 2009 US Open was played)
- Bay Hill
- Firestone
- Oakmont
- Doral
- Pinehurst #2
- Wentworth West
- Harbour Town
- Pebble Beach
- TPC Boston
- Hazeltine National
- East Lake Golf Club
- Torrey Pines
…or you can tell the game to choose a random 18 (or 9).
All of the courses are not initially unlocked; you need to progress through a set of Tournament Challenges that will build your skills, unlock courses, unlock equipment and get you ready to compete on the single player PGA Tour campaign mode and online. As you progress you earn money to buy equipment, apparel and other items in the pro shop. Up to 4 players can play in matches together on or offline.
It is vital that you play at least some of the aforementioned Tournament Challenges prior to joining the PGA Tour which is, just like the real thing, a series of Thursday through Sunday four day events (you don’t really have to play them on Thursday through Sunday).
After beating a good part of the Tournament Challenge mode, your skills should be sharp enough to now play on the Tour on the Event Calendar; I’d highly recommend not joining the tour until you acquire the full potential of your skills by defeating Tournament Challenges. Similarly, if you plan to play online, play as Tiger until you get your own character fully upgraded or be sure that you’re playing against someone at your own skill level.
A really cool feature of the equipment is that if you don’t want to wait to unlock some of it through playing experience, you have the option to literally purchase it though the Playstation Store (like 2 bucks for each unlock I think). That was especially inviting for me as a TW ‘07 convert. I’m too used to having the best equipment, so it was nice to be able to set myself up with some perk items right from the get-go.
Speaking of my conversion from TW ‘07 to TW ‘10, I’ve found so far that the improvements and enhancements to ‘10 versus ‘07 are 99% positive. Online play is much easier to manage…especially playing with friends. And my favorite campaign mode upgrade is the Tournament Challenges that pit you against the pros during classic moments in golf history versus in ‘07 where you just played matches against from lowest to highest ranked golfers. TW `10’s Tournament Challenges are very cool and a lot more challenging than the “Tiger Challenges” that were in TW ‘07.
The minor negatives in ‘10 versus ‘07 are 1) the new Precision Putting system. Hate it! Hate it! Hate it! Thank goodness ‘07 through ‘09 players can tell the game to go back to the Classic Putting mode; I’d advise all new players to try the Classic mode before smashing your controller in frustration over the new Precision system. The second minor negative is the weather; unless you tell the game not to mimic real-time weather at the course you’re playing, you could find yourself playing in a driving rain storm that will dramatically affect your skills. I don’t play real golf in the rain, and I don’t want to play PS3 golf in the rain!
Another difference between TW ‘10 and ‘07 is the disappearance of the driving range. The driving range allowed for quick, easy skill upgrades. The new “Player Coach” in ‘10 is really fun–don’t get me wrong–it’s just, well, I dunno…I’m sure that the “Coach” will grow on me. After a round, he has you practice some of your worst shots in the round in exchange for skill upgrades. Actually…I guess that’s pretty cool.
Oh yeah, and the other very minor negative is that David Feherty and Gary McCord (the popular PGA TV announcers) are gone. They were pretty good in TW ‘07. In TW ‘10 you get Scott Van Pelt from ESPN and Kelly Tilman from The Golf Channel to narrate your game play during matches. Their commentary can be annoying…especially when you hit a bad shot. Anyway….
You can choose to play as some popular golfers that all look like perfectly created CGI versions of the real players (with the exception of Colin Montgomerie who looks more like a scary character out of Resident Evil 5). But the best and most fun way to play is creating your own golfer that you save.
Besides stroke, match and skins play, there are several other game modes to try (which, frankly, I haven’t done much of and probably won’t).
Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘10 on the PS3 can kill an hour quick if you’ve got one to spare. Fastest 18 I’ve ever played. When you’re playing with more than one person, set aside a good amount of time if you go a full 18 holes.
Overall, this is a terrific game that is addictive as you are driven to improve your custom golfer’s skills. It’s great fun for the whole family. Add it to you cart.
Be the ball.
Rating: 5 / 5
August 27th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
For my money, this is the most fun you can have with a sports game, particularly if you are a golfer. With the motion-plus controller, this game is the closest thing to playing a real sport in your home. It’s ridiculously addicting, and a lot of fun. For me, it is too easy on the standard difficulty and swing options, but quite challenging on the advanced settings.
You have to wonder why, then, there are so many glaring problems with the game. It’s as if the designers felt that because they had revolutionary gameplay they could phone in the rest of the design. Or maybe it took them too long to iron out the gameplay and so they ignored the design. Well, whatever it is, this game that could be simply the greatest sports game ever falls short.
A list of grievances:
It if FULL of glitches. Most glaring is that you are unable to see your season statistics no matter how much you play. How you can miss that in the design is beyond me, particularly as some of the trophies are statistically based (and after completing a season and not getting any of them, I can only assume that it is impossible to do so). Another glitch is that occasionally the computer will lose track of the actual position of the ball. Once, needing a par to tie for the lead on the 18th hole, I splashed a ball…. in the middle of the fairway! Another time I eagled, but I heard a ker-plunk, read that I had hit it out-of-bounds, and was somehow awarded simply a par. Ugh.
The obstacles aren’t always obstacles. If you hit it in the bushes, you will often be advanced in front of them without penalty. The layouts are also too open at times…. when a hole at hazeltine is tough because of a tight, tree-lined fairway, I’d like there to be more than a few trees on the video game.
Once you advance beyond amateur status, you can’t go back and play the amateur tournaments. Fine…. but don’t make winning them part of gaining 100%. Because I didn’t want to turn the difficulty down and plow through every tournament no matter my skill level, there are now a bunch of trophies that I can not win.
If you go to a playoff in a stroke-based tournament, you have NO idea what your opponent is doing. You just play out the holes and wait to see if you finished first or second or whatever.
The game encourages sandbagging. If you rip off a great first round, by the second the rest of the field will be shooting at or below your first round score. If you can’t match it, forget about winning. Before lowering the difficulty, it once took me a -61 to win by two strokes. Realism?
You don’t play in pairings….. no matter what your position on the leader board, you can expect to play the final 6 holes with everyone else in the clubhouse.
Without putt preview, you’re essentially guessing the speed. Why isn’t there a practice green? And you can put spin on the ball while in flight (though not on advanced), but not at the stroke…. why not?
There are other things, too, that show a lack of creativity. Why can’t you turn on an option that lets you play with an opponent during your round? That would amp up the excitement of battling towards a trophy. Why aren’t there hybrids? Where is the skins competitions? Instead of piling up endorsements, why not make the companies compete for your name (how interested is Taylor Made in sponsoring someone who is also sponsored by Callaway and Ping?)? Why isn’t the rough at the U.S. Open insanely high like it is in real life? This is just a brief list.
All that said, it is currently my favorite game to play. I just wish it was handled with the care it deserves.
Rating: 3 / 5
August 27th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
While this game has some fun to it, EA Sports has never been known to go out of their way to fine tune a product and give it some polish, and certainly they rarely fix anything with a patch.
The computer golfers in this game are PERFECT. They NEVER miss a fairway, NEVER miss a GIR, and always 1 putt, with occasional 2 putt. Typically they shoot in the 50s, regardless of what course, what conditions. They are absolutely perfect and therefore no fun to play at all. I used to like doing a ‘mixed doubles’ in 2009 version, me team up with Paula Creamer (as I have a crush on her
, not to mention shes a great golfer) and go against Tiger and Annika. Perhaps Best Ball, or some such. Great matches, sometimes close, sometimes we’d win big, sometimes they’d win big. Real genuine UNPREDICTABLE fun. Now in 2010, all of them are perfect, including Paula of course.
This year its hard to stay awake during such, all 3 or them, Paula included, are absolutely perfect. Yawn.
Re the Play the Pros, this is a great idea, but as usual EA leaves out some key things, why for instance are we not allowed on monday thru wednesday to play the course, practice like the real pros do, in live weather. We can do nothing until day 1. And you cannot practice most of the courses in the other part of the game, because most of the cousrses do not really exist.
If the course the real pga is playing that week, is not part of the game, EA makes up some conglomeration of holes from courses in the game, so #1 might be from Beth Page, #2 Pinehurst, #3 Pebble etc. Thus impossible to practice. How hard could it be for them to oopen up mon-wed so we can practice the ‘made up’ course they are using that week.
The greens are ludicrously fast, th precision putting, which you have no choice but to use in play the pros is good, but very difficult. Be prepared in play the pros to have a very hard time of it as you must play at the the top level “Tour Pro” All of that makes sense I guess in some way, though not sure why. Its not like we are competing online against anybody.
And as usual, no detail, you don’t even see your stats at the end of a round, how many GIRs, how many putts, etc. STuff that is just standard everyday fare in any good golf simulation. When plyaing a computer golfer you never have any idea how far thier drive went, what distance they are from the pin, stuff a good caddy would be telling you. You also have no way of knowing the slope of a green you are hitting an approach to. Little details that EA Sports has never cared about and never will. They are market driven, get it out the door. Don’t do anything extra to take more pride in your accomplishment.
Anyway, most of the stuff that was fun in 2009 has been ruined by the perfect computer golfers. Even the simulated pga tour is the same, everybody shooting in the 50s and low 60s. All in all I think 2009 is a better game. if it had precision putting, it would be about perfect.
Rating: 3 / 5