I suck at putting. Not real-life putting – I haven’t played real golf in over a decade, and I’m decent enough at the mini variety. No, I suck at virtual putting. And to add insult to my injury, the announce team in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 like to remind me of this fact.
My three and four-putt woes are in no ways a fault of the game, as the new “precision putting” feature, where you use the same putter regardless of the distance of the putt, is pretty easy to use. You basically line up your putt and pull back on the joystick to hit the ball. My main problem is that I rush through it and don’t take enough time lining things up. My lack of patience is probably why I don’t have any desire to play real golf either.
If you’ve played past incarnations of the Tiger Woods game you know what to expect – there aren’t a whole lot of massive changes to this year’s game. Now, I reviewed the game on the PS3 so I can’t comment on the Wii version of it (unless Nintendo wants to send me a free Wii system of course – holler at me Nintendo!). Most of the major changes this year for the XBox/PS3 version take place online, where you can play live tournaments with real-time weather conditions and even play real-world tournaments as they happen, matching up your scores with the pros. The U.S. Open at Bethpage Black is one of six new courses in the game, bringing the total number of different links up to 16. Another fun feature is the “dynamic attributes” of your created golfer. Depending on how you do during a round, your various skills will increase or decline. And Tiger’s long-time coach Hank Haney is in the game to give you drills to improve your skills.
The actual gameplay is pretty easy and intuitive, and with four different difficulty levels it is easy for anyone to pick it up and master it pretty quickly. The game pretty much offers all that you could hope for in a golf game. But, with that being said, it still is just a golf game, so non-golf fans might get bored with it pretty quick. As an added bonus, if you buy the game you’ll get a free subscription to Golf World or Golf Digest magazines (unless you live outside of the U.S. like me).
Now, excuse me while I go and practice my putting so announcer Scott Van Pelt stops making fun of me.
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