I begrudgingly purchased Tiger ’09, still smarting from the horrid experience that was Tiger ’08, but hoping against hope that at least some of the “this one is much better than the last one” reviews weren’t just corporate buttsucking.
With about six hours of playtime under the rapidly-expanding waistline, then, I will now present to you my preliminary review of Tiger ’09, played on an Xbox 360.
Here are the things that are better than last years!
– The little bubble that shows you how you’re actually moving the joystick in “real swing” mode or whatever it’s called.
– The graphics are a little better.
– The player stats, although suspicious, are “dynamic”, in that your abilities (distance/short game/putting, etc.) go up and down based on your performance, rather than however it worked before, which I forget, but which I think was a lot more static — you’d build your stats in the training section, and those’d be your stats.
– You can’t tell whether you miss or make a putt based on the camera angle it immediately switches to. I can’t tell you how annoying this was. In ’08, if it went to the “behind the golfer” view, you knew you’d missed, and if it went to “behind the cup” view, you knew you’d made it. Now at least there’s a little tension as the ball rolls to the cup.
– I like the new Tiger Challenge mode. In ’08, you’d have to complete a specific set of tasks to get to a “boss” match. Now you can pick and choose among a bunch of tasks, each of which has a point value, so as long as you collect enough points, you get to the boss, regardless of how you collect those points.
– Thusfar it has yet to alter history.
– Seems some of the courses have been replaced with other ones, and a couple of the new ones seem pretty money.
Here are the things that are worse than last year!
– Gary McCord and David Feherty have been replaced by the deadly dull Sam Torrance and the racist lesbian Kelly Tilghman. However, since the announcers are completely useless anyway (see below), you’re almost relieved that the good names of McCord and Feherty need suffer no more indignities in the name of this godforsaken franchise.
– The Hank Haney training system, where the personality-less Haney suggests training exercises to give you a temporary skill boost, seems completely pointless at best, and totally boring at worst. Or the other way around. Anyway, the training exercises are so painfully dull that the minor temporary boost you’d get in skill is never, ever worth it, and it becomes just another screen to skip.
– Seems even slower than last year, which was already very slow, in terms of loading times.
Here are the things that are just as bad as last year
– The announcers still appear to have no idea what is going on on the course. Moreover, when they are spouting their nonsense which has no apparent relationship to what’s going on on the screen, their grammar now appears to be suffering on top of it.
– Opponent golfers still suffer unbelievable lapses in concentration, and will intentionally line up directly at a tree, fire a ball at it and hit it square, as if they thought the goal of the game was to kill as many woodpeckers as possible within a certain time limit.
– You, yourself, appear to have no idea what is going on either. You will wildly celebrate one-inch putts, and flail around disgustedly when your 280-yard 3 wood misses the green by a foot. You also complain about par a lot.
These three, listed above, continue to amaze me. With all of the advanced technology and multi-zillion dollars that go into these things, for some reason they STILL can’t figure out how to interpret what is going on. I don’t see how it’s that hard. if (distance to pin < previous_distance * .04) celebrate(); if (putt_goes_in and putt_length > 8 feet) fist_pump();. This is NOT DIFFICULT LOGIC TO IMPLEMENT. if (shot_is_really_close_to_green and shot_length_was_over_200_yards) do_not_whine_and_penalize_your_short_game_stats_for_fucks_sake();
I just don’t see why they can’t, or won’t, fix this.
– Still way, WAY too easy. On hard, I’m already breaking 60, and have won every tournament I’ve entered, by a decent margin.
… So, that’s it, at least for now. As a “hardcore golf simulation” (as which some article or another laughably referred to the Tiger EA franchise) it still sucks moose tits. It is still a bad golf game. But it is a better bad golf game than last years, which was horrendous and inexcusable.
So, you know. I guess it’s fine. And ultimately, it’s as good as we’re gonna get.
=(
Ice Cream Jonsey