Tiger Woods PGA TOUR

Getting the "Eye of the Tiger" The actual gameplay in Tiger Woods, the real meat of the game, works pretty well. To hit the ball, there is a huge slider that you move your finger down, as straight as possible, and then explode upwards to simulate the swing. The more you draw to the right and left, the more the character will draw the ball in the game. After the ball is hit, you get to put any kind of spin you want on the ball, just like in the video game, to effect what the ball will do after it lands. Once you hit the green, the putting works very similarly to driving, but there are a few more things to account for. While putting, you must account for terrain movement, indicated by a grid overlay with moving arrows that signify how hard the break is on the course. After you have aimed, you can use Tiger eye, which shows the path of the ball with your current aiming... but you can only use Tiger eye once, so use it well.

The Rough is Evil The game plays pretty smoothly throughout unless you miss a shot into the rough. The rough is so unforgiving in this game that it hurts. The rough hates you. Just beat it into your head, avoid it at all costs. Hitting a ball out of the rough in this game takes at least half of the velocity off of the ball right away, causing you to undoubtedly hit a bogey almost every time. The rough in the game is even worse than the sand, just for the fact that the sand leads to bad expectations. I know the ball wont go 100 yards out of the sand, but it should out of the evil, evil rough.

Virtua Fighter Golf? The graphics are one thing that Tiger Woods doesn't do very well. The player models just don't look realistic at all. I was half expecting some kind of cartoony version of the Tiger Woods characters, but I instead got a hybrid human/Virtua Fighter. I always liked Virtua Fighter, but I never considered Tiger Woods to be one. The textures and scenery in the game are equally as weird. Sometimes when I am spacing out I can imagine them to be real houses and trees, but when I'm paying attention, the game just looks odd. Everything seems like a cardboard, Virtua Fighter version of itself. I think that I would, if I were EA, turn the graphics slightly cartoony to overcome the systems lack of overall gaming power.

Sound of Silence The sound on the other hand is quite good for an iPhone game. There is limited, but very good, announcing from (golf legends?) Sam Torrance and "the golf channel's own" Kelly Tilghman. The names were shamelessly pulled off of the iTunes store description... the only golf announcers I know are the ones on NBC. The background sounds, although still parse, are very well crafted. Peaceful weather sounds like peaceful weather sounds, and a raucous crowd sounds like they are genuinely excited.

Overall, I would say that Tiger Woods is an enjoyable gaming experience, but at version 1.0.0, it's just not worth $10. On any other system, this price would be fantastic, but on the iPhone, with its unrealistically low price points, the price should be around $7, not $10. Add WiFi multiplayer and some kind of online leader-board and we will talk, but there are some missing mission critical features that make this game not worthy of its price tag. For a golf nut that doesn't need perfect graphics or the chance to dominate over WiFi, Tiger Woods is fantastic, but for the rest of us that want a bit more, it's tough to cough up that much money.

There are a few things that I would tweak a bit for the next version of the game. 1. WiFi Multiplayer. Not an option, this needs to be on the game. 2. Smoothed out graphics, if possible. 3. Slightly easier rough's, because the ones in the game are brutal. 4. More of an RPG element. If I am not going to be wowed by the graphics, I want to wowed by the extremely amazing PGA tour mode.