Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 on the Xbox 360 looks like it’s going to be a great entry into the franchise. It looks great, it has plenty of nice little touches in the presentation, the controls are solid, but it’s lacking just one thing; it’s not the Wii version. After playing Tiger Woods 09 on the Wii with its extremely enjoyable motion controls, and with the promise of even better controls coming with this year’s inclusion of MotionPlus, I found it really hard to play Tiger Woods with a standard controller. Still, if you don’t have a Wii, the demo for Xbox 360 reveals plenty to like about this year’s game even if you don’t get to play with a Wiimote.
The demo gives you the option to play a couple holes on two new courses or to try some practice holes. It also gives you a rundown of the new features in this year’s game and a quick description of what sort of impact they’ll have on the game. Compared with previous years, Tiger Woods 10 felt like an extremely refined version of past games. If you’ve played any past Tiger Woods games on the Xbox or the 360, you’ll instantly be familiar with the controls here. However, gone are the over 100% shots, which frankly I’m thankful for. Keeping you shot power on a 100% scale will make it easier to determine just how much oomph to put into my swings and also will help me figure out exactly where my ball will land. Also, “precision putting” is being introduced this year, but I don’t feel like it’s going to radically affect the putting; whether it improves it or not will require more experimentation in more scenarios.
One nice addition to this year’s game is the Tour Challenge mode. This mode gives you the chance to relive some of Tiger Woods’ most memorable moments. In fact, in this mode you’re challenged to match him stroke for stroke in some of the spectacular moments from his career. Tiger himself will introduce theses moments and share what he was thinking and what he was trying to do, and then you get to play him in those moments. It’s kind of like reliving those historic moments in Madden NFL, but the personal introductions are nice touch and it should be fun to see if you can be as good as Tiger.
Graphically thinks are looking sharp for Tiger 10. One of the biggest improvements is the gallery. It actually adds quite alot to the game to have a bunch of people lining the fairways and crowding the greens to watch you play. It gives everything a much more authentic feel. As expected, all the animations are fluid and smooth, the fairways are lush, the water is beautiful; the game just looks great. The game boasts a new “broadcast style” presentation which is supposed to make it feel more like a golf tournament you see on TV, but I didn’t really see much of a difference in the brief time you get play in the demo.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 is shaping up to be one of the best entries into the series so far. Several small refinements have improved the controls, the atmosphere, and the variety of things you can do. Again, the major drawback for the Xbox 360 version will be the fact that it doesn’t have the Wiimote or Wii MotionPlus as the Wii version will have this year. Then again, Microsoft is rumored to reveal some pretty big developments when it comes to motion and the Xbox 360, so anything is possible.
0 Responses to “Preview: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10”