I stated last week that I've had golf fever lately, and this was the other of the two games I bought a couple of weeks ago. There's almost nothing in common between this and Golf-e, except for the featured sport. This game is available for the next-generation systems, and while I wanted to get it for PS2, the Cube version was $10 cheaper, and I couldn't resist that. This is also a completely different golfing experience than anyone's ever seen before, and I'll elaborate on this in a moment.
If you have a great memory (or look
at the Reviews page), you'll know that the first game I reviewed was
Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64. Back
at the time, that game gave me an interest into the game of golf, which
I had thought to be boring. After getting
into Mario Golf, I started to appreciate the real game itself. However,
Mario Golf did not give the full experience of golf. 30-foot putts could
be made with ease, while
a real-life golfer makes that putt
only 5% of the time. Using a meter to golf may be easy, but it doesn't
give you much control over how hard you hit the ball, if you slice or hook
the ball, if you want the ball to have spin on it, or if you'd like your
shot to go very high or stay low. As a result, while Mario Golf was a lot
of fun, and a good, long game as well, it did not accurately reproduce
the actual game of golf.
While most people scoff at golf as a
senior citizen's sport, golf requires just as much skill, strategy, and
patience as most other sports. A player
such as Tiger Woods, whose name is on this game, must think about
many different things, such as distance,
wind, the texture of the ground, and weather. While only a few are able
to master the real-life sport, it can be made into a very good videogame,
where all of these factors can be simulated to give you the true golfing
experience. The question is, is it possible to make a game real, yet fun
and easy-to-control at the same time? EA Sports has the answer to that
question righthere in this disc.
If you're still reading this, I thank you for your patience. This is yet again reviewed on the 0-4 star scale, which remains the same as always.
Graphics: ****
This game is absolutely stunning. It's
the first time that I've ever seen a game with nothing, and I do mean
nothing, that looks all polygonal and
squared off, N64-style. The golfers are extra-detailed and look real as
well. The courses? Wow. I've never seen something in videogames look as
real as these. This game has to rank among the best games graphically all
time. NCAA Football 2003, Madden NFL 2003, Gran Turismo 3, and Super Smash
Bros. Melee are others that are right up there with this one. Somehow EA
puts out tons of these games that are absolutely unbelievably awesome-looking
like this.
Sound: ****
And now we come to another thing this
game excels in, the sound category. If you don't like hard rock, then
you won't enjoy the menu music that
much. I really like it, but that's not all the sound is good at. The sound
effects, such as train whistles, jets flying by, seagulls, fans' cheers,
water splashes, sand, and any normal shot, sound completely real. The announcers,
meanwhile, make some pretty good jokes, especially when you're doing poorly...
"Well, thank heavens for small miracles, we're on the green!" I can't find
too much to complain about when it comes to sound in this game, and it's
good enough to receive a four-star rating.
Difficulty: ***
This game starts to take a leap in gameplay
over Mario Golf with this category here. The actual golf is made
more realistic, which in turn means
that it's a lot tougher than simply pressing a button when a meter is
at its maximum point. The controls,
which will be explained a little later, are made so that you're the one
who has the responsibility of getting that shot to the green. If your club
hits the ball 250 yards, and there's only 220 to the pin, you're going
to have to take a little off your shot. Now while that's possible in Mario
Golf, Mario Golf's clubs' max length are so close together in length that
you are hardly ever in a situation where you'll have to purposely not shoot
the max length on your meter. In this game, the clubs are occasionally
quite far from each other (192 and 256, perhaps), and you're going to either
have to put more spin and power on your shot, or you're going to have to
use your more powerful club and not bring your club all the way back. This
leads to using strategy and actual skill. As hard as this may seem, I like
this.
Now I'm not here to bash Mario Golf,
but Tiger Woods 2003 gives me more of a challenge. If you're in a
tournament at St. Andrews Golf Links
(home of the British Open), you're not going to get a great score. A score
of -2 might win the tournament, since the course is so hard. I prefer this
much more than having very low scores like -10 in a round, and this being
actually an average round (at Toad Highlands, I've had scores of -18 and
-17). It's nice to feel like I've got to conquer a course, not like even
if I struggle, I'll be under par. This has led to me practicing up at world-famous
Pebble Beach and feeling a real sense of accomplishment after finishing
-11 in a round.
For these reasons, I feel that for one of the few times ever (the Lost Levels being another prime example), added difficulty makes the game better, to the point of excellence, not more frustrating. I'm quite pleased that I've been given a challenge, and that challenge is not near-impossible to complete.
Characters: 1/2
One of the few huge errors with this game, the character selection is very poor. Granted, you've got Tiger Woods, and you sure ought to, considering he's in this game's title! You've also got a few real PGA golfers, like Colin Montgomerie, and some fantasy golfers, which give some humor to this game.
Unfortunately, this is about as far
as the character choice goes. Where are some of the other big-name
modern golfers, such as Ernie Els,
Phil Mickelson, and up-and-coming Chris Riley? And how about some
old-timers, like Jack Nicklaus and
my hometown's Arnold Palmer? Okay, so you don't know who any of these are,
so maybe it wouldn't make a difference to you. But to someone who appreciates
professional golf like me, and who would have liked to have his own tournaments,
this is something that could have been greatly improved. (You'll see some
of these players' names on the tournaments' leaderboards, but they are
unplayable and never actually seen in the game, sort of like the Koopalings
in Mario Golf.) I would have
loved to make my own tournaments with
these players, playing for each and every one of them, then seeing
who ends up on top. This is what kept
Mario Golf alive long after I unlocked everything. It's still possible
to do this, of course, but it's not quite the same when you're using fantasy,
no-name golfers.
Controls: ****
When I first found out that new golf
games were going to start using the Control Stick and/or C-Stick for shooting,
instead of the meter, I was thinking the golf genre would be destroyed
with extreme difficulty, due to hard-to-use controls. This is why I passed
on Swingerz Golf and Outlaw Golf, and I thought at first that this game
would use the old meter. I opened it up and found out I was wrong. And
now, I'm so glad I was
wrong.
First of all, this game gives you a
choice between the Control Stick and the C-Stick. I much prefer the
Control Stick, due to its size and
its being less slippery. Basically, here's how it goes: you push your
Control Stick all the way backwards,
then all the way forwards. To get full distance, you want to push it all
the way backwards, and then quickly go all the way forwards. But, if you
don't want to put everything on it, you can either do it a little slower,
or not go the whole way back. I don't know if it's pressure-sensitive,
but I always tend to press harder whenever I want it to go farther. On
most long-range shots, pressing Z several times repeatedly while you swing
back will give you more power; on an approach shot, where you're shooting
onto the green, this will give the ball more spin. You've got to be pretty
straight with the stick as well... if you go towards the left or right
a little bit, you'll hook or slice your shot.
This may seem very complicated, but once you start doing it, you can get the hang of it. I really like it because I feel like I'm actually swinging the golf club. It gives you that feeling of control... something I always like to feel in videogames, when I feel like I'm in direct control of my character. There are some games that get this right (Super Smash Bros. Melee, for example), and some that don't (Super Mario Sunshine isn't the only one). Now I hope that all golf games adopt this style of controls, using the Control Stick for shooting.
As for the other buttons... the Z button-mashing
eliminates the Power shots from Mario Golf (which I
disliked when the computer could use
them constantly and never run out of them). The X button gives you a
view of where the ball would go if
you shot it at maximum power with your current club. The Control Pad
controls where you're shooting, so
you can change the desired destination of your ball. The game will
automatically "club up" and "club down"
if your new desired shot location requires a different club. A gives you
different views of your golfer before your shot (not especially useful),
while holding down A during a shot makes the shot go by in fast-motion
(this saves lots of time when the ball slowly rolls down the fairway or
the green). B will change the style of your shot, whether you want to shoot
full distance, flop the ball high into the air, punch the ball low, or
shoot a shorter approach shot to the green. Sometimes the game will have
this set automatically for you; other times you'll have to do it yourself.
Finally, the Y button simply resets the
setup of where you were set to shoot
if you changed the location of where you wanted to put the ball, and
back to the original club as well.
Finally, putting is better than I've ever seen before. Basically, if you push the Control Stick all the way back, then all the way forward, your ball goes the number of feet there is to the hole. However, slopes in the green change where your shot will go, and your caddy will suggest how much you'll need to change your shot (for example, if the tip is "1 ft RIGHT", you'll have to push the Control Pad until the arrow is approximately 1 foot to the right of the hole, in order to get the ball to go in). It is hard to approximate distances, but it's more like real golf, where it's very hard to tell the slope and how hard to hit the ball. I like this added bit of reality to the game.
Overall, I don't think the controls could be any better than this. Sure, there's ways of making it easier, but I don't want it to be easy. I want it to be real, where it takes some skill to be able to get the ball to go where I want it to. After a while, if you learn the controls, you'll be able to manipulate them to your own advantage, like knowing how much to take off your shots. There are Practice and Skillzone modes that help with this kind of stuff, and I've found the Skillzone mode to be especially useful. To put it simply, Tiger Woods 2003 has near-perfected controls for a golf game.
Gameplay: ****
I'm keeping the gameplay section as one this time, since it would be a little difficult to break it up. I have to say, this gameplay is fantastic. It's the pinnacle of golf gameplay. It has lots of reality to it, and there are a few examples to it.
-Ball hits tree. In Mario Golf, your shot will occasionally go through the tree, with it disrupted a little, but not too much. In Tiger Woods 2003, if your ball hits a tree, it falls straight down (or perhaps down to the side), and for good reason. A little ball, when hitting a branch, isn't going to keep on going right on through. It's going to be affected.
-Ball lands in bunker. I'll give Camelot
a lot of credit: they tried to simulate trouble with bunkers in Mario Golf
by making your meter's accuracy line absolutely tiny if you try to blast
your ball out. However, that didn't quite get the real feeling of bunkers.
In Tiger Woods 2003, you may have to use a different kind of shot to get
your ball out of the bunker (perhaps Flop), or you'll have to really blast
the ball if it's buried. Another nice thing in Tiger Woods 2003 is that
the ball might be somewhat in the sand, or completely buried, and they'll
tell you that, giving you the signal to really blast your ball if it's
buried. Finally, if a ball lands in a bunker, it
will 90% of the time stick where it
lands, which is very much like it will for real.
-Slopes on a putting green. In Mario Golf, unfortunately, the sloping really didn't simulate a real sloped green, as the ball would roll in a straight line, whereas on a real sloped green, a ball rolls for a while, then makes its "break" (a sharp curve to the left or the right). Tiger Woods 2003 has that down pat, and you'll see this happen on lots of shots. If you position your putting aimer correctly, you'll get your ball to break right into the hole.
These all demonstrate how Tiger Woods
2003 makes golfing as real as possible. Mario Golf is more of an
arcade golf game, and I feel it did
a great job for its time. I just am illustrating how Tiger Woods 2003 has
improved on these physics to capture the reality of golfing.
Courses: As I do most of the time with gameplay, I'm going to actually split up the expected courses section into three parts.
Course Selection: **
Well, I guess no game has unlimited
size. Still, I was hoping for more than the 12 or so courses found in
this game, or at least for a couple
of more well-known ones. How about Augusta National, home of the Masters,
or my hometown's Oakmont, ranked among the best golf courses in the nation?
If several more courses could be added, maybe four, and especially Augusta,
this game could then have the real Grand Slam, not the fake Grand Slam
tournament that is found in Tournaments mode. Still, with Pebble Beach,
St. Andrews, and a few fantasy courses that present a real challenge, this
game still has some of the best and hardest courses ever made. It's not
all bad; I'd just like a little more.
Course Detail: ****
To describe the detail of these courses,
let's go with very, very detailed. These courses have everything:
the fairways, the semi-rough, the rough,
the bunkers, the green, the green edge, the tee ground, the trees,
the water hazards, the walkways, the
fans, and background scenery as well. Then there are the course-specific
details: circular walls surrounding bunkers at St. Andrews, lots of water
inlets at Pebble
Beach, a jungle's worth of trees and
bushes at the fantasy course known as The Predator, and so on. As
these courses seem so real, it looks
like you're actually there. I'm quite impressed, especially with the real-life
courses, because it must have taken a long time in order to get these made
to look so like the real thing.
Create-a-Course Mode: 1/2
This mode lets you create a course, but don't get carried away, like my sister and I did. We thought this was a Tony Hawk-like mode where you could take hills, greens, fairways, rough, bunkers, water hazards, etc. and make them into holes for your own course. If that was available in this game, this game might be beating NCAA Football 2003 for best sports game ever (although it's very close as it is).
However, that's not what it's like. You take holes from other courses, then insert them into a list of 18 holes. Then those 18 holes are your new course. Sure, you get to choose from 10 or so logos, and this does let you make a course of all par-3's or par-5's, but this isn't some grand feature that lets you actually make holes. Maybe in the future there will be actual course-makers, but for now, this is merely letting you string together 18 holes, in any order you want.
My Tour Mode: ***
In reality, this is the heart of this game. You make your own golfer, then play the other modes of this game in order to earn money so you can buy improved stats and equipment (it takes a while to get better equipment). Your starting stats depend on your player's model. There's only six models for players not able to be unlocked, though, so the game's lacking there. Why not have it like Tony Hawk, where you have near-complete control over your player's looks, and then edit your starting stats with a very limited number of points?
However, even with the lack of player
editing, I can't complain about the whole idea of earning money and
stuff. Without this, the game really
doesn't have much to it. Sure, you would unlock golfers and all, but you
just wouldn't get the same feeling
of wanting to win tournaments and challenges to build your stats as well
as other unlockable things. This is probably the most important feature
of this game next to the excellent
controls, and even without being able
to change your player's looks much (save for his or her shirt), the game
would be so empty without this.
Tiger Challenge Mode: ****
This is probably the best playing mode
in the game, and it combines so many different things from the other modes.
You'll play through scenarios, match play against other golfers (who can
then be unlocked by
beating them), skins games, and tournaments,
all of which lead you through the game in order to earn cards, which then
multiply the amount of money you win from other modes. If you complete
the Tiger Challenge,
you'll have pretty much unlocked everything
there is to unlock, and your stats will be really high, too. This is a
brilliant way to string everything together into the "big mode" of this
game, sort of like how there's a "big mode" in every other sports game
(usually a Dynasty Mode or something similar).
Tournament Mode: ***
This mode gives you quite a few tournaments,
most of which are quite hard (except for the two-round Pebble Beach tournament,
which I ended up at an inexplicable -22 or so!). You will compete by yourself,
at your own pace, which is nice. However, you'll need to play a great round
in order to win. In most of the earlier tournaments, most any subpar round
will win, but as you move on, you'll need something like a -5, -6, or -7
to win, and the courses themselves will be harder as well (usually the
tees will be moved back farther,
meaning you'll need quite a load of
power in order to par the holes).
What's to like about the tournaments?
First of all, I like the feeling of having no pressure. Your opponents
are mere names and numbers on a leaderboard,
not computer players that you watch make their shots (like
in Tiger Challenge mode). Sure, there
is pressure to keep making pars and add some birdies, but more often than
not, your opponents will not do as well as they would if you actually watch
them play (they tend to "cheat" more in Tiger Challenge mode, like making
the occasional hole-in-one to ruin your day). Plus,
tournaments all have trophies, and
it's more fun to get a trophy than just money and/or a golfer you'll
probably not use that often.
If there's all that to like about tournaments,
what's not to like? How about the lack of a real PGA Tour in a PGA Tour
game? That's right, there may be tons of tournaments, but they aren't strung
together into a Tour that would reward whoever finishes with the most money
on Tour, or best finishes, or something similar.
Such a Tour would have made Tournaments
Mode even more rewarding, and maybe if the Grand Slam was real (the Masters,
U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship) and not just the four "best"
courses
strung together, this game would have
been real on the tournaments side of the game, adding to the awesome reality
of the gameplay.
Speed Golf Mode: ****
Multiplayer golfing is taken to the extreme with this mode, one that is more for fun than actual real play. You and a second player (computer or live) play split-screen, left and right sides of the screen. Once you tee off, you have to run to your ball (using the Control Stick to run, the C-Stick to steer, and the L button repeatedly to run faster). Once you get to your ball, you shoot again, and you race to get the ball in the hole. Each player starts with $3000, and you steal money off your opponent for tons of things, including teeing off first, driving longer, getting to the green first, getting a birdie or par, and finishing first (and more). If you finish before your opponent, you can try to finish the hole twice, in which case you'll earn tons of money from your opponent. This game is a lot of fun, because it takes lots of the frustration, strategy, and thinking out of the game and lets you have all-out fun, not worrying about your score. Play against a live opponent for maximum fun. This is probably the most fun mode of this game, barely beating out the fun and challenging Tiger Challenge. Let's see this mode in Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour... and how about four players at once!
Scenario Mode: **1/2
This is a golf version of Super Smash
Bros. Melee's Event Stages, and let me tell you, they provide a huge
challenge in this game, reminiscent
of Event Stage 51 (possible but extremely difficult). One thing about
Scenario Mode is that some scenarios
require some perfect shooting for multiple holes in a row, and that
means you'll have to be on the top
of your game to win at this mode. It's a real challenge, but it's got to
be as rewarding as Tiger Challenge Mode, considering how hard it is to
win at it.
Stroke Play: ***
This is basic golf, just seeing whoever gets the lowest score. It's a good, solid mode, especially if there are three or four live players. It's the best way of showing who's the best golfer in a threesome or foursome, and it's also nice practice before taking on a tournament (this helped me shoot a 61 at the par-72 Pebble Beach).
Match Play: ***
Match play is solid, two-player fun where whoever gets the better score on a hole wins a point. Whoever ends up with more points at the end is the winner. This is how most of the Tiger Challenge modes are played. If you want a Mario Madness-style of tournament, with two players playing each other at a time through a bracket of your choice, this is your ticket.
Skins Game: *
I can't stand the Skins Game against
computers, though it's all right against live opponents. Basically,
whoever gets the best score on the
hole without anyone tying them gets a skin, and if at least two players
tie for the best score on the hole,
the skin is carried over to the next hole, meaning if enough skins are
carried over, one hole could be worth a ton of skins and basically decide
the tournament right then and there. If you're playing three computer opponents,
and you're doing bad, sometimes one will miss an easy
putt just so another one can win the
hole, beating you. If two would tie on the hole, the skin would carry over
and your bad hole could be forgotten, but they tend to do this on purpose
to beat you. With live opponents, it's actually a pretty solid, fun mode,
though it's not as fun as any of the others.
Practice Mode: *1/2
You can drop your ball anywhere and
practice on the hole from there. This is not bad for practice, though
I'd rather practice by actually playing
the real way through a stroke mode. After all, at least practicing in stroke
mode gives me some money, while this is just shooting from anywhere for
practice.
Skillzone: ****
Finally, we come to a mini-game mode that is excellent. This one lets you play alone or against someone else in different games that all require you to try to hit targets. The best mode I've played of the five is TIMED, which starts you off with 90 seconds but allows you to earn more time with each target you hit. These modes all give you the opportunity to earn money, and it's probably the quickest and easiest money-maker in the game.
Replayability: ****
This game can be played for quite some time before it gets old. If you're trying to earn enough money for perfect stats for your golfer, there are lots of ways to earn that money, and it'll be a long, long time before you run out of things to do. I'm very impressed with the way this game was made so large.
Fun Factor!: ****
Golf is made even more fun than it ever
has before. I didn't think a game that simulates real golf could end
up this fun, but EA Sports was able
to do this. This is a very fun game even when the competition is at its
highest, and comments from the announcers combined with antics of the golfers
add some humor to the game as well.
OVERALL: ****
My Reviews aren't meant to be surprises, and you probably saw this rating coming, but if you did, that's a good thing, because I've given enough reasons why this game is excellent. Surprisingly, this game blew away Mario Golf, gave me a real challenge in golf, made golf an exciting, fun sport, redefines the golf game genre, and starts to rival NCAA Football 2003 as the best sports game on the GameCube (though NCAA is still slightly ahead). I'll put it this way: Golf-e was a double bogey. The GBC's Mario Golf was a par. The N64's Mario Golf was a birdie. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 is more like a double eagle. With an actual PGA Tour, a few more courses, and some more famous golfers, this game could become a hole-in-one in years to come. If you enjoyed Mario Golf or maybe even Hot Shots Golf on a PlayStation system, this game has made golf real, fun, challenging, and exciting. It's worth getting if you liked any other golf game. This gives Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour a very high standard to reach when it comes out later this year, but as many golfers know, when it comes to golf, Tiger Woods is the hardest to beat. The same now goes for golf games.
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