Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 : The Masters

Having owned 09/11 and now 12 - i think that this is the best yet.

On the normal settings the game is not that challenging, but there is scope to make this really difficult. If you have 11 you probably will not see much difference except your playing for the masters rather than Ryder cup. So only bother to buy this if your a real fan (although you can bring forward your XP). If you have 09 then its probably worth the upgrade.

Summary fun game play, easy to use online, daily challenges on most holes and courses although how some people can drive 450meters is still a mystery to me. Some of the courses that are on the schedule are not included so you have to download them at extra cost which i think is a bit rich. extra course I kind of understand but when they are part of the main game just an excuse to charge more money.

Here's my opinion of Tiger Woods 12: The Masters.

Graphics:

As usual with EA games the graphics are very good generally. The Masters is no exception. The Augusta course itself is very well realised and looks great. The other courses (not including the downloadable courses as I haven't seen them) also look very good. The professional golfers may not look exactly like their real life counterparts but it's not hugely important that they do, (since you very rarely see much of them) they're still well detailed though.

Your created golfer will sadly have a limited variety of looks and after making three or so different golfers they all had a similar appearance. Clothing and equipment for your created golfer is not huge to begin with as most of it gets unlocked at either the later stages of the "road to the Masters" mode or through sponsor challenges (a very long winded way of getting new apparel).

Its a shame then that the on course spectators aren't given a make-over as they do look pretty bad. They're blank faced robots who all clap in unison for some reason and have the old brick style pixelated appearance. Not a huge problem but its a smudge on an otherwise good looking game.

Sound:

The commentary in Tiger Woods games has changed so little since I last played one on the PS2 its unreal. You get the same phrases over and over, mostly the wrong phrases for the shot I just hit. EA should either dump it all together or freshen it up because it had me hitting the mute button often.

Similarly the crowd reactions are stale. You get a cheer for simply hitting the ball then if you just go a tiny bit into the rough you get a sudden "awwwww" from the crowd, only to resume to clapping again if you roll out of the rough. It all sounds like someone playing random effects off cue.

The sound of the ball being hit, the splash of the water or the sand are all good however, but its little consolation.

Gameplay:

First let me start by saying that I can't fault Tiger Woods 12's game mechanics. Swinging and hitting is easy to do and adding boost and spin amongst others adds a little challenge to this. Once again its changed little since I played on PS2 but "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

My real gripe comes in the form of the games difficulty. As a relative novice to newer Tiger Wood's games I thought I'd have a go with the "pro" difficulty to start me off (or see how bad I was). I quickly found birdie's difficult to come by and a score of even was about the norm. That was until the pin placement got more difficult at the end of tournaments. The caddy tips started to disappear and putts I was making before were mysteriously going wide of the hole. So I decided to switch down to "amateur" (the lowest setting). This was much better and I was able to get far more birdies (even the odd eagle). This was until the final days of the tournament, again caddies tips disappeared (for no reason and only on some holes) and pin placements sometimes involved putting up a steep hill with the pin positioned on the slope (I thought this was a PGA Tour not crazy golf). It made for some impossible putts without the caddies tips that involved me coming away with a triple bogey or worse (and lucky to get that in some instances) and of course sliding all the way down the leader board (my main competitor having miraculously got easy birdies on these holes). This was the beginning of a series of randomly ultra difficult rounds of golf and lost tournaments. And this was on amateur!

Now my main gripe with this extends to many EA Sports games. They don't know how to make a balanced competitive and fun game. Instead they cheat you out of winning if you get too good in the same way old arcade games did to keep you pumping money into the machine. It's such a cheap way to build a game and ultimately very frustrating and in no way fun. I'm not a bad gamer and was quite enjoying the game until all help was removed (for no reason) and pin placements went from manageable to downright impossible. Shouldn't I still be able to get something if I'm on amateur? Isn't this the entry level difficulty? There was no way I could have guessed where exactly to aim for on the green with such crazy slopes and dips.

To this end the gameplay was ruined for me.

Features:

Tiger Woods 12 has what I would say are typical EA Sports features. Masters Moments (the same as Madden Moments on the NFL games) where you can try and match former Masters winners shots. You then have online mode, which has a number of daily live tournaments or your usual match making, which I found to be quite slow to load (or in some cases didn't load at all). There's Augusta based features as well with guides on how to play the course. Nothing great or out of the ordinary really.

EA Sports are also allowing players to buy equipment and clothes (with Microsoft points) without having to go through the many sponsor objectives. A bit cheeky I thought but then that's EA for you. They also like reminding you, in the main 'road to the masters' mode that you haven't qualified for a certain tournament because you haven't bought the new course pack. Its a sad fact that games are now built around draining the fan of as much cash as possible.

Verdict:

Tiger Wood's 12 isn't a huge deviation away from past games. It has the Masters Augusta course... but that's about all. Nothing really springs out at me as being new, fresh and original.

The "Caddie" (which I forgot to mention) is an annoyance really. Much like the commentators he spouts the same rubbish time and again with little useful advice other than "you can do it" or "knock this one in".

The difficulty settings are a real problem and it does make the game unnecessarily frustrating. EA need to find a way to create a competitive, fun game and not just cheat the player out of winning if they get too good.

I can't say I enjoyed Tiger Woods 12. It left me feeling I had bought a game with little depth and little to enjoy. I'd avoid unless you really want to play the Masters course.

A few changes from previous Tiger Woods games

- a more serious feel to this one with no pirate costumes or Happy Gilmore style swings
- addition of caddie to set-up shots for you (if you want to) - Speeds the game up but can make you play a little on auto-pilot
- Graphics are amazing in HD
- Good gameplay and challenging on Tour Pro setting

Bad things
- To fully enjoy the game you need to download additional courses. This will cost you around £40 in addition to the cost of the game - I'm fine with additional content if its optional but much of it is neccesary just to complete the normal game!
- No overview of the holes or zoom to ball option which means that if you want to set shots up yourself you are mostly shooting in the dark. A serious omission in my view.
- DON'T download the predator course it's ridiculous!! Unless you like hacking a ball through a jungle and putting on greens on a 45 degree angle - waste of money
- EA don't allow more than one gametag to play online which is disapponting

Some things better than last year (serious feel, difficulty level, masters course) but some things not so good (need for expensive download content, one player only online, lack of hole overview). Still the best golf game out there but EA are close to killing the goose that laid the golden egg