Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11

For those who have never played a Tiger Woods game then this will be a real treat. The graphics are as good as ever and adding realistic wind effects on the grass and your clothing is a great touch, as is moving clouds. After some training you soon get the hang of it. If you are a novice I strongly recommend you try out the challenges first though you won't have to complete them all before jumping into your career. There are not as many people in the crowd as there was in Tiger 10.
The Ryder Cup is good although I have not completed it as yet. I don't quite understand why they included Colin Montgomery as a player. The game still has some annoying bugs though, but nothing major. The commentary gets a bit repetative and doesn't always match your shot. Sometimes you think you have hit a near perfect shot only to find you ball has fallen short of where it should have landed. As someone who has played all the Tiger Woods and the PGA tour games on the golden age of the Amiga I was hoping that had been improved. One other improvement I hope they introduce one day is arrow indicators on the green before you reach it so you get some indication of where to aim for. All that aside it is a really good addition to the Tiger series and well worth buying, especially if this is your first foray into the world of Tiger Woods.

Ok this is simply the best golf sim around, and this time realism has been bought into the game in a more detailed way, the use of a new focus metre which allows you to enhance your shot, i.e shape it with fade ,draw or increase the power on the shot etc, the good thing is that each time you use this the metre reduces so you should use it only when needed, again i use it mainly for reading putts.
Again the Tiger challenge is this time based on beating challenges which enables you to gain xp points to boost your attributes, the challenges are fair but some are quite tricky until you get your attributes to a certain lvl,I would recommend doing these challenges before taking on a full season on tour, included in the tour again is the Us Open franchise which is good,i love the random weather option also. The new introduction of the Ryder Cup seems a good idea i havent fully explored it yet but i think we know what to expect, fourball play singles action, tension etc , graphically its just as superb especially the water which looks amazing in hd,extra courses have been added also so the array of challenges is vast,You can play up to 5 seasons of the tour which is abit of a let down as i think you should have longer, but this is a minor gripe about the game, Online options are vast you can play teams of up to 20 ina self syled Ryder Cup, Live tour updates also available plus all the usual competition from all comers from every corner of the world,this game has improved immensly since 2010 and i can fully recommend it, i havent explored all avenues of the game yet so this is an early outlined review enjoy>.

It's still a great game of course and the new focus meter adds some more tactical decision making to round management but it's funny the things they've still not quite right.

The Spectators - If anything they've regressed! Almost all the men look like Paul Casey, very often everyone's making the same movement and sometimes clapping (in time!) while the player is lining up a putt!

The Commentators - Nobody could be as good as Gary McCord and David Feherty and it's still a shame that they've dropped them but the current pair are OK. Perhaps I should say the current pair are only OK. I like the real-life Scott Van Pelt as he seems to have a sense of humour but they've stripped out almost all humour from the game comments now. Also, the comments don't always match the situation, or reflect previous shots. For instance, I'll play an approach shot that stops 5ft from the hole to no comment, then my opponent will play a shot that ends up further from the hole and they'll rave about it! In another situation I was playing The Ryder Cup and had completed only one hole of the first round (i.e. none of the other matches had started). OK, it went badly but it was only one hole and STILL Kelly and Scott started to say something along the lines of 'The Europeans really need to get their act together otherwise they're going to be out of it!' In short, EA haven't devoted much development time to the commentary logic.

Increasing Accuracy - Not really sure how this works, or if it works at all. Everytime I've tried it my shot seems to come out worse!

Game Face - Another regression, it seems. I've uploaded and used photos ever since the option existed and I swear they're getting worse. My current golfer looks very little like me at all.

Pro Shop - Can't say I'm that keen on using XP to buy stuff. It defies logic - logic previously supported in previous versions by being able to use your winnings to BUY EQUIPMENT THAT IMPROVES YOUR GAME! But OK, it's part of how this version works except that there's no indication of how each item will help your golfer...so what should I aim to buy?!

Downloading Courses - As other reviewers have mentioned, having to pay (400) Microsoft Points to download courses it taking the mickey and I really miss the fantasy courses like the Japanese course 'Emerald Dragon' and the 'Highlands' course and even the immensely difficult Central Park course. I can understand the PGA Tour 10 downloaded courses not being compatible (or at least not immediately compatible) due to the coding involved but the fact that they cost so much really sucks. It would make more sense to include the fantasy courses, or make them free downloads, since they're unique to this franchise, and leave the 'real' courses as paid for downloads (and still, not as much as they do charge).

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So, I like it a lot, and I'm playing it a lot, if only to give my wife a rest from me playing Half Like 2 which she thinks is "horrible" (and of course it's safe for me to play when my young kids are about) but I don't really feel like I'm playing a particularly different version from '10.

And I'd still rather be out hacking my way around a real course. :)