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| Source // Giant Bomb |
I think I'm right in saying that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 is the last golf game on this 1001 list. Wii Sports Resort might have a take on golf, but it has takes on everything, so that doesn't really count. Tiger Woods here is the last chance the sport has of convincing me that it deserves to exist.
Harsh words, perhaps, and probably unwarranted, as skimming over the many golf games the 1001 list has thrown up has lead me to believe that I am, in fact, fine with golf as a game, so long as it is on the more cartoony side of things. Golfing sims can get out of here.
If PGA Tour 10 is aiming for realism, there's a strong chance I'll not like it. Who makes it? EA Sports? Ah. Well, let's just pad out this foregone conclusion a little bit more, shall we?
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
Frustrations
I'm playing PGA Tour 10 on the PlayStation 3 and had planned on diving into the career mode to take a complete nobody to as far as I could be bothered to go before getting bored and abandoning my golfing career. Oh, wait, I should try to leave my biases at the door.
I got bored during the creation process, and so did my PS3. The sound just stopped and then it refused to load anything, before refusing to even register inputs from my controller. Good start, Tiger.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
You're going to have to imagine what the actual game looks like, but you'll probably imagine it correctly. The HUD shows you what club you've selected, and you can adjust the angle at which you hit the ball with a nudge of the right analogue stick. It also shows you the wind speed, though let's be honest, you're never going to factor that into your shots, are you? You're all about raw power, so let's learn how to swing this club.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
Luckily, you can press L3 to enter the practice swing mode, where you step away from the ball a tad and get swinging by pulling back on the left stick and either letting go and watching it flick back to the middle or by pushing it forward, I was never sure which.
I thought rolling the stick around in a circle would do something, but it doesn't seem to. It's all about the up and down motion here, which isn't terrible, but if you don't know the ins and outs of the system, expect some weird shots from time to time, especially when it keeps track of how far off-centre you've pulled the stick.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
After a few drives, you're on the green where you get to experience the new putting mechanics, which now feature an on-screen meter indicating where the sweet spot is. This time, you pull back the left stick until it's in position and absolutely definitely push it forward and watch the ball inevitably miss the hole by a mile.
Fancy grids and pointers don't do anything, and what good is a heads up as to where your ball is likely to go if you can only view it once per shot before it's gone for good? Where are my training wheels, damnit?
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
The game is pushing the US Open this year, with courses and rulebooks sitting alongside actual live weather data and real-world scoreboards, should you be following along with it, connected to the Internet, and the EA servers still work.
I doubt they still do for PGA Tour 10, but the online features do at least give players something current to do as a distraction from the rest of the game. Can you match this result? Can you do better? Which of your friends is going to complete this before you do?
I can't really fault all this sort of stuff. It gives a bit more life to the game and a reason to keep turning up, but eventually it'll get forgotten about, and as an EA game, it'll be sooner than you think.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
The courses look alright in images like this, but in-game PGA Tour 10 looks very graphically dated when unfairly compared to games of today. Some of the colours are almost too green for a golf course. The physics and animations might have been simulated, but the lighting could do with a bit of work sometimes.
What do I know? I'm just grumpy that I can't putt the fecking ball into the hole before scoring bogeys.
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| Source // Nintendo |
After playing it for three holes, no more, I gave up my dreams of becoming a professional golfer to gather some screenshots, where, to my surprise, Nintendo were bigging up a different sport - Disc Golf.
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| Source // Nintendo |
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| Source // Nintendo |
Presumably a bonus mode, or maybe one specific to the Nintendo Wii, highlighting the inclusion of Disc Golf as much as the inclusion of Tiger Woods himself must say something about the state of your game, no? Or am I just clutching at straws, desperate to attack the idea of golf wherever possible?
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
Final Word
At the end of the day, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 can be summed up as the most authentic golf game you could find for the time on a home console, and that if you were a fan of golf, you'd have more than enough to occupy your time until PGA Tour 11 came out a year later.
As I don't enjoy the actual sport of golf, realistic depictions of it in video games aren't going to get my attention either. I can say that this is game is perfectly serviceable as easily as I can say that it absolutely isn't for me. It is a game of golf, it is presented well, it has what you'd expect - and then some, perhaps - but I'm not interested in any of it.
If Tiger had a bobblehead and the ball trails sparkled, however...
Fun Facts
Bethpage Black, Oakmont, Turnberry and more make their appearances for the first time. Are they clubs or what?
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, developed by EA Tiburon, first released in 2009.
Version played: PlayStation 3, 2009.