Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 DVD
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 DVD
- Confidence Is a Factor—The all-new Shot Confidence feature uses factors from your previous rounds—including club selection, lie, hole, and more—to determine your confidence heading into each shot.
- PGA TOUR Mode—Build a golfer from the ground up in the most in-depth Career mode ever. Go from an inexperienced rookie to a crafty TOUR veteran on your way to becoming the world’s most dominant golfer.
- FedEx Cup Playoff Courses—Experience the all-new FedEx Cup championship format by playing a dream round at Westchester Country Club, TPC Boston, Cog Hill, and East Lake.
- Take on the Most PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour Pros—Featuring the greatest PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour pros, including Tiger Woods, John Daly, and Vijay Singh, plus Annika Sorenstam, Natalie Gulbis, Christie Kerr, and Morgan Pressel.
You’re facing a long putt for par on the 17th hole with Tiger Woods clinging to a one stroke lead. You’ve been in this position before, but that doesn’t matter now. Or does it? Whether you play it safe or go for broke, Play with Confidence in Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 08. The all-new Shot Confidence feature uses factors from your previous rounds—including club selection, lie, hole, and more—to determine your confidence heading into each shot. Play with the confidence of a pro as you battle the best golfers from the PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour on the most courses ever in your quest for the coveted FedEx Cup Championship.
List Price: $ 9.99
Price: $ 34.97
Tiger Woods PGA Tour makes the grade in 2008,
Tiger Challenge is totally different in `08 as the scenarios and skill tests are on a HexGrid with individual nodes making up the whole matrix. (It looks like a piece of Honeycomb). Six nodes surround a central hub, which is where the final challenge is for that section (out of multiple sections). Completing certain areas for bronze, silver, and gold medals open the adjacent spaces and it’s all color coded to let you know what’s completed and what’s still available. The final test of course being to conquer Mr. Woods himself at the end of the HexGrid.
More new additions are the FedExCup and the confidence meter. FedExCup can be played straight from the menu while skipping the PGA season. This will let you play the 4 tournament playoffs – The Barclays, Deutsche Bank Championship, BMW Championship, and The Tour Championship. The confidence meter uses statistics from previous rounds played to determine your confidence when starting a new shot and how it will end up. You can even get an attribute boost if your confidence is really high which improves your chances of hitting a great shot.
The PGA tour season is pretty much the same as is the large variety of games (stroke, match, stableford, 4 ball, etc.). The Pro Shop looks a little more stocked than last year and the Game Face option has been tweaked a bit too. Something enticing for those that have them, this game will let you use the Xbox 360 controller to play the game. The menus are different looking now but not hard to navigate and the music, sound effects, and commentary are all decent but not exceptional.
A total of 14 courses this year (up from 11 in TW `07) offer some really nice variety and challenge and they are as follows:
Cog Hill Dubsdread
Doral
East Lake Golf Club
Firestone Country Club
Harbour Town Golf Links
St. Andrews Links
Pebble Beach
The Riviera
The Palmer Course at the K Club
Moonah at the National Golf Club
Ocean course at Kiawah Golf Resort
TPC Boston
TPC Sawgrass
Westchester Golf Club
EA sports did well again, in my opinion with this continuing golf line from Tiger Woods. As usual, there are some good changes, some mediocre, and much of the same from previous years. It’s not perfect and never will be but the fun factor remains high and that’s what really counts.
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|A great golf game but similar to its predecessors,
First let me say that this is one of the best golf games you can buy for the PC. If you don’t have any other TW title and money isn’t the deciding factor then this is the one to get. If you do have some of the more recent titles you may want to sit this title out. If you are looking to enter into the TW universe and money is a factor you would probably be better off picking up 06 or 07 as the last three incarnations have been very similar and previous versions can be picked up at a much cheaper price.
For those that have some of the more recent PC versions of TW… they have made slight improvements over previous versions but I’d be hard pressed to say that they are anything that warrants buying it at the current full retail price. In some ways this is a good thing. They didn’t “fix” anything that wasn’t broken. Oh the other hand they didn’t do much to merit the full retail price of a new game either. They’ve mixed up the presentation of the scenarios a bit this year but it really amounts to the same scenarios of the last 2 or 3 versions of the game.
I believe it was 05 when they had the scenarios separate from playing the legends (which were arranged in a pyramid). The next version still had both but they were mixed together. Things really haven’t changed since the version where they mixed them together… it’s just that they update it with a new interface each year. One year it was time travel. This year it’s a honeycomb.
The graphics have improved a bit but following in Maddens footsteps EA didn’t take the PC version of the game to the next generation’s level. My now somewhat dated PC can still run the game quite smoothly so I can only assume that they are doing this to ensure that those of us with older computers can still play the game. I guess I have somewhat mixed feelings on this. It would be nice to have next gen graphics but not at the expense of not being able to play it without massive upgrades. It seems like they could have developed it with paths for older systems to run it at reduced levels while giving those with better rigs the ability to take it to the next level.
I haven’t noticed any difference in the game face character design going on a 3rd year now. I don’t think they’ve even so much as added a new hair style or single piece of extra clothing. I haven’t seen the new feature that allows you to import your face yet. I believe it is absent from the PC version. That and the absence of next generation graphics may push many to opt for getting one of the console versions of this game.
Experience points develop your attributes using the same system as ’07.
Sad to say that the commentary is the exact same as the previous 3 or 4 years. “You’ve gotta be happy with that birdie, you’ve got to be happy with any birdie” “What do you see? I see a straight shot, 150 yards to the hole, and I see dead people” (yes, they’ve probably been doing that one since the movie came out in ’99). It’s pretty bad when they don’t even update the commentary parts that date it to a movie that came out 8 years ago.
They’ve changed the on course HUD to match the game’s honeycomb motif. One improvement that I did like was the honeycomb that is dedicated to telling you the current distance that your club will hit the ball. In previous versions you had to mouse over the club selection, adjust your shot, re-mouse over the club selection to see what your adjustment did, and repeat until you got it right. Now when you adjust your shot the distance is updated right on the screen. No more back and forth. This is the only feature that really made an improvement on the game for me.
The other new feature is the confidence meter. I haven’t found it to be very useful. The HUD seems to be just as touchy as it has been in previous years. When using the click golf swing method you have to take extreme care to make sure you don’t accidentally initiate your golf swing when doing things like changing clubs, adjusting your shot, or changing the shot type.
You also have the ability to jump right into the FedEx playoff. That didn’t appeal to me too much since you play tournaments all the time in PGA mode. It didn’t really add to the game.
This is a fun game for me. For those that haven’t experienced TW, pick it up. For those that have you’d probably be better off waiting for a price drop. If next gen graphics are your thing, definitely go with one of the console versions.
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|One of the greatest golf games! Excellent mix of elements from different genres by EA!,
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008 is quite simply one of the best golf games ever. I am really into first-person shooters (Battlefield 2, Rainbow Six), racing games (GTR2, Race 07 WTCC, Need for Speed), and adventure games (Oblivion) and found it easy to become immersed in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008.
The graphics are very detailed and precise. The scenery is gorgeous and everything runs smoothly with full details (on the auto adjustment setting) on a P4 3.0 GHz rig with a Radeon X1950 GT.
The sound quality is top notch. The ambient noises such as duck quacks and bird chirps immerse the player in the golf environment.
The custom character system is similar to the system used in The Godfather where you can adjust the character’s facial and body features. One can also select a randomly developed player, or select a PGA Tour pro such as Tiger Woods or Annika Sorenstam. You can also accessorize your player with real-world products like Oakley M-Frame sunglasses, Oakley watches, Adidas Traxion golf shoes, Ping/Callaway/Taylormade clubs, and different types of clothing.
My gripe is that while the game was released in 2007, much of the clothing/accessories were based on those available from 2005-2006. With respect to the software developers, they could not have foreseen changes in clothing lineups, but I kind of hoped there was the ability to import new clothing products so you can keep your character “up to date” with golf fashion.
The game does not include hybrid golf clubs, like Taylormade’s Rescue line of hybrids. While Hybrids are relatively new in the sport of golf, they are slowly overtaking the sale of fairway woods and long irons. I just felt that EA should have focused on the latest in golfing equipment as well as the tried-and-true traditional clubs.
The installation of the game takes a bit long due to the large number of MP3 commentary files.
Some of my complaints about gameplay pertain to how the bystanders get in the way of some of your shots. Granted, PGA Tour pros generally do not aim for the rough or bystanders, it just seems odd that many of my balls would hit a bystander/spectator and bounce off them like it just hit a wall. OUCH would probably be a better result!
I also wished there was a way to control your character like one from a first-person shooter, where you can walk/jog your way to your ball or tee box and then address the ball. There is also a LOT of potential for implementing vehicles, such as golf carts, into the game where you can drive it around and wreak havoc in a multiplayer game with some buddies. Granted, none of these are in the “spirit” of professional golfing, it would fall within the scope of computer games and simulations and add a certain sandbox appeal to the genre. There is a lot of potential for adding vehicles and other tweaks found in games like Battlefield 2 while maintaining the seriousness of PGA Tour golf.
Pros: Robust graphics engine, excellent sound effects, intuitive user interface, and bug-free. You can start golfing as soon as you finish the installation!
Cons: No way to update clothing/accessories to reflect current golf fashion, bystanders/spectators are treated as unmovable solid objects, and you can’t control your character like in a first-person shooter.
Overall: If you don’t like golf, you will NOT like this game (obviously). However, if you do enjoy golfing there’s a good chance you will like this game. I found it to be a bargain especially with the quality of the graphics and interface. I’ve paid more for games that provided much less value.
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