Tiger Woods 07 – Nintendo Wii
Lets get this out of the way. Tiger Woods 07 looks fairly poor. The character models are decent, but the courses are a hideous pile of ugly textures. Water looks awful, sand traps lack definition and the rough looks like wavy weeds. A few courses look nice (Emerald Dragon comes to mind), but overall the graphics are the biggest weak point.
That said, the gameplay shines brightest of all. Unlike the swing mechanic in Wii Sports Golf, you can swing as hard as you like and it feels great. You hold down B, carefully pull back and swing as straight as possible. The harder you swing the further the ball goes…it works great and after a few hours you will be placing the ball exactly where you want it.
The game is not for casual gamers. The learning curve is fairly steep and you can become really frustrated until you finally nail down your swing. Some of my friends claim the swing mechanic is broken, but poor shots are always the users fault…not the games. Take the time to learn the mechanics and it works flawlessly. For those that can’t take the more realistic approach can opt for an easy swing mode. I found easy to be way too easy and after an hour or two I stopped using it. Practice makes perfect though and in this game a novice will almost never outplay a seasoned veteran.
Tiger Woods has tons of features and the game begs to be played with friends. Since you play standing up its easier to taunt and or dance after making 30 ft putts. This leads to lots of laughs and good times by all. My very first hole in one was sunk while seven people were watching. It was such a great feeling and very few moments in sports games could match it.
Tiger Woods on the Wii takes a more serious approach than recent offerings. Gone are the explosions while hitting a great drive, the over the top celebrations and arcade style gameplay. You can still put spin on the ball in mid air by hitting the d-pad and shaking the wiimote, but that’s about as unrealistic as this game gets. Personally it’s a welcome change, because if I want arcade style golf I would buy Hot Shots instead.
Overall Tiger Woods is one of the best golf games available for any system. If you have any interest in videogame golf, do yourself a favor and pick this game up immediately. It’s a showcase title for the Wii and certainly an ace from the folks at EA Sports.
The good: Great motion swing mechanics, deep gameplay, tons of features
The bad: Shoddy graphics, steep learning curve
The grade: B+
