Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 Review

That’s a big slice.

Golf is all about numbers. You’re a 10 handicap playing 18 holes, a total par of 72. You’ve got a bag filled with irons numbered 1 through 9, a ball with another number for identification and a scorecard on which to mark down even more numbers. How long is each hole? 355 yards, 412 yards, 515 yards. And what’s the best you can do? Hit a hole in one. Golf bags should come equipped with calculators.

Tiger Woods 06 for the Xbox 360 messes with some numbers, too, but sadly, it’s mostly subtraction. Instead of fifteen courses you get a mere six, and instead of a million modes and mini-games, you get two. The core remains unchanged – which is a good thing – but with so many omissions and so few enhancements, it will be hard for Tiger Woods fans to get behind this odd new math.

Though it’s migrated to a more powerful system, this really is the same game as the one released a few months back for the current-gen consoles. The shot stick, shape stick, spin meter, power meter, Gamebreakers, driving, chipping, lofting, pitching and even putting are exactly as they were. Rather than waste precious web space (an oxymoron?), I’d like to recommend that you go read, say, the Xbox review of Tiger Woods 06 to learn more about the specifics of the mechanics.

One niggling flaw has arisen, though. Aside from swapping the shot stick and shape stick, you can’t customize the controller at all, meaning you cannot change the default setting of the essential Power Boost button (left bumper). It’s nigh impossible to boost shots; your left thumb cannot accurately pull back the swing on the left stick while your left index finger is theoretically smashing on the left bumper. Swapping the sticks helps a bit since you can now freely swing with your right thumb, but no matter what, you’ll still be using your left finger to rapidly boost power. It might seem like small potatoes, but it actually makes a fair bit of gameplay difference.

That being said, Tiger Woods 06 is still eminently playable. Swinging the clubs is smooth on the Xbox 360 controller, and no mechanics have been ditched at all. There’s a reason why this is the only viable golf game on the market.

But while the core is just as it was, the shell is flakier. Since really hitting its stride with Tiger Woods 2004, the series has put on more weight than John Daly, adding mode after mode after mode. This version, though, has gone South Beach and trimmed the fat by stripping away much of the game’s content. The fifteen courses have been pared down to only six, the terrific Real-Time Event calendar is nowhere to be found and Rivals mode is gone altogether.

In its place is Career mode, basically a catchall of Tutorial, Skills Challenges and ultimately the PGA Tour Season. You start off as a lowly hacker trying to get your tour card, but rather than just hopping into the PGA Season from the start, you have to first plod through several hours worth of Skill Challenges. These are exactly as they were in the other versions, including events like Longest Drive, Closest to the Pin, Bunker or Rough Recovery and a smattering of short matches against CPU players. You only have access to events at Pebble Beach at first; beating challenges slowly opens up other courses in sequential order, leading to just more challenges. Along the way, you’ll earn skill points to increase your talents and cash to spend at the robust Pro Shop for new gear. After what seems like an eternity, you’ll have to pass muster at Q-school, earn your tour card, then finally start playing through the PGA Tour in an effort to be the best ever.

Or you know what else you could do? Play any other version of Tiger Woods 06, since they let you hop into the PGA Tour right off the bat without forcing you to mindlessly swing through so many brief, boring challenges. I imagine that most of the people buying this game aren’t total Tiger Woods newbies; most have likely had some experience with at least one other game in the series since it has been the clear-cut market leader in console golf for the past five years. Why, then, make us prove our worth all over again? It’s not like there are any new gameplay features to master. It winds up being annoying, frustrating and ultimately a turn-off having to jump through so many hoops just to get to the good stuff, which is playing 18-hole tournaments and seeing how you stack up against the CPU pros. At least make it a skippable option.

You can always forgo the main Career and just play traditional matches in one of seven available styles (Stroke, Tamch, Stableford, etc.), although a better bet is to test your mettle online. This is one area in which this version of Tiger trumps the others. Some of that can be attributed to the Xbox 360’s online ease of use, but the addition of four-player matches, full leaderboards, stat tracking (including a money list) and ‘Tournament Thursdays’ makes for a pretty lively online experience.

But clearly the biggest area of improvement is in the game’s graphics. Unsurprisingly, it looks swell. The increased level of detail leads to some eerily lifelike touches, particularly in outstanding grass textures and bump-mapped slopes. Most of the animations have been ported over, but since they looked so great before, you’ll hardly notice. This is Tiger Woods at his graphical best, although there are still some noticeable flaws in the engine. Polygonal seams poke through during many character close-ups, and so much material was taken from the other games that it feels more like a fresh coat of paint on a used car than a brand new body.

Speaking of which, you can really detail the hell out of yours via the touted Gameface character creator. It’s got the exact same bells and whistles as before, the only new addition being a movable light source for better face viewing. But the beefier engine leads to some noticeably cooler effects, like blemishes that actually pop off a face and character models that are more rounded than rectangular.

The audio certainly hasn’t changed, and that’s inexcusable. The soundtrack is fine, but Gary McCord and David Feherty are at it again, saying the same things they said in the other versions’which were the same things they said in the past several years worth of Tiger games. I, however, will say this to EA for the last time: NEW RECORDING SESSION. It will do everyone some good.

Tiger Woods 06 will not, though. It’s a decent game that nails the essentials by reprising the gameplay mechanics and bumping up the delivery, but like too many of these EA launch games, it delivers less content than the same games released on technically inferior platforms. The fact is, if you already own a Tiger game for a current-gen machine, you own a better one than this. Numbers don’t lie, and neither do we.