Tiger Trumps Himself
At A Glance
- Many new features make this game all the more fun, challenging and varied.
When you have a long-running series like the PGA TOUR videogame series that has been around for 16 years, you would think it would get harder and harder to improve on the previous year's model. Yet, somehow Electronic Arts manages to keep doing it. This year, it's no exception. Not only has the game moved to the next generation console with all the sweet upgrading that comes with that, but they've also added new modes and courses.
Tiger studies the green.
The keyword for Tiger Woods PGA Tour® 07 is longevity. Just as a long, straight drive is a beautiful thing, so this game sends the ball far down the fairway to the green. Although gameplay has changed hardly at all, the ways in which you can entertain yourself and your friends with it has increased geometrically.
New Faces
For the 2007 tour, look for some new faces out on the courses. Electronic Arts has gathered a fantastic array of professional golfers to put you to the test. Among them, meet and compete against Arnold Palmer, Vijay Singh, Mike Weir, John Daly, and Jack Nicklaus.
"World Champion" takes on a new meaning when you're
competing against people from all over the world.
Your own character's face takes on significance with the addition of the GameFace tool. Xbox 360™ has the capability to let you customize your character in thousands of different ways. This new technology has been appearing lately in many Xbox 360 games and brings a new level of personalization to the game. Now your character can look just like you, or just like you wish you could look.
New Courses
Where's the challenge if you're so familiar with the courses that you don't even have to eyeball the grade? Electronic Arts included a number of new courses in Tiger Woods 07 for you to explore and discover. Hottest of these is the Glen Abbey course, located in Canada. It's known as the spot where Tiger Woods won the 2000 Canadian Open with a spectacular 218-yard shot from a bunker on the eighteenth hole. Enjoy playing the eleventh hole, where you tee off from a cliff more than 50 feet above the fairway.
Crowd dynamics have amazing realism.
Another significant course added to the game is Bandon Dunes. Bandon Dunes serves as the practice course, giving you a chance to hone your driving, pitching, and putting skills without the tension of tournament competition. Bandon Dunes is located on Oregon, and in 2005 was ranking on both the top 100 worldwide and top 50 U.S. golf courses by Golf Magazine.
One new aspect allows you to TigerProof the courses. This is a real-life phenomenon in which course owners tweak the landscape in order to make it harder for Tiger to win. In the game, you can narrow fairways, make hazards more sinister, and even change the roll of the green to increase the challenge of it.
Design the course to your own specifications.
In other words, design your own course. Your opponents feel the increased challenge, but so do you. It also means, however, that no hole ever has to be exactly the same the next time you approach it.
New Games
Career Mode is back, so play a decade-long career of 30 tournaments per year to see how well you do when walking in Tiger's shoes. Most people come to Tiger Woods 07 looking for tournament play, and they find it. They find plenty of it.
There's much more in this year's installment of the game that adds to its long-term playability by increasing the number of ways that you can have fun with the game. In addition to regular tournament play and career mode, you'll find a varied set of mini-games and arcade fun to challenge and tickle you.
Golf is a social sport, and for the first time this year, play Tiger Woods 07 online against the global community of Xbox Live®. "World Champion" takes on a new meaning when you're competing against people from all over the world. Take your customized face and your customized courses online for others to see. Nothing could be more cool than that.
Once again, as Tiger does regularly on the tournament course, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 07 trumps itself. Put on your golf shoes, folks. Tiger's issuing his challenge.
Article by Angel Leigh McCoy
