Return To Home Page		May 1, 2012

It's the great man himself, Tiger Woods.

Another year, another Tiger Woods title. As a golf fan I’m always excited to see what EA has brought to the table this year. Last year The Masters were added for the first time and that will be a tough act to follow. For this year’s game EA has overhauled the swing mechanics, added a new game mode where you relive Tiger’s career from toddler to superstar and implemented country clubs online, making it easier for you and your friends to tackle the online community. Do these new additions make Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 the best Tiger yet? Read on…

With much of the core game unchanged from last year let’s focus on the changes to this year’s game. EA has labeled the swing changes to this year’s game as the most significant overhaul in a decade. As you step up for your very first shot you’ll notice a white arc around your golfer – this is the all new swing plane meter. As you swing your club ideally you will follow the arc of the swing plane, because swinging your club under or over the arc will result in a hook or slice. Luckily following the arc is quite natural, and with a little practice you’ll follow it regularly.

The tempo of your swing and the length of your backswing also play a more prominent role in each shot this year. Near the top of your backswing the arc of the swing plane meter changes from a white line to a red one, with the red area indicating the overswing zone; shots from this area have more power than a standard shot. The tempo of your swing is also measured and factored into the resultant shot - with a fast swing the shot will go further, a slower swing has the opposite effect. Fast and slow swings are also more inaccurate, so the goal is to get a perfect tempo swing.

At the bottom-left of the screen you get immediate feedback on the tempo and backswing of your shot, along with a line indicating how straight your backswing (by either analog stick or Move controller) was. Checking this after every shot gives you a clear idea of what you’re doing right or wrong, and makes it easy to improve as you play.

Tiger Woods playing on the Augusta course.

The swing overhaul isn’t done there though, as now there are also stance setup and ball-striking meters. The stance setup meter enables you to open or close your stance to make the shot fade and draw respectively. You can move the ball forward or back in your stance for a higher or lower ball flight as well. The ball-striking meter shows where you’re targeting the ball on any given shot. It’s not especially useful because almost all the time you’ll aim for the center of the ball, and the game automatically moves the target to the correct spot if you should be aiming low or high on the ball. The benefit of aiming high on the ball isn’t quite clear – the in-game text says you’ll either hit the ball thin or miss it altogether, neither of which sound ideal.

There is one significant new game mode, called the Tiger Legacy Challenge, which literally allows you to relive Tiger’s career. You start off as a two-year old Tiger, strutting your stuff on the Mike Douglas show just as the real Tiger did back in 1978. If you play through all the way to the end of the Legacy Challenge you’ll have the chance to break Jack Nicklaus’s record of eighteen major championships, making Tiger officially the greatest golfer of all time.

This mode is broken up into ten era’s and presents multiple challenges from Tiger’s life within each era. Examples of the challenges are; as a toddler you chip the ball into the pool in your backyard, in Tiger’s early years you sneak onto the course to play golf against your dad, and in Tiger’s junior years you go through distraction training where a horn sounds through each of your backswings. Soon after that you’re battling for junior titles, dominating the amateur circuit, winning Tiger’s first major and reliving other highlights from Tiger’s storied career. Other sports stars such as Marshall Faulk (NFL), Jeremy Roenick (NHL), Dwight Howard (NBA) and Wayne Rooney (the English Premier League) all make an appearance too, just to spice things up a little.

Animation in Tiger Woods is superb.

The biggest addition to online play is country clubs. Anyone can set up their own public or private country club and invite their friends to join. Within your country club it’s easy to challenge other members to a round of golf via the lobby, or play against anyone else through the online matchmaking menu. As a country club member every round you play earns status points for your country club. A weekly status leaderboard keeps track of which member earned the most status for their club and grants them club champion status and entry into special Club Championship events.

Whether you play online or offline you’ll earn coins for every round you play. These coins can be used to buy boost pins as well as rounds of golf at downloadable courses – of which there are many. Boost pins come in four types; golfer, boost, course and refill. Golfer pins grant a boost to all skills of a specific golfer, either a created golfer or one of the twenty-two pros in the game. Boost pins can increase specific skills (like accuracy or power), or grant more shot previews, or improved lies. Course pins are pins for every hole on a course – by collecting all eighteen you’ll earn more status for every round you play at that course. Refill pins are used to replenish your stock of any depleted pins in your collection.

As mentioned above you can also use coins to buy rounds at downloadable courses, though the price is steep. The advantage to this is that if you achieve gold course mastery at that course you’ll then have free access to it. Achieving gold mastery of any course is going to take a lot of time though, because you have to perform feats such as one hundred pars, or eighty career GIRs or FIRs (greens in regulation and fairways in regulation). Only the most committed will be able to earn gold course mastery of a downloadable course just with coins; most people will have to buy the course with real money instead.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 includes an updated swing mechanic.

Ok, so that’s the new stuff taken care of, but what about the old stuff? Career mode returns as career mode, dropping the ‘Road to the Masters’ title it had last year. It’s mostly unchanged though you can now choose from one of three amateur tours when starting your career. Once you make it to the PGA Tour you can select the difficulty of the AI-opponents, from easy to expert. On hard difficulty, two below expert, the AI were shooting between -8 and -12 a round, so you can definitely give yourself a challenge.

You still earn experience for your on-course play, with experience points used to level up the skills of your golfer. Before each tournament you can still participate in sponsor challenges which earn you new gear in the pro shop once completed, as does completing in-game challenges from your specific sponsor. All of which helps make your created golfer a match for even the most seasoned PGA veterans.

The Move controller is supported again this year, and while the controls are perfectly natural and largely functional, they still don’t feel quite right. The biggest issue for me is that you still have to swing a little too hard, and wind up a little too far for it to be completely comfortable. Although the Move is incredibly accurate in mapping your motion, this can actually be a handicap unless your technique is flawless. A slight twist in your wrist will result in hooked shots or pushed putts, making the analog-stick controls that much more user-friendly. A more relaxed control scheme with the Move would be more fun, but in a serious game such as this it is probably out of place, and is unlikely to be implemented any time soon (unfortunately).

Playing in the Legacy Mode.

Although we’ve spent a lot of time talking about this year’s new features it’s worth discussing how much they change the game, and the reality is it’s not much. EA can tell us that the swing mechanics are ‘all new’ and much improved, but they feel a lot like they have every other year. Sure there are a couple of new meters to help you perfect your swing, but aside from that it feels incredibly familiar. So much so that without the white arc of the swing plane meter you may not have noticed the swing changes at all.

The Tiger Legacy Challenge is a new and robust game mode, but it doesn’t deliver anything particularly new aside from a few different character models. Hitting a ball into Tiger’s mum’s handbag may have been how he spent his time as a kid, but it doesn’t equate to a lot of fun in a videogame. All of last year’s Masters-centric modes ‘Masters Moments’, ‘Tiger at the Masters’ and ‘Inside Augusta National’ are all gone too, so EA has taken away with one hand what it gave with the other.

It’s something we’re probably stuck with long-term, but I’m not a fan of games promoting the sale of additional content within the game itself like EA have done here with downloadable courses and boost pins. These items are promoted with full-page advertisements in the game, and to me they negatively impact on the overall experience. EA has always been a massive self-promoter, and you still get the full page EA Sports logo on-screen between shots, so it looks like this is a strategy EA won’t be abandoning any time soon.

Another disappointment in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 is that most of the issues from last year’s game have returned unaddressed. There are still no playoffs in tied tournaments and as mentioned above in-game advertising is back and more noticeable than ever.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 is available now.

Two other bugs occurred in my time playing the game. Firstly your score isn’t always calculated correctly if you take the maximum allowable number of shots on a hole. Sitting on+4 in the Masters I took a disappointing +10 on one hole, only to find my score was then +7. The last little bug is that sometime your ball changes position in between shots. For example I once hit the ball into a bunker, but when I played my next shot it was from the rough next to the bunker. Another time the ball rolled off the green and into a bunker, but when I went to play the shot the ball was on the fringe of the green. Very strange indeed.

The graphics are up to the same standard as last year. Courses look authentic, including the trees and flowers that line each hole. The fairway is always clearly defined, while the rough, bunkers and water are obvious enough that you can avoid them. Character models are a bit of a mixed bag with some players looking exactly like their real life counterparts (Tiger, Jim Furyk and Zach Johnson), while others aren’t given the same care Rory McIlroy, Boo Weekley and Ian Poulter).

Although the sound was an area of weakness last year, it has received little to no improvement this year. Jim Nantz and David Feherty deliver the commentary again, and while they do a decent enough job with their lines it is not always implemented well. Sometimes on putts of less than a foot they’ll get really excited, while some of over thirty feet pass with little fanfare. The commentary isn’t used to add excitement or tension to tournament play either, which is one area EA could really improve it.

Overall Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 is still a solid game of golf, but one that makes few (if any) significant strides over last year’s game. The biggest additions come with caveats; new swing controls feel awfully familiar and while there is one robust new game mode, three are gone from last year. Country Clubs are a welcome addition however. If you have last year’s game then it is genuinely hard to recommend Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, but for everyone else it still offers the best game of golf going around.

Review By: Mike Allison

GRAPHICS	Great looking courses and so-so character models. It’s hard to make golf courses look much better.	83%
SOUND	The commentary isn’t used as effectively as you might like, with no tension or excitement added to tournament play. Overall it’s mediocre.	64%
GAMEPLAY	No major innovations this year, but still a great game of golf. How long until playoffs make a return?	83%
VALUE	Between career and online modes there is plenty here to keep you busy. The Tiger Legacy Challenge is a good but not great addition.	86%
OVERALL	With no significant improvements to last year’s game Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 is a bit of a disappointment. Despite that it’s still a great game of golf and worth checking out If you missed last year’s title.	80%