Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters review

Oh Tiger. After years of grinding perfection, including 71 tournament wins, $94m in prize money and 14 Majors, it’s only taken a year and some juicy revelations for it all to fall apart, with him now suffering the worst year in his career as a golfer. Lucky for Tiger, then, that there is a silver lining. EA Tiburon has only gone and produced the best Tiger Woods game in years with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters. We’re sure it can only be up from here. Read on for the full review.

Why is Tiger Woods 12 the best Tiger Woods game in years? Well, all the things we love about the PGA Tour games are still here - the players, the courses, the simple yet effective control system and the Focus and True-Aim improvements from last year that added much-needed complexity to the gameplay. And on top of that they’ve added two simple and yet crucial elements: a story mode revolving around The Masters. And a caddy.

First, The Masters. Effectively it’s the star of Tiger Woods PAGA Tour 12: The Masters – taking some of the pressure off poor old Tiger himself. A little like the recent Fight Night Champion, EA Tiburon have added narrative to the traditional sports game career mode. In this case everything builds to you qualifying for – and winning – The Masters. You work your way through amateur leagues, the qualifying ‘school’ (note: not a school) and then pro tournaments, honing your game until you’re good enough to be invited to The Masters itself.

Having this focus really works – and not really because it’s the Masters but because it gives you something tangible to aim for. Winning The Masters, finally, after all the build-up (and the practice, mainly via the Masters Moments, where you are set challenges based on real Masters, er, moments) is a proper gaming experience in a way that winning a tournament in a Tiger Woods game has never been before. And then there’s the caddy. As with the addition of a story to the career mode, this is a blindingly simple and yet effective addition. Golfers have caddies. Tiger Woods has a caddy. We’re not sure why it took so long for a Tiger Woods game to have caddies, but they are here now. He helps you choose your clubs, pick your line and read the course.

In his brilliant book about spending a year as a caddy, Four Iron In The Soul, Lawrence Donegan says: “The first thing to understand about caddying is that it’s not brain surgery. It’s more complicated than that.” He then goes on to describe his year working for the then fairly low ranking Ross Drummond.

The point is that caddying is much, much harder than he thought it would be, but not for any of the reasons it should be. Caddying turns out not so much about reading putts and carrying the bag as being cheerleader, supporter and psychologist for your employer. And while the new caddy system adds much to the overall experience in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters, he’s little more than an animated help guide. As a nicely done review on Joystiq points out, there’s no personalisation – he just doesn’t understand you! This is a minor gripe, really, but hopefully points to where EA Tiburon can go with next year’s Tiger Woods game.

Our other minor niggle is with The Masters itself. We love golf and The Masters in particular, with the Augusta National the best looking course in the world. But centring everything on one course – however good it is - means you end up playing that one course a lot. Especially if it takes you quite a while to actually win the tournament (which, er, might have been the case with us…). We’re hoping for more depth – and more courses, to the central challenge in next year’s Tiger Woods game.

There’s also motion control – although we played without it – and online play. Depending on whether you go with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters on PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii then there are DLC courses available too. You can get the full low-down on all that at the official site. While the changes to this year’s Tiger Woods game are mainly cosmetic - the basic game remains pretty much unchanged – they manage to improve the experience exponentially and make Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 the best Tiger Woods game ever. Which we are sure is just the tonic Tiger himself needs to get back on track. And if not he's still got that $94m in prize money to console himself with.

9/10

Words: Rich Keith

Please register or login to post comments