By Joey Davidson

I actually had a chance to sit down and play the Tiger Woods 09 demo that hit the Xbox Live Marketplace over the course of this past weekend. Nothing really struck me as “worthwhile” until about half way through the demo. That, and I’ll get to the “that” of which I am referring in a bit, is what drove me to plop down next to my computer and type something up. Here come some impressions.

 Tiger Woods 09 is a Tiger Woods game, plain and simple. The franchise hasn’t really seen any major changes in a few years and, like some may have already assumed, is starting to fall into a relatively obvious pattern of rehashing and tweaking. This demo sports Hank Haney, Tiger’s coach, 3 holes of a new course, custom drills and a club tuner.

 Let’s start with Hank. He’s basically a personified computer. There, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out. His voice acting is subpar…or that of an athlete. As you play rounds of golf, Hank will come up with drills based on some tough shots during your course of play to throw at you as you finish. These drills will improve your stats and skills throughout the game. Players do not start at 0 this year, they play a round, Hank measures their performance and their skill sets and stats start based off of that first round. This is probably my favorite addition and tweak. The frustrating batch of golf that opens a Tiger Woods game is now gone for those that have been with the series since its inception… you’ll play as well as you should.

 One of the goals, as stated by the developer, of this year’s version of Tiger Woods was to achieve a more realistic course look. They created a new engine and went through making the old courses look “better.” The scare quotes go up there because, frankly, I think that they took the lush look and feel of the holes and turned it into something slightly brown and plain. They added more texture and environmental specifics, but the colors just look a little boring; to each his own. Here’s a comparison video of ‘08 and ‘09:
Now, the custom drills… a great idea. You had a tough chip during the round? Hank recreates the chip into a drill. Need to work on putting? Hank will take one of your difficult puts and make it a drill. You’ll try the shot, succeed, and then enter a timed score challenge with the shot. Pass the challenge and earn some stat points. Simple, right? Well, one of my shots was an approach to the green that started off behind a tree. During the round, I couldn’t get to the green through the tree so I hit to the fairway and approached from there. Hank created a drill from this shot, but made it impossible. He placed me directly behind the tree and made my target the green. No matter how I hit the ball I couldn’t even come close to the green; I’d either hit the tree or try a punch shot and wind up well short. So, it’s definitely a feature that does not fire off correctly every time. Yet the variety and learning experience the tool provides the player with is something that may even be considered invaluable.

 Finally, and this is my major gripe, we come to the club tuner. Players will be able to hit the range and adjust club specifics to their personal shots. Like getting custom fit with a set of clubs in real golf, players will tune their clubs to make up for slicing, hooking, topping and unnecessary draws and pushes. Sounds pretty sweet, and it is. But this is a video game. Why even bother adding this feature. In the real world, golf is an incredibly challenging sport. Players spend years perfecting even the tiniest aspects of their game. Even the greats get wrapped up in bad habits that need to be broken. Why make it possible for players to get rid of the work? If we’re going for simulation here, why would EA chose to eliminate the process of learning the game’s swing mechanism? You just use the swing you started with in the club tuner session and WHAM-O! Perfect swing! It takes the challenge away from the game. Yet, and I’ll end here, it is an optional feature. Purists like me are welcome to leave it alone entirely. I certainly will.