2 stars (EA just doesn't care.) - This game is an embarassment. I've been playing the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series since 2002 and have been a huge fan of it up until now. The newest version is the buggiest yet, with all sorts of visual and audio glitches present throughout the game. They also, for some reason, removed the ability to skip celebration animations for the golfers from this version, forcing you to sit through the same ones over and over and over again until you want to smash your putter through your television.
As far as gameplay is concerned, few changes have been made, and they are mostly for the worse. It now takes FOREVER to level up your golfer in single-player mode due to the game's new points system. This wouldn't be so bad if playing the game didn't seem like such a chore in the first place. Another change they've made is to the putting. They attempted to make it harder by turning it into an analog swing, but ended up making it ridiculously easy with the "ideal putt" camera. Once you master it, rare is the occasion that it will actually take you more than one putt to get the ball in the hole.
Overall, one gets the impression playing this game that EA Sports just doesn't care about quality anymore. They just seem to throw in a few new "features" that worsen the gameplay, let a few more bugs slip through the cracks, and then have the gall to release this year's latest edition at full price. I, for one, am done with this series.
1 stars (Don't waste the money!!) - I have been a major fan of all the EA Sports PS2 Tiger Woods golf games- until now. What the hell is going on! I can describe this new incarnation for the 2006 season very easily, crap, crap, CRAP!!! I should have listened to other reviews that supported my opinion before I wasted $50.00 for this, but like many of you I want to see things for myself, so I bought it. My biggest complaint was in the degredation of the graphics. Last years 2005 version was great. Now the graphics look cartoonish, lacking much detail that the previous version excelled at. With the upcoming release of playstation 3 I guess they did'nt want to waste time upgrading the program. The meeting probably went something like this: "Well we have to release a new version of PGA golf this year. Being that we are all concentrating on our PS3 and the new games that we will be charging more money than ever, who is interested in working on PGA 2006?" Silence fills the meeting room, no one raises their hand. Then a subordinate chimes in with "Well sir, we have an old beta version of the PGA 2001 game that we never marketed. We'll just tweak it a little, about 2 hours worth of work, and ship it out as the 2006 version, and before the unsuspecting consumer figures out that we sold them garbage we would have sold a million copies!" The boss says "Sounds Great! let's do it, but I can't afford the manpower so have your kids work on it at home and have it ready to go on Friday which is 2 days from now" Furthermore the menu choices are confusing to navigate through, and there seems to be a lag on scene changes and the video sometimes look very choppy. My PS2 unit is working perfectly. To make sure we tried the game on another unit with the same results. I just can't believe they would try to pass off an inferior product like this. Needless to say I will never play this version again. I wish I could return it but once you open one of these games the return policy is out the window. Maybe I can sell it at a garage sale. I could probably get what it's worth- 3 bucks.
3 stars (Not all that bad) - In most of the reviews I keep hearing how they should have made 06 like 05. I'm glad they didn't. 2006 has challenged me like no other golf game ever. Come on I was shooting on average scores of 20 under par in 2005. What fun is that. there's no challenge at all. They did good in making 2006 feel more like the real thing.
I'm not saying TW06 is perfect because it's not. It's confusing at first to realize where to go to start playing. The load times are pretty bad, and there are some nasty bugs that should hgave been fixed before release. The worst one forced me to to retake my second shot over and over again because i couldn't make it over the water. It wouldn't let me pick anything than wedges. It did the same thing to my computer opponent. That's only happened once but it is still pretty bad.
Wityhout that one bug it would be a much better game. I haven't played online yet, but it seems like everyone else thinks it sucks. If you want a good golfing sim, it is worth it if you can get over some of the flaws. |
