Only a masochist (or an EA marketing weasel) would call this frustrating waste of money "fun".
I've been playing TW games since TW 2003. Between Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii, GCN and NDS, I've bought a total of 10 copies of the various iterations of Tiger Woods Golf. This version is isn't the worst (it's probably the third worst after 07 on the Wii and 07 on the DS, respectively) but it makes me feel ripped-off the most.
What's wrong with it? Well, for starters, the much-touted Photo Gameface simply does not work. I know that some people have gotten it to work, but it just won't work for me. When I can get on the site, which isn't often, the creation process always hangs in the very same spot. I tried it on several different hardware platforms, Win and Mac, with different versions of Flash, and on both IE and FireFox. Same thing every time. Worse than the fact that it doesn't work is that fact that EA doesn't seem to care. I sent an email to support at EA, describing the problem in detail and even included a screen shot. I got no reply. Sorry EA, but a "we're sorry" pop-up or the word "beta" on the creation site doesn't cut it for those of us who've shelled out 60 bucks for this train wreck. It should say "beta" on the box. Once you get past the fact that you won't be able to use Photo Gameface, you can then move on to hitting ridiculous slices and hooks all over the place due to the stupidly touchy analog control. I try to justify this flaw to myself by thinking "it makes it more challenging". It's true, but there's challenging, and then there's so-arbitrarily-punishing-that-it-isn't-fun. The analog control, unfortunately, is decidedly in the second category.
You can go to the game's driving range and hit 6 perfect drives. Of course, you'll have to mess around changing back to your driver, though, because the game always wants to automatically change your club to a 5 wood or 3 iron on you for some reason... but I digress. Anyway, you can hit a number of perfect drives, right up until you think you've got it figured out, and then you'll start hitting wild shots again without doing anything perceptibly different. Perhaps a spec of dust gets under the control stick, or perhaps the control stick has slipped over to a different ridge of your thumb-print in mid-swing. Who knows. The meat of the matter is that I can go out and hit it consistently straighter on a real golf course... and that's a pretty sad statement on the controls of this game.
When it does go crooked, which is most of the time, the crowd often gets in the way of your recovery. The very first time I went right, a spectator was standing in my way, facing me as I addressed the ball! Sure, it was funny watching him grab his crotch and double-over after my ball hit him squarely in the junk, and it was worth having the ball advance only 34 yards... the first time. After that, it's just another flaw.
I could go on and on about the rest of the game, but the Gamespot review pretty much touches on all the problems I saw. Interestingly, I didn't have the crashing problem others are reporting during the Tiger Challenge event against that girl at Carnoustie. The one and only version of TW I bought for the GCN (I think it was 04) was obviously not play-tested. At the end of the Tiger Challenge you had to play two 18-hole compilations and, since the courses were distributed between the two discs, you ended up changing the discs after practically every hole. TW 2008 for the Xbox 360 feels much the same... not finished, and not properly tested. That's the real problem with games like this, folks. Developers fling them out rife with bugs and figure they can just patch it later if anyone notices their mistakes. It's been going on with PC games for a number of years and, now that the PS3 and 360 are able to deliver content via the Internet, it's easy to do the same with console games. I saw one other reviewer comment something to the effect of "there are problems, but it's still worth playing". Sorry, but that attitude is what made the Ford Escort a popular car, my friends. Here's the thing: When someone expects me to pay money for something, and their black-hearted marketing people are telling me that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, I expect something more than recycled gameplay, recycled commentary, recycled courses, and brand new bugs. At the very least, I expect it to work. Is it so much to ask that we get what we’re paying for?