Tiger Woods 2005 has plenty to offer and tries desperately to get you to play as long as possible.
User Rating: 8.6 | Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 PC
Comparing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 to last year’s version would be pointless and only cause many of you to blow off this title. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 is, as a whole, a great game with more features and modes of gameplay than any other golf game on the market. While the game has little competition, it still makes a bold stand in the world of sports games and deserves any sports fan’s time. Those looking for a vast improvement to last year’s title might as well give up now and accept EA’s offering of more courses, modes of gameplay and new features. Tiger Woods offers a wide range of different modes and features to keep you busy for quite some time. No longer does the game have you simply play through a career filled with tournaments and buying clubs, but now revolves around an entire theme based on the legends of golf. In fact, there exists an entire currency within the game, aside from real money, called “Legend Coins” that add even more features to the game. The more of these Legend Coins that you acquire, the more the game continues to open up and offer more replay value. While Tiger Woods does offer an insane amount of options to play in for a golf game, these additional modes aren’t always as impressive as they may sound. In fact, as the game continues to open up, some players may begin to close down the game from the lack of interest… You can either create your own player with the new Game Face II create-a-player and start from the ground up, or become one of the legends and take off into tournaments and matches. Most will find the create-a-player much more long lasting and RPG like, while playing as a legend takes away the entire improving your character feature of the game. As a custom player, you will start as an amateur trying to gain enough respect to join the PGA tour card and play with the big boys. This means gaining enough money through tournaments and matches to buy lessons, equipment, and attributes to make your player the best there is to offer. Along the way, you will also be offered loads of money for wearing different sponsor’s gear or using their equipment. You will have to pass “Q-School” in order to join the PGA tour. Once you are fully powered with impressive attributes and the knowledge of every shot in the game, you’ll be set. Unfortunately, you’ll also be set to become somewhat bored and uninterested. Once Q-School is over, the in-game currency becomes quite pointless and you are simply playing to get to your first major, not to improve anything. This is where the design team decided to add even more to the game in hopes of keeping you alive… Each tournament will help you gain more points in the sub-currency of the game; legend coins. These coins will help gain you the power to build your own “Ultimate Course” that you can try to beat the legends at in hopes of proving you are the ultimate golfer. Unfortunately, what seemed as a brilliant idea known as “Tiger Proofing,” is nothing more than a few sliders that make your so called “ultimate course” a little bit more slanted and rough filled. All you do is edit other courses, not create your own actual course. At its core, the “Tiger Proofing” mode is simply a fake build your own course feature that players will find rather flat. Making the trees blue on the Pebble Beach course is amusing for about a half second and is quickly followed by the game closing in lack of interest. Players, at this point, have lost complete interest and are once again only playing to get to the major card in order to play with Tiger and gang. What else did EA come up with to thrill you? More Legend action! The Legend Tour is an interesting mode that is supposed to represent the theme of the game but is a bit more over the top than it is impressive. You will climb a Mortal Kombat style ladder in order to reach the ultimate legend and win the legend tour. On the bottom of this intense bracket are the most ridiculous created golfers you will ever find. The talent ranges from a Scottish drunkard in a kilt to a punk rocker with a Mohawk. While it does change the more professional tone of the game for a little fun, it feels more far-fetched than it does fun. The AI is even a little too dull to make it fun when having to play around 8 of these pointless 9 hole matches. Aside from this slight downside, the legend tour offers even more game time to help keep you interested and playing the game. If you haven’t started to notice, having an interest in golf is without a doubt a necessity considering you will be playing a lot of it and for hours on end. Finally, Tiger Woods had only one last EA standard to throw in before it could be shipped off; online play. This is available on the PC, XBOX, and PS2 versions and is certainly an excellent feature that adds quite a bit to the replay and intense memories of the game. There are several custom modes that are offered in the online mode such as shootout, skins, scramble, and a slew of other odd titles(Blood Mode) that pretty much define alternating team play. Online also includes a feature for “side games” where you can put money prizes on certain accomplishments made during your bout such as aces, drive length, chip ins, etc. Many will find the online mode quite rewarding and like most EA Sports titles, the source of the replay value. Graphically, Tiger Woods has always been very appealing due to its beautiful course design and in depth character modeling, all of which have several different facial expressions and motion capture swings. The PC offers the most polished look with extensive detail towards the water and grass textures. All versions include an excellent camera as well as very cinematic replays that are automatically saved and available at all times. The PC version offers you a grid on the putting greens for determining the slopes and such, while the console versions offer the beauty that is “Tiger Vision.” This new addition tells you exactly how to aim your shots and is almost always a guaranteed sinker. You only get around 3 uses of this feature per game, so use it wisely. Tiger Woods is obviously the most detailed and feature filled golf game known to man. Its cinematic camera style, remarkable commentary, well textured environments (especially on PC), lengthy career mode, and endless legend theme features make a lasting experience that can be repeated for the entire year. Its attempt at making a worthwhile “create a course” or use of far fetched created players can be its unfortunate downfall for those looking for the ultimate golf game. While it may not contain the most creative or in depth set of features EA has shown in its sports titles, it is certainly worthy of any golf fan’s collection. Most importantly, Tiger Woods has once again taught me that being good at virtual golf means absolutely nothing in reality. 86/100 
