Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 (GameCube) Review

Picture the scene; you walk out in the early morning, breathing mist from your mouth as you walk across the moist, dew-covered grass. You reach into a pocket and withdraw your lucky tee and crouch to lodge it firmly in the soil below, at the same time perching a brand new, sparkling white golf ball atop of it. Stepping back you look up into the golden sunshine that is currently doing its best spread its heat over the course ahead of you, reach for your favoured club and prepare to tee-off. A story background is certainly not required here

Repetitive commentary syndrome is something that has a terrible tendency to plague sports titles and can be so annoying that they force you to simply turn the volume down. Now, whilst this new version of Tiger Woods does not rid of that 'illness' exactly, it does remedy the situation somewhat and gives hope for the future. Perhaps one-day games will include enough speech to vaporise the problem entirely...But for the moment this EA Sports title is by far the best we have been given so far and just like its football cousin, FIFA, the vocals included are crisp, clear and amusing/irritating (depending if you are the player being taunted or not) to the right degree. Then there is the addition of various in-games tunes, all composed by legendary Britsh DJ, BT. Each of his compositions sits perfectly well in the scenario they are used for, which is more than you could ask for. EA knows how to present games after so much practice, definitely!

With such annual updates, the consensus is normally that there are not quite enough extras tacked on to warrant a purchase if you already have the previous year's version. Just look at EA's FIFA series, which came under much criticism in the past for being 'rehashed' too often. Thankfully, though, this is definitely not the case with the company now, and the EA Sports brand is fast becoming synonymous with 'high quality'. First of all there is an updated version of the GameFace create-a-character option, whereby you can build-up your very own golfer to almost the levels of what developers can do in their swanky offices. The detail is immense, ranging from facial structure, skin tone, clothing, and accessories, as well as bodily shape. It truly makes a mockery of other creation modes, even EA's other attempts. This, tied-in with the shop feature means that once created, you can heap as many of the 2,500 items on your character as you can afford. Everything is easily searchable for, so you need not worry about getting lost in the system! The, to finish off, you can modify your swing to completely personalise the experience.

Not too many actual gameplay changes as such have been made, mainly due to the system being used actually working perfectly well and not necessarily requiring much in the way of refinement. You still use the analogue stick to swing your club, for instance (unlike Mario Golf's timed power bars approach). But now TigerVision has been included, which gives you a short amount of time to line up your putting marker with a special spot and if you succeed, then you get an automatic perfect sink. But this tends to make things rather easy, so it is not a feature that should be used too frequently, for fear of spoiling the game. Something that does detract from the game's quality slightly, though, is the lack of any grid on the green. Whereas in Mario Golf you can read the green perfectly when putting, the whole matter is far more complicated due to the omission in Tiger 2005.

Purists are kept happy with the addition of the Tour Mode, where precision swinging is called upon across the realistic courses, forcing you to really think about which shot is best for the situation you are faced with, rather than just swinging as strongly as possible in a certain direction. Of course, it is in this mode that you would likely switch off the features that ease play, but wise use of the Ball-in-Stance inclusion would be advisable. Placing yourself so that your stance is to the front or back of the ball will increase the amount of height control and the way your ball lands after flight. It is good to see that EA has catered for the needs of real players of the game as much as possible and not just gone down the arcade route. This is what makes Mario Golf so different from Tiger Woods

There have also bee some wonderful additions to the general game modes as well, with the Legend Pursuit taking the place of the rather tiresome World Tour. Now you can spend your time competing against the greats of golfing, which will have youngsters and older golfers jumping for joy, especially when you pass by the famous golfers and go head-to-head with the likes of Jack Nicklaus and the man himself, Tiger Woods. As well as playing this for fun, though, you also gain Legend Coins that can be spent on another superb inclusion