EA Sports’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 is set to launch from EA Sports this week. The title aims to reinvent itself with the latest motion controls, new gameplay mechanics and a unique challenge mode.
Video game golf has seen a pretty significant leap in control schemes over the course of its existence. I can personally recall the early days of playing PC golf games; when you simply lined up your shot, clicked a button, and off the ball went. Then came Golden Tee, with its track-ball arcade control, giving virtual golfers an unprecedented level of interactive controls for the first time. After that came the three-click-swing, where one click initiated the backstroke, the second determined the power and the third determined accuracy.
The biggest change to the virtual golf swing and the one I personally enjoyed the most, was the analog swing. Using a controller’s analog stick to mimic the “swing†towards a golf ball was probably the closest thing to a real golf swing that I could get my hands on. As someone who plays golf in real life (albeit not well), I was thrilled at the amount of control I had with the analog-style swing.
All of that changed with the Wii. Being able to actually hold a tangible object and perform an actual, physical swing was thrilling. Even if the motion recognition required needed nothing more than a quick flick of the wrist, it was still cool to pretend and I enjoyed it.
With Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, video game golf has been taken to a whole new level. While both the PlayStation Move and Kinect are supported with the new control scheme, it is pretty clear that the bulk of the “tech†has gone into the Kinect version.
For this review I wanted to focus on the Xbox 360 version, as the Kinect features are not as familiar as the Playstation Move. The new control scheme is simple to explain, but significant in its contribution to virtual golf. In Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, “YOU are the controller”. The Kinect will scan over 1,000 data points on your body in real-time as you perform a virtual golf swing in your living room.
You know that golf swing that you’re practicing so much at the store, or while hanging around in your garage? Now, you can put that to work in an actual golf environment…virtually speaking, of course. With the Kinect, you face the TV screen, bring your hands together, to address the ball, and swing away.
The tech behind the Kinect integration was mindblowing. Every nuance I have in my golf swing, whether good or bad, was replicated on the screen. I tend to slice the ball playing on actual links, especially when using my driver, and to my amazement it was the same result in the game. I also have some cosmic affinity for knocking my ball into lakes in real life. Unfortunately, that was also replicated in the game, as was my ability to chop too hard when doing a chip shot.
The point I’m trying to make is this, you can’t cheat in TW PGA Tour 13. You can’t just sit there and “Happy Gilmore†your shot. Any weaknesses you have in real life will be replicated in the game and if you want to do better in the game, then I would suggest you practice on your real golf swing.
It’s a great blend of real-life and virtual reality and the title does a great job muddling the line between the two.
While the swing tracking is fantastic and is a truly impressive piece of tech, the rest of the Kinect features leave a lot to be desired. A variety of options are accessible via voice commands. You can says things like “Aim Shot,†or “Putt Preview†to initiate these features without having to pick up a controller. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done. While I thought Mass Effect 3 had fantastic voice commands, without the need to over-enunciate or speak with anything louder than a normal, conversing tone. The voice recognition is TW 13 is pretty bad, to put it bluntly.
Kinect rarely recognized what I said. Most of the time spent trying out these commands I stood in front of my TV screaming at it like a ragey idiot. I over-enunciated words, then I tried to speak them normally and then I kind of slurred the commands but nothing worked. I would argue that less than 20% of my voice commands were recognized during my trial.
Of course, if the voice commands are so poor, then at least you can still avoid picking up a controller and just swipe your arm around to select these options, right? Yeah…not really. The options prior to lining up for your shot are presented as a menu right smack dab in the middle of the screen. One of the more intrusive UIs I’ve seen in some time. You can use Kinect-motion to select from this list of options by simply moving your hand up or down, and then swiping to the left to select though it rarely works that simply.
The hand recognition is a gamble and doing something as basic as highlighting an option long enough to left-swipe, becomes a very frustrating task. Many times that I found my desired-option, I would accidentally scroll past it. It required an almost ninja or surgical-like precision to slow down the menu enough to left-swipe. Many times when I did try to left-swipe, I would start scrolling up and down again.
That being said about the UI controls, it did not change the golf portion of the game and can be tweaked out later in a patch. Though I can say that by the time I’ve gone through all that and lined up my shot, my patience had been fried. It did affect the overall enjoyment of my experience and while reviewing it, it took a lot of work to separate my anger towards the Kinect and my enjoyment of the gameplay.
Thought to be honest, the rest of the game is pretty damn good. Even if you remove the Kinect functions, the analog swing on the controller has been tweaked a lot and all of it was for the better. Now you can control; tempo, swing plane, shot power and even the setup of your feet. With all these different options, you can create any type of shot that you would want and manipulate your swing to a pretty reasonable degree. It definitely is an evolution of the simple analogue swing.
Other than the requisite upgrades to each annual entry (new courses, golfers) the biggest new addition to TW 13 is ‘Online Country Clubs’ and the ‘Tiger Legacy Challenge Mode’. The Online Country Clubs is a pretty interesting concept and definitely gives the online lobby system and leaderboards a nice injection of something new. You can create your own country club, or join an existing one with your friends, while playing through online or offline matches. Playing in these matches you will accrue “Status Points”. These points are then used for various upgrades, and to rank you against your fellow club members. At the end of each week, the club member with the highest Status Points total will be named the “Club Champion”, and will be invited to a special tournament to compete against the Club Champions of other teams. It’s a great addition to online golf and actually makes you feel like you are an important part of a team.
The “Tiger Legacy Challenge” is more of a challenge mode, but it’s very cool to play through all the biggest moments in Tiger Woods’ career. The Legacy Challenge highlights 10 different eras of Tiger’s career, starting from his appearance on the Mike Douglas Show at age 2, all the way to his quest to break Jack Nicklaus’ major championship record. All the different “Tigers” from the different eras can then be used in the “Play Now†portion of the game. once you’ve unlocked them. I have to admit, it was pretty amusing to use a toddler Tiger up against a bunch of PGA pros.
If you take away the Kinect features, the meat of TW 13 is a pretty by-the-books upgrade that you would expect in an annual sports game. New courses, new golfers and a handful of tweaks to some existing game modes make this the type of game that many would consider buying only every other year. However, the addition of a Kinect powered swing and even the less than stellar voice and hand gesture commands warrant a pretty serious look at this year’s offering.
Yes, the voice and hand gesture commands could have been implemented better but that can always be patched at a later date, hopefully sooner rather than later. The Kinect swing function and the game-mechanic itself however, is worth the entire $60 purchase. It’s an amazing piece of tech to behold and people who play golf in real life will be amazed at how realistic and accurate the swing tracking is.
That being said, if you are not someone who plays golf or someone who only dabbles in golf games periodically. The Kinect features alone are probably not enough to warrant a purchase. The new features are amazing but they will mostly appeal to a crowd that can identify with the game of golf.
Graphic Design 9: The game looks great, new animations and graphical upgrades make this one of the best looking golf games on the market
Gameplay 7: While the Kinect swing is amazing, the rest of the Kinect features are extremely bipolar, regular controls get some nice upgrades
Presentation 8: Nice PGA Tour atmosphere, the crowds look nice and the courses are genuinely beautiful; however, I feel like I’ve heard the commentary tracks a million times already
Replay 9: Plenty to come back for; tons of courses and online options, DLC to come
