Tiger Woods PGA Tour
Golf by Z!O Interactive / EA Sports
Reviewed by David W.
Whitmore using an iPAQ 3650 running Windows CE 3.0
Discussion:
Tiger
Woods PGA Tour Golf is a game similar quite similar to Links for the PC
platform. The mechanics of these games are remarkably close to that of their
physical counterpart, the sport of golf.
Installation onto my external memory card was straightforward. I encountered a minor problem with
registration, possible due to the liberal use of the characters 1,L,l,I,I,o,0,and
O. Death to those who dont filter these characters from
software licensing algorithms!
Tiger
Woods PGA Tour Golf comes bundled with two fine courses Las Vegas Country
Club and Badlands Golf club.
The game:
Six
distinct game types are available on these courses.
Practice Highly
recommended as a starting point to become familiar with timings and game
response. Practice is available for
driving, putting as well as complete holes.
Stroke Play This allows
you to play a complete 18 hole round as one of the 4 professional golfers
included with the game, or as a custom golfer.
You can play alone, against one or more of the professionals, or against
live competition (using sneakernet) with a maximum of 4 golfers per round. The object being completing 18 holes in the
least amount of strokes
Skins game Based on
the made-for-TV contest which awards a monetary purse to the winner of each
hole, with money carrying over to the next hole in the event of a draw
Match play Pairs
individuals or teams of two against each other. The object of this game is for either you of your partner to
achieve the lowest score on a hole. The
team winning the most holes wins the round.
Four ball and Foursomes, which are
derivatives of match play, games are also included.
Play:
Mastering a repeatable motion under varying conditions to propel a white ball into a hole being the objective. To increase accuracy, TW-PGA golf uses the 3 tap driving stroke as opposed to other golf games (Zio golf for example) which use the 2 tap system. After a few tries, it is rather easy to hit a straight and true shot. The screen interface includes the wind speed and direction, current club, map of the hole, and the current status of the player shooting. Screen layout is intuitive and straightforward. A Ball-Cam that allows you to follow the ball in the air rivals that of the finest PC platform golf games. With all of this in place, it becomes just as easy to play bad golf on your handheld as it is on the rolling meadows of a real course.
On a sad note, the program did quite a bit of crashing during my evaluation period causing a soft reboot and/of program restart to recover. A typical user would expect to be able to play a few holes, power down and power up later to play a few more holes. This activity wreaked havoc on the game & system causing my iPAQ to freeze. Likewise, the game generated a fatal error during some mis-hit shots causing the game to end abruptly. Task switching is not available while playing the game, one must save the game & end to continue with other handheld tasks.
Controls
Like all golf simulations, you need to select a club, align yourself, and swing. Club selection is straightforward and semiautomatic based on your distance from the hole. Alignment is best accomplished using a cool, interactive overview hole map. Features like swinging power, draw & fade are not available. This becomes a serious issue when close to the hole. Making a short putt becomes unrealistically difficult compared to longer putts due to quick-tapping requirements.
Storage and Requirements
Installation required 5.5 MB of memory, PocketPC2000/2002, and a
strongARM/MIPS processor.
The Verdict
Great graphics, highly addictive, and every bit as challenging (read frustrating) as the real game of golf. Program crashes were a concern forcing an automatic 2 point deduction from the French judge
TOTAL SCORE:
7 out of 10 stylus taps.