Tiger Tuesday: Game Face

Game Face revolutionized the create-a-player feature in videogames, pure and simple.

It first made its debut in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004, a helluva golf game on the current-gen consoles that pushed the franchise further than it had ever gone. Forget playing as your favorite golfer. You could play as you and take down your favorite golfer on the Tour. And when we mean "you," it really was "you," if you took the time to accentuate your cheekbones and eye sockets just so. Heck, you could even include your trademark herky-jerky swing that makes Sunday golfer wince at the local muni course.

Other games have followed suit, including the same options for eyebrow size and forehead slope, but with little success. Even on the 360, Test Drive Unlimited's create-a-character feature could have been included in Dead Rising, and Top Spin 2's feature would drive Anna Kournikova to tears-- tennis had never been so ugly. Even the current-gen Game Face one-ups those games.

This year, EA updates Game Face in Tiger 07. But as we've seen with the Tiger franchise throughout the years, it's damn hard to reinvent the wheel year in and year out.

"When dealing with an already tested and proven design there wasn't a whole lot to change," said Tiger producer Kevin Bayne at EA. "The main difference between last year's version of Game Face and this one is a large increase in the number of possibilities you have when creating and customizing your character. We have increased the number of hair styles, hair colors, eye color, skin color, and almost doubled the amount of items within the pro shop. In addition to that we will once again give the players the ability to purchase animations of the various fantasy characters you defeat in order to give your character a little more life."

"In order to make Game Face even easier to use we have moved away from our old slider system and have adopted using both of the control sticks on the controller to allow the user more flexibility when changing areas of the character," said Bayne. "We found that by attaching the old slider system to the control sticks, players were able to create characters quickly and easily. So in years previous where it would have taken quite some time to create and customize your character, you can now be done in a matter of minutes. In addition to the changes in control, we have given the user a lot more options on colors when it comes to skin and hair. This should allow a much larger variety of personal style when creating a golfer."

Check out the media links below for screens of Game Face in Tiger 07.

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