Pre-E3 2007: Tiger Woods 08 Preview

Jun 18, 2007

"This year's Tiger Woods is going to change videogame golf forever." I remember thinking those very thoughts when I first saw Tiger Woods 08 at EA Sports' Tiburon Studio. Maybe it wouldn't change the way the actual act of golf is played - the controller is still in your hand after all - but the boatload of GamerNet features and the ridiculously cool facial mapping technology meant that the extracurricular activities were going to be a serious focal point for this year's game. But would the gameplay be able to make the same leaps and bounds?

We were just recently out in Los Angeles to check out EA's entire fall lineup of products, and boy did they have a boatload of titles to flaunt at gleamy-eyed editors. Tucked away in a little corner was the key to our first hands-on with Tiger Woods 08. Two debug Xbox 360s were spinning early builds of the game, so I helped myself to my hometown favorite, the TPC at Sawgrass.

After blasting a 350 yard drive off of the first tee - a Par 4, 423-yard hole - with Mr. Woods I immediately checked the simplicity of saving a clip to upload to GamerNet. Luckily it was as easy as pressing start and selecting to save your clip: easy as pie. Actually setting the challenge and point levels would take place once you upload your piece to GamerNet. It's also important to remember that you aren't forced to upload true golf accomplishments. You can blast a driver from the fairway into a crowd of people and see how many you hit, or bounce it on the cart path and count how many times the ball bounces on the pavement. Either can be set for winning criteria on GamerNet.

But you already know all that there is to know about GamerNet and what's involved with capturing your mug and slapping it onto a golfer; what we were in LA to check out was the gameplay. From the onset it was clear that the core gameplay dynamic hadn't changed all that much. You still use the left analog to swing and the A-button or left bumper to power up your shot. One of the few significant changes that were on display for us to toy with was the new three-click swing. By pressing down on the right analog stick, a new power meter appears at the bottom of the screen. As the name would suggest, it takes three clicks of the A-button to send your ball into the air. One to get the power meter going, another to stop it to achieve the perfect -- or not so perfect -- length, and a third as the meter comes back down to stick the accuracy.

Three-click hitting probably won't be used much when you're hitting from the fairway or tee box, but it's very helpful for those in-between shots. Like when the game tells you to hit 68% of full power. Previously there would be no real way other than guesstimating at what 68% of the animation was, so now there's a true meter to let you know.

There also seemed to be a new system for hitting draws and fades, but when we asked the EA Sports rep what the deal was we got the classic, "We're not talking about that just yet." We'll delve into that a bit more in the coming months, you can be sure.

Putting also received a slight change. People are always whining about Tiger Woods' putting being too easy, too unlike the actual challenge of playing on the green. Last year had the Ideal Putting Cam, but players complained that all you needed to do was line up the initial bend in your putting line with some object in the distance and you were golden. This year EA Sports has implemented a "Putt Preview" in which you have to line up your putt to what you think is the proper course - all the while using the classic moving grid lines that we all know and love - then tap the left bumper to initiate the new feature. Essentially what happens is that the camera pulls back and gives you the exact line that your ball will travel for your current setup. The only snag is that you can only use the Putt Preview once per hole, so you need to make sure that your line is as close to dead-on as possible. People will probably still moan about it making putting too easy, but it seemed like a step in the right direction over the Ideal Putting Camera.

Visually the game looked similar to what we saw in last year's edition. The Tiger Woods model still strutted around looking exactly like the guy we watch on CBS or NBC every Thursday thru Sunday. What had been nicely refined was the look of the trees that surrounded the course. Each individual leaf could be seen in excellent detail, and the overall look of each piece of greenery was simply more natural than it has been before. The bunkers had also been retooled with a fresh set of visual details. The rake lines were clearly evident as you step into the sand trap to pitch your way out. It's a minute change, but it's a bump up in quality nonetheless.

We're still waiting to see what kind of gameplay functions are going to be implemented in Tiger Woods 08 to really push the game over the hill, but the few new changes that we were able to get our hands on did pump up the enjoyment level. The new visuals also added a nice layer of realism that had previously been missing. Things like the gallery of people following your golfer now walking their way to your next shot, and actually grabbing the right part of their body when a stray ball hit them made it feel more like actually being at a golf tournament.

Even if there weren't any kind of sweeping gameplay or graphical changes in the build that we played, we have a feeling that EA Sports has a few tricks up their sleeve that we'll see later down the line. With GamerNet and facial mapping Tiger Woods 08 is already pushing the sports genre as a whole in a different direction; it almost seems unfair to demand anything else. But we all know that won't stop us.