Joystiq hands-on: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, now with frisbee golf!
We took Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 through the paces recently -- Wii MotionPlus included -- and encountered a fair bit of confidence from product manager Randy Chase, who said, "You know ... I just realized that this is going to put those really expensive digital golf swing analyzers out of business." Actually it's not quite that accurate, but it's getting there. Perhaps one day you can look forward to suckering golf wannabees out of thousands of dollars by charging them for "lessons" from Tiger Woods himself.
Randy took a few swings with Tiger Woods back in March, and we're happy to echo his sentiments. It's very rewarding to switch over to the MotionPlus and watch your golfer avatar follow along pretty darn precisely with your swing. It not only makes the game feel more intuitive, but (amazingly) coaxes you off the couch. No slumped flailing here!
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Videos: Wii and Xbox 360 / PS3.
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The accuracy was pretty uncanny, especially because it reads how open or closed your grip was on the Wiimote, and your swing will draw or fade accordingly. You can make extremely minute adjustments to your grip, swing, and stance, and you'll seem them reflected on-screen immediately. This is probably one of the few times when a plastic, third-party golf club attachment will actually come in handy.
Aside from the MotionPlus functionality, Live Tournaments have been added to Tiger Woods' annual outing. You can post a round of golf online in either daily or weekly tournaments, and if you have the high score at the end of the tourney ... well, you win, obviously. You can also stack them up them against the pros during actual PGA tournaments. Just to be clear, you're only posting your scores against these other players / pros, not watching them play and waiting for your turn.
EA has also added Tournament Moments where Tiger Woods will come in via video and talk about some of his most exciting moments on tour, like a particularly hard round during the PGA finals. As a result, the game will recreate the exact scenario in the game so you can see how you would handle it. Another feature stuck in at Tiger's suggestion concerns the sounds in the game. It now features crowd noise from other golfers as they play on holes near you, and the crowds will responds in different ways, depending on whether you've just made par, shot a bogey, etc. You'll hear gasps, groans, and muffled golf claps.
One thing EA dropped on us as an afterthought: frisbee golf. If you've never played it, it's just what it sounds like. Instead of using a golf ball and clubs, you hurl a frisbee at the hole. Of course, it's not actually a hole, but a basket mounted on a pole. These courses tend to pop up around college campuses, and you'd be surprised how fun it is. Kudos to EA for not just turning this into Frisbee Golf 2010. Chas explained that the dev team was initially developing it as a party game, but decided to stick it into Tiger Woods during development.
If you remember way back to last year's Nintendo keynote, Cammie was showing off her MotionPlus frisbee tossing in Wii Sports Resort. The same 1:1 frisbee motion is included here, and Chase told us you'd be able to throw your frisbees with a detailed amount of control: under the leg, behind the back, up and over bunkers -- the whole 209 yards. So, if you've had a recurring dream about playing disc golf on St. Andrews in your jammies, you can now live it.
We asked about the possibility of adding motion control to a PS3, or the Xbox 360 (especially given all the rumors we keep hearing). Unfortunately we couldn't rattle Chase, and he just gave us the standard line, saying that the team would consider anything. Right now, the great divide between the Wii graphics and the 360/PS3 versions masterful control system: looks great on two of those systems, plays great on the other. You'll have to decide which is more important to you. But if you let it boil down to frisbee golf, you're gonna want the Wii version, since it's exclusive to that platform and features same-room multiplayer.
