Tiger Woods ’08 was developed by EA Tiburon Studios and published by EA Sports. It was released on the 28th of August, 2007 in the U.S. and Canada, and about month later to the rest of the world. It’s available for all major consoles, handhelds, PC, and Mac. As usual, this review will focus on the XBox 360 version.

Story: Well, it’s golf. You hit a little ball with a variety of clubs, trying to ultimately land it in a small hole hundreds of yards from your starting point in as few hits as possible. Eighteen times, no less. Robin Williams has a nice explanation of it, as you can see in this YouTube clip. Be warned, though, there’s a fair amount of swears packed into this clip, so don’t listen to it around your grandma.

Graphics: For being the third installment on the 360, I’ve got to say that the visuals are underwhelming. Real-life golfers bear a passing resemblance to their digital counterparts. Courses aren’t very detailed, but retain the landmarks that make certain places famous. Aside from the HD shine, this looks like a straight port of the Playstation 2 version.

Gameplay: Tiger Woods ’08 features a new left-analog stick swing motion that, frankly, doesn’t work too well. Thankfully, you can bring up the tried and true three-click swing method by clicking down on the right analog stick. This method is much better for accurately measuring your swing’s power. You are also given an aiming reticle by pressing the B button, which gives you a fair estimate where the ball will land (not factoring in wind speed and grass conditions). Also, using the three-click method, you are told how far the ball with travel (again, not counting wind and such) at any given power level. Once you learn to accurately judge for wind conditions and course conditions, hitting great shots become fairly routine.

One thing puzzles me, though, and that is the fact that shot distances for your woods and the majority of your irons are completely wrong. For example, your shot meter tells you that your 5 Iron will hit the ball 140 yards, yet when you do this, with no wind and course conditions that are perfect, your ball will not travel nearly as far. I suggest keeping a sheet of paper handy to take notes on the different clubs and what their actual range is — it’ll help out a lot.

TW08 features a surprisingly large amount of gameplay modes, enough to keep even the most avid golf fans busy. There are your standard exhibition, practice, and PGA Tour modes. We’re also given minigames and arcade-style games. The Tiger Challenge is new to the series — it features over 50 separate challenges, consisting mainly of “can you do this certain task or shot type in the least amount of strokes” minigames. Some feature head-to-head challenges against other golfers. The final challenge is a grueling 18 rounds of match play against Tiger Woods himself.

The EA Gamernet challenge is what brings in fresh challenges on a daily basis. These challenges are user-created, and showcase skills, shots, and rounds from their play. You can take your golfer at any time and try to beat these challenges. You can also post challenges of your own, as the game lets you save clips from your games.

When you begin play, you can select pre-established golfers, or you can create your own. The creation mode is deep, but doesn’t allow you to make the type of off-the-wall characters that other games allow. You can put yourself in the game as well with EA Gameface — take a clear photograph of yourself, and the game will do a better-than-expected job of recreating your likeness. You can accomplish this by using the XBox Live Vision Camera, a photo on a memory stick, or by uploading the photo to EA’s Gamernet website. I didn’t use my own photograph, but I must say that Captain Picard is a great golfer.

A word of caution, though — the difficulty for this game is brutal. Even on the easiest settings, playing against the AI is frustrating, especially with your underpowered original golfer. Should you manage to gain the lead, the AI demonstrates that oh-so-lovable ability to come back at the very end. Stick to skills training to build your golfer up until you have the proper ability to hang with them.

Sound: The golf sounds — teeing off, putting, ball striking in general — sound generic and uninspired, but they get the job done. Commentary is provided during the game, and you’ll quickly learn to turn that option down to “0″. Music tracks accent the various menus, but none of these are memorable in the least. Be thankful that you can network your XBox 360 to your PC, thus allowing you to listen to your own playlists during gameplay. I’ve found a nice mixture of The Beatles and The Who is great music to golf by.

Multiplayer: You can challenge up to three other golfers from around the world to traditional or non-traditional games. Hopefully, you won’t get stuck with quitters and sore losers.

Achievements: Very balanced and obtainable, and much to my delight, only one multiplayer. Getting these will take some time, though, as you’ll most definitely need a golfer with great stats. Since my usual source is having website difficulties, you can see the achievement list at 360-HQ.com.

Intangibles: Since you can play golf games at your own pace with fairly minimal motor skills, TW08 is a good game to play if, say, you’ve fractured a wrist and can’t really handle the dexterity of Call of Duty 4 and such.

- If you find that going through the skills training to build your golfer up is too tedious (and it is), you can download an unlock key from XBox Live Marketplace which will max out your character’s stats. Considering the beating you’ll take without a powerful character, it’s worth the $2.50. If that’s too high for you, justify the cost by telling yourself it’s part of the free course that’s available for download as well. Also, you don’t have to buy separate keys for each character — it will apply the stats to all your created characters, if you so wish.

- As with real golf, games are won and lost by putting. The putting physics in TW08 are a bit wonky and unrealistic (how does a ball, traveling uphill at a snails pace, suddenly whip around the cup as if it were in a matter accelerator?), so spend some time practicing and getting to know how this aspect of the game works. Once you get it down, you should able to compensate for the little oddities that happen on the green.

- The main menu is a good example of how to completely clutter things up. Different categories branch off into new categories which in turn branch off into even more. Hell, you’ll need a strategy guide just to find out where stuff is half of the time.

The Bottom Line: TW08 is a fun game and a fairly good representation of the actual sport. As one of EA’s signature franchises, I really hope that more attention to detail and gameplay refinement is offered in next year’s title. Despite the little problems, TW08, at its core, is a very solid title with a ton of features and gameplay modes. If you’re a rookie to golfing games, expect frustration from this title — it’s best that you pick up ’06 or ’07. Otherwise, golfing fans should be pleased with this title. With the amazing amount of included depth as well as the daily addition of user-generated content, Tiger Woods ’08 is a solid buy for golf fans.

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