Customer Reviews

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This game, especially now that the original Xbox game is $29.95, is complete robbery. The Xbox 360 version sports only 6 courses compared to the 11 courses on the original Xbox and this version is filled to the brim with bugs.

For example, when playing a tournament, on the final hole, the putting line will mysteriously disappear (this actually happens countless times throughout the game, but interestingly enough, I've noticed it appears most often when you're about to finish a round). Also, as you make your last putt, the announcers will often say "That's a tie atop the leaderboard!" or "That's for a share of the lead." when you've actually won the tournament. Announcements will also come late, for example, when you're putting and the announcer calls out that you're 170 yards from the hole. Top that off with the fact that their putting advice isn't just useless, it's often totally wrong.

The online version of this game is using EA's own front-end, as they have in the previous TW games. If you haven't experienced how bad it is, consider yourself lucky. Game drop-outs (which are tallied on your personal Xbox profile) are far more likely EA's fault then a sour player. EA even taunts us by directly telling us that the only way they're going to update their 4-question online FAQ is if we send them a question "wrapped in cash preferably twenties."

EA has never offered additional courses for download. There is no "download" menu item in the Xbox Live menu of this game, and I will personally fly to EA and buy every member of the TW06 team a copy of this over-priced, over-rated game, if they ever offer even a single course. It simply won't happen because they don't care.

This game has a "fall-behind, catch up" feature, so bad that, if you're winning the tournament, Tiger Woods will come out of no-where on the 3rd day and score an impossible round. For example, he shot a hole-in-zero (yes, you read that correctly) on a par 3 to catch up to me on the back nine. He'll also take the lead in the tournament. The reason this is done is so that you can do "head to head" against Tiger. However, it also ruins any course records you've worked hard (and fairly) to earn.

The final nail in this game's coffin is that the system "cheats." And by that, I mean that the controls on the system will mysteriously pull (left or right) or push (over the green) your shots when you're too far in the lead, or making an early gain at the beginning of the higher tournaments. If you want an example, try making the exact same eagle approach shot in one of the major tournaments when you're ahead and behind. If you're the leader, you won't ever hit the green, if you're the leader, you'll never hit the green, if you're a few shots behind, you'll -amazingly- land near the pin.

For the price of this game, you should really go out and play a real round of golf. You won't be giving lazy developers any of your hard earned money and you'll be playing at a far nicer course than EA has virtually created.

Tiger Woods 2006 brings the glorious realism of the XBox 360 to the game of golf. You get quick games, planned out career mode, plus live play and minigames.

First, the characters you can play. By default you are Tiger Woods of course, but you can also play Vijay Singh, Mike Weir, Chris DiMarco, tons more, or create your own character from scratch. The creation screen is rather impressive, so you can really create a golfer that you can relate to. We had a ton of fun playing with the precise level of detail. Unibrow? Freckle density? It's all here.

You start out with six extremely detailed courses - but EA lists the following courses as the ones supported for this version of the game. I imagine that it means the rest of the courses will be able to be downloaded in the future. You can only fit so much information on one DVD! I've marked which ones come on the game DVD.

Bethpage Black
Carnoustie - INCLUDED
Central Park
Cog Hill
Doral
Greek Isles
Kapalua
Pasatiempo
Pebble Beach - INCLUDED
Pinehurst #2 - INCLUDED
Pumpkin Ridge
Red Rock Creek
Reflection Bay
Riviera - INCLUDED
Sahalee
St Andrews
Troon North - Pinnacle
TPC at Sawgrass - INCLUDED
Turnberry - INCLUDED

The game is definitely not an "arcade" easy style button masher. There's no swing-o-meter to hit the X button on. You have to really "swing" the joystick properly to hit your shot. I found this really natural to do, and my boyfriend, who is an avid golfer, was playing extremely well in only a few holes. That being said, if you're not into golf and don't understand the club choices / ground slope issues, you can have problems.

I really loved how the power shots go into slow motion if you hit them right on, and how the crowd roars out its approval for the great shots. It really gives you a visceral sense of reward. I also love how the crowd cringes if your shot goes too near them, or they actually double over in pain when you hit them. I admit to aiming for them a few times :) It was just too funny.

The graphics are quite nice. The shadows ripple across the green, the ball kicks up debris, the clouds roll across the sky. The birds chirp, you can hear the wind rustling in the trees. The characters still aren't quite photorealistic, but we're getting quite close. I remember as a kid playing the Atari Golf with little pixel-characters - this is amazing how far we've come.

The sounds really draw you in, from the commentary to the crowd noises to the ambient sounds. I didn't even mind the background rock music in the character screens and such.

There's a ton of items to unlock - better clubs, better shafts, and so on. There are always new challenges to try for and items to strive for.

For quick arcadey fun, we're big fans of the PSP Hot Shots Golf, and we finished that game all the way through. But for a serious challenge, where our golf skills are tested and honed, we really like this one. It's both very challenging and very relaxing at the same time.

If I was going to pick on the game, perhaps I'd say it was too hard for beginners, or those who don't really play golf. However, there are tons of games out there that are deliberately arcadey or just "fun". Casual players have plenty of options to choose from already. If someone is a serious golfer looking for a game to have fun with during rainy days and winter season, I really recommend this one.

this ruins the game completely!..the pre-swing power tap button/spin control is the left button...right by the swing stick!...that means while you're pulling and pushing your swing back and then forward you also need to,with the same hand,tap your power button...then if you even get a little power going its so difficult to do that your shot inevitably goes awry.......then to spin the ball a certain direction just takes genius that no one possesses...you cant do al that with one hand...I went into the controller configuration and tried to change the controller to the way i liked it and it wont let you change that button...im not kidding....dont believe me then buy the game and you'll see for yourself..the other versions had the power/spin control button on the right side of the game...it worked well...putting sucks as well and the graphics look like the old game....not impressed at all....60 bucks down the drain....

This Game is great, when i got my XBOX 360 i frowned upon it, i know alot of people think golf is boring or akward, but once i started getting good, i spent litteraly 3 hours a day playing it.

Pro's

Put's in every aspect of golf, such as wind, hieght, hill's and it really makes you think hard about what to do

This game has about 108 holes, and about 4 combinations for each so that means 432 combo's of holes, what more could you want?

Challenging, this game may look easy and carefree, but when your putting for an eagle on the 18th hole, its extremly tense, the XBOX 360 rumble system works incredibly well.

Unlike Madden 2006, this game barely freezes up and NEVER crashes, which is good if you just beat tiger woods (wouldn't want to not save after that)

Con's

Difficult at start, the learning curve is fast, but most people don't spend the time to get there charcter better and to learn the art of golf. unless you are persistent and patient, you will like this game, if not, go buy call of duty 2 or something, this game isn't for you.

Only 6 course's to play on makes the game a little odd, something EA needs to work on.

Overall. this game is great for beginner's and the type of game you would use to learn how to use the XBOX 360. if your an expert on the xbox, the amount of challenge in it will make you work till your thumbs bleed (or until you get carpial tunnel syndrome, did i spell that right?0

Ok here is the bottom line. THis is a much harder Tiger Woods than the previous entries in the series. THis is a good thing. When was golf ever an easy game. Pretty much if you lose your concentration while your swinging you are a goner. Some people will love this, some people will hate this. Here is some bad news. there are only 6 courses on this game. that is about half of the previous games. You will love the 6, but it will still get a little old. The good, is that this is a very pretty game. You will love the look of everything.

I really enjoyed Tiger Woods 2005, so I decided to pick up the 2006 version for XBOX 360. Let's put it this way: the only thing better about this game is the graphics. Gameplay has taken a huge step backward. As others have noted, this game contains only 6 courses, hitting the ball has become an impossible task that requires 3 hands to power up, spin and swing, and the in-game achievements (trophy ball case, check your progress, etc.) has been completely removed.

It seems like EA cut too many corners to get this game out the door for 360 launch day. Hopefully the 2007 version fixes these problems.

It appears that EA has rushed its titles to make the 360 launch date, and Tiger Woods 2006 is no exception. Graphically it's slightly better than its predecessors (most notably are the trees, which used to be flat pixels...here they're all polygons).

However the faces of the characters actually look less similar to their counterparts than the previous versions. Tiger, for instance, looks like he decided to get permanent eyeliner tatoo. Gone are the vast customization of the create-a-player feature. One of the goals of this game is to create a player to look just like you, and to get the player to play the same equipment. Last year I got a kick creating a player that looked pretty close to me, with matching clothes, and even a custom built swing to match my flat-plane shorter swingpath. This year, everyone swings the same.

The pro-shop is now irrelevant, since you "unlock" items rather than save up money to buy the ones you really want. There's a fraction of the available items (clothes, equipment, balls, etc.) than from previous versions.

There is a saving grace, however. I was tired of shooting mid 50s in the past versions. Once I even shot a 49. It reached a point where I played without upgrading any of my abilities, so I was driving it only about 240 (which works for me, because that's as far as I can drive in real life anyway), which made the tournaments at least competitive. I also didn't like how you could dramatically change the spin on the ball so that if you didn't like your approach shot, you could work the ball mid-air so you could get the ball close to the pin. Yeah, pretty realistic. In this new version, that's gone. You have to determine your spin before hand. Also, with analog putting, you could be throwing darts out there onto the green, but could still get a double bogey if you don't putt well (which increases the difficulty).

All in all, however, it felt like a rushed game. Here's hoping that new courses and acessories are downloadable...

This game is pretty good, but there are some things that aren't as good as the old ones. One thing being is that the only single player thing you can do is the PGA tour. Where is traveling around the world and playing some very weird but cool peaople. Where are the crazy coarses. What about playing the legends. Even without all of those things the game is still pretty good. The live play is fun if you find someone that will actually talk to you. It is also fun to play with a friend at home. Also if you make a bad shot and hit one of the peaople they either fall down or stagger around. it is pretty funney. but one of the things a can't get passed is the graphics. they are barley better than the PS2 or XBOX versions. So it is up to you if you want to spend 10 extra bucks just for a little bit better graphics.

Whew! they got it out for xbox 360 release date I think the graphics where as good on the TW 2004 C'mon EA there aint nothin special about this game even in HD save your money.

this is the first golf game on the 360 and it shows. unachievable achievements meaning there not unlockable not very fun.