Amazon.com: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003: PC: Video Games

11 Reviews

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

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4.0 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of the PC version, August 13, 2003

By	keviny01 - See all my reviews

This is a landmark video golf game that should appeal to every golf fanatic and novice. It offers every type of gameplay conceivable: stroke, alternate shot, match play, Stableford, skin game, skill shot competition, four ball, etc. You can play in "career mode", where you start as a rookie, compete in calendar events, improve your equipments, and improve to pro, champion, and master status. You can play in "season mode", where you create a new player (male or female) with the abilities of your choosing, and compete in an editable list of events. You can also, of course, just play a single match where you choose the course, the number of holes, and the opponent(s). You can also play some "side competitions" to earn some quick money. You can also hit the practice range, or take some golfing lessons as well.

The game keeps good statistics of your player -- number of holes played, driving distance and accuracy, number of chip-ins, aces, pars, birdies, and bogeys, money earned, all-around ranking, round-by-round scores of each event, etc. Statistics of virtual players are kept only when you choose them as your opponents before each round. Your statistics in everything you participated in, whether in season mode, single match, or side events, are consolidated.

One unique feature in the game is its use of "TrueSwing" motion to simulate the club swinging motion. You simply move your mouse backward to backswing, then move it forward to swing. In my opinion, this is an infinitely more intuitive, more realistic, more controllable, and more exciting method of simulating the swinging motion than the traditional 3-click or 2-click methods (included in the game also) used in older golf games. The effectiveness of the swing depends on the straightness, steadiness, and speed of your mouse swing. To hit a fade or a draw shot (a curve ball), you need to move the mouse in a diagonal, yet still straight and steady, line. TrueSwing offers 5 difficulty settings: "Amateur" and "Pro" settings give you a bigger margin of error, while "Tour", "Champion", and "Master" settings require you to move the mouse in an almost perfectly straight line.

Many standard features are present as well. On each hole, you can see caddie's advice. You can view a hole "fly-by". Before each shot, the computer makes a club selection for you (which is sometimes a poor choice). You can see a "shot target" view that shows you the ball's projected destination -- which may be cheating, but the projections are not always accurate. You are shown the wind speed and direction. If the ball is in the hazard, you are told whether it is in light rough, deep rough, light sand, etc. You can see an overhead view of the hole, and access several camera angles. If you like your last shot, you can save it to be replayed later. Also, the computer automatically saves whatever good shot that you hit. Unfortunately, the last shot of each hole cannot be saved (a bug?), unless the computer saves it automatically for you.

The game comes with 12 courses, with a nice variety of geography, difficulties, and scenic qualities. It also comes with a course designer. And you can download courses designed by other users on the web.

The game's graphics look very realistic. There are many 3D-rendered objects as well as some judicious use of 2D sprites. Human players look very life-like; many real-life PGA Tour players are rendered in various degree of realism -- Singh, Garcia, Montgomery, O'Meara, Furyk, etc., and of course, Woods. Spectators don't look or behave very convincingly, however. This game was released a year ago, and it runs pretty smoothly on my Pentium 4 2.4 GHz with a GeForce4 video card at 1280x1024x32 resolution. There is a demo version of this game (which can be downloaded at many PC games web sites, such as gamesdomain.com) that you can try to see if your PC can run it. But the upcoming 2004 version, to be released later this year, will surely require new hardware that will take advantage of DirectX 9.0, which enables much more realistic-looking graphics to be created.

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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Addicting!, December 21, 2002

By A Customer

This game is definitely addicting, and a lot of fun to play. Advice: Be sure to read and familiarize yourself with all the features and shortcuts (F1-F9 camera angles, quick-keys for club selection, advance to next-shot, etc, etc...) as it makes the game that much more fluid and enjoyable, and saves you time having to "click" around. The Career Mode is awesome, although I have already quickly made it to the Tour level (3 of 5 levels), even though I've only been playing the game for 2 days. (Would like to have been a little more challenged for longer?!) I also agree with the other reviewer, that the commentary can get annoying- but that's not a big deal, and you can turn it off. The "True Swing" works well.

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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great fun, but...., January 22, 2003

By	James W. Galbraith "Just dig classics" (Sunnyside, Washington USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I own the 1999 and 2001 games. The 2003 has great graphics, but I thought the others did, too. The narrators should not be taken seriously. They say you are in the trap and you may be in the rough and vise versa. The rough is extremely difficult to get our of and unless you have a fairly new mouse, the drives are difficult to put in the fairway. If you are not in the fairway, lookout. Some courses, Hawaii and Britain have roughs beyond belief. Your scores could be horrible. I found that putting is far superior on this game than any of the rest. You had better learn the courses and study the clubs used for each shot. They are all set for you but that doesn't mean they are the right ones. More often than not, they are. All in all, this is the best Tiger Woods game I have every played in spite of what I have said. Be sure your computer is capable of handling the game or you might experience some freezing up.