I'm giving TW14: Masters Historic Edition only three stars. Video games are supposed to be fun. This one is not.
I've was an annual EA Golf/TW purchaser since PGA Tour on the Genesis. I've seen a huge number of versions, some good, some bad. TW'11 began the downfall. I took a two versions off, and from reading the reviews, that was a good thing. Now, the series has completely transformed into a simulator.
The overall setup of navigating through the game is easy. The menus have a nice flow to them and everything you want to do is easy to find.
The actual hitting the ball part of the game is pretty good. I like the new swing meter and they finally stopped the trigger powerup on swings. I'm happy they still allow in flight spin, which I didn't figure a simulator would allow. The putting is much harder and kind of weird. They did keep the preview option and it's somewhat accurate. I've seen previews miss the hole to the right by a foot, I move the aim about 3" to the left, and the putt misses left. It makes no sense and has never been that way. Overall, the hitting the ball around is good.
I like the country club idea. I like the internal tournaments and the chat functions. I really miss the old "game center" or whatever where you could match crazy shots and post comments about them. That was in TW11 and was a blast. One of the reasons I didn't move to TW12. I was having too much fun just playing online.
I'm happy David Faraday is back, but they've really toned him down, which isn't why he should be in a game. I liked it more when he'd rip on you for bad shots or leaving long putts. That's who he is and I'd like to see it reflected in the game. The Jim Nance commentary is terrible. EA has cut and pasted just about everything and it sounds like a PSOne game. He sounds like a robot voice. Pretty annoying.
All of the information they try to throw at you in between holes is silly. I don't care how some auto played players in a tour played the hole. The country club leaderboards are fine. I'd prefer to see my scorecard or my overall stats or something.
This leads me to another annoying thing about this game - load and save times. My gosh. The load times per hole are like 15 seconds. The PS3 is a pretty powerful machine. While it's loading, it's sending and receiving data from the connection and that has to slow things down. What is it doing?
The worst thing is the save times when you are modifying your character. Every change you make requires a 15 seconds save. For example, I gave my character a new shirt and it required 15 seconds in save time. Imagine updating your skills, getting some new clothing, and some new equipment. It could take 10 minutes. I don't know why it takes 15 seconds of save time to change to a new putter.
The "money grab" stuff from EA is all over the place. Coins, pin packs, and courses. This is what video games have become - buying add-ons. I don't really have a huge problem with it and fall into the trap once in awhile with additional course purchases. I see they are down to four fantasy courses. Let's be honest, most real courses are easy on a video game because they are straight and there's not much to them. I want a challenge and be able to use some shot creativity. Most of the time it's - 300+ yard drive, high iron or wedge approach, and putt. That's boring when that's all the game is. This is the problem I have with the direction of the series.
I will always love the TW04-TW07 era. That is when the PS2 version was a real video game and the PC version was the simulator. I just don't find the current version fun to play, and that's what a video game should be.





