Format: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Developer: EA
I have been a fan of the Tiger Woods series for years now. My first memory of it was when it was just called PGA Tour and it was on the good ol Sega Mega Drive. I think that the series has gone from strength to strength. And while some sports are really not a perfect fit for an iOS device I think that golf is a sport that is handled better than most.
This is a great looking game. When EA released their first Tiger Woods game on the iOS store (two years earlier I think it was of the top of my head) It was really well received but many people said that the game had pretty rough graphics. People looked past this as the game was fun to play. But the extended development time of this game has resulted in a much better looking game. It may not be as highly polished as EA’s Madden or Fifa games are on the iOS, but it’s nice enough to look at. You have eight different courses to play on one of which is St Andrews which is always cool as I grew up ten minutes from there. As well as this there is a great selection of golfers for you to chose from.
The two game modes that you will be spending the majority of you time with are first of all the PGA Tour mode. My goodness this mode is just so addictive. The idea is that you are on the PGA Tour and you are trying to rise through the ranks. The better you do the more money you earn which can be used to buy some more equipment. Even though I was just playing against the AI I got really competitive in this mode.
The other mode is the Tiger Challenge this is kind of a series of mini games of golf where each game has different sets of rules. This is pretty fun and if you do not want o spend a great deal of time taking your golfer through the PGA tour then this is the mode for it. It does serve well as a quick pick up and play mode.
There is also a social game where you can challenge your Facebook buddies to get closest to the pin. I really loved the idea of this, but I do not like mixing Facebook with my gaming and to the best of my knowledge this is the only way you can play this mode.
The overall game play is just great. Golf is a sport that I think lends its self really well to the touch screen controls and you really do feel like you have a great deal of control over your shots. One and I hate to use the term criticism here is that the game plays pretty much exactly the same as the previous game that was released a couple of years earlier. To be fair the game was already pretty much perfect so I personally am glad that they did not change things or just tack things on for the sake of doing so.
For under a buck this game is an absolute steal. I am a pretty big hand held gamer and this to me is the best hand held Tiger Woods experience you can get on any hand held device.