Gameplay

• The gameplay in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 is again very similar to games in the past.
• However it does seem like the control scheme has taken a step backwards as certain features are hard to execute.
• First the “swing stick” is back.
• I personally hate this swing method.
• The game gives you the option of using the left or right stick for swinging.
• For those who aren’t familiar, you start your backswing by pulling one of the sticks back.
• Then when you are at the top of your backswing, you press the stick up to start your downswing.
• If you are off center then you will hit the ball to the left or right.
• The controls are very forgiving in this way. As long as you are close you will hit a straight shot.
• Since I am used to swinging with the right stick, I switched from the default left stick.
• Unfortunately I was unable to re-map any of the other buttons so using something like the “Gamebreaker” is nearly impossible.
• A Gamebreaker is earned after making several good shots.
• To execute you rapidly tap the “A” button while swinging.
• This is hard to do when using the right stick to swing.
• On top of that the Gamebreaker doesn’t seem to help most of your shots and will exaggerate your mistakes on drives and approaches.
• It did seem to make putting a little easier though.
• To spin the ball you now use the opposite stick from the swing stick called the “shape stick”.
• As you are swinging you move the other stick to place spin on the ball.
• Move the stick down and you will put back spin on the ball.
• If you miss pulling straight back here, you will slice or hook the ball too.
• The amount of spin you can put on the ball depends on when you move the shape stick.
• If you hold it down early then it will start to automatically return to center.
• So to put a little back spin on it, you must hold the shape stick down earlier in your swing.
• If you want to put a lot of back spin on the ball you pull the stick back right before you make contact.
• This seemed very clunky and hard to be consistent.
• Putting is another area where the game seems to have a very unbalanced result.
• To put you have different power ranges to use (5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 60…)
• All you have to do is aim and then like a normal swing you can pull the shot stick back to the maximum backswing and then press forward to swing.
• If you are level and 9 or 10 feet away from the hole, then a full swing makes the put every time.
• If you are 13 feet away, then a putter power of 10 will be too short.
• Likewise a power of 20 is too strong and you will miss that too.
• No matter where you put the cursor you will always hit 100% of the power on a full backswing.
• You are supposed to adjust your backswing to adjust your power, but this doesn’t work well if at all.
• Pulling back your swing 50% is supposed to make a 20 foot put only go 10 feet.
• In practice though, on an even green, what looks like a 50% backswing or less, ends up still going almost the full 20 feet.
• This is also a problem with the approach, as a half swing doesn’t translate into half power, and it’s very hard to judge.
• It has almost an all or nothing feel.
• Overall I think the controls of Tiger are outdated and inconsistent.
• It is still easy to shoot low scores, but there always seems to be a high number of frustratingly missed shots due to a lack of consistency in adjusting your swing.

Multiplayer

• Outside the single player career mode, multiplayer is still as fun as ever.
• The optional game modes such as “Skin”, “Four Ball”, and “Stableford” make playing with friends exciting and different.
• Also, online play really allows you to relax and shoot around of golf while talking to buddies.
• Occasionally you might run into some lag but it has never bothered me in mid swing.
• Online play offers a variety of gameplay options
• .Each day play a round in the “Tournament” mode.
• The best scores for the day will win some money.
• Challenge someone to a ranked or unranked game.
• Other online game modes
• Match Play
• Stroke Play
• Skins
• Alternate Ball
• For some strange reason EA decided to make all the achievements only achievable online.
• I found this to be a bit annoying, so you’ll have to play it online if you are an achievement based gamer.
• Also after playing for a while online you may notice a bunch of little glitches such as:
• Having to reload your character after a match.
• Sometimes not being able to create a match.
• Advance buttons not working forcing you to exit the lobby and come back in.
• These glitches don’t hamper gameplay too much but do show that the mode was a bit rushed.
• Overall the online experience is ok, however, there are still easy ways to exploit the system so shooting a 39 is what it will take to compete with the best.