Last week I finally got my Xbox 360 and Tiger Woods 2006. So how is TW 2006 as a next gen golf game, read and find out.
After waiting and calling and waiting and calling I finally heard...."yes, we have 6 of the Premiums in right now". So naturally I told my boss that I "was not feeling well" and drove straight to the store, picked it up and was on my merry way.
The first game that I played on it was Tiger Woods 2006. I originally started playing with doodi at his pad and fell in love with it. We literally stayed up until 3:30 in the morning on a work night just getting his character onto the pro tour and taking turns on each hole. It was quite romantic.......
The gameplay was what I think really captured me from the get-go. From the fluid swings to the camera angles and trajectories (well, most of them) to John Daly cranking a 400 yard drive. The feel of the swing is quite realistic as well as the ball movement on the ground over hills and sand. The control that you have over the ball is also phenomenal. You can fade, draw, pop it up, knock it down and spin the hell out of it. Hell, you can even have some fun knocking down fans by swinging your ball into them.
At this point I would give this game a 9.1 out of 10 because you do get the occasional glitch and your ball goes wherever it wants and the announcers have like 20 phrases and the get quite irritating after a while.
Unfortunately the online portion of this game has much to be desired. Going back to what I said before about the Xbox Live menus it is quite confusing trying to find out at first where you need to go to load your own character to play online. Then to top it off after you are done with a round you need to make sure you load your character again before starting another match or it will revert back to being Tiger. Just a hint, go to the lobby area to load your character.
Lag is somewhat of a problem with this game as well while playing online. Sometimes you may think you took a full swing but since it lagged you only took a 3/4 swing or it takes a bit off your putt when you least expect it. I think that the lag has more to do with the EA servers though rather than the game itself. Out of the past 2 weeks that I have attempted to play online the EA servers were unreachable about 4 or 5 times and when you do get on even the menu changes seem laggy and the menus themselves are rather difficult to figure out.
With that said I have to give the game an overall score of 8.3. With online play being so important these days, hell its the premise of the 360, this game needs to get with the program. I would also suggest a tournament type format once the lag is worked out of the game. It would be great to have 32 players online competing against each other.
To recap this is a great game overall with great graphics, gameplay and realism but has some desirables when it comes to online play. Its also a great game for us old folk to sit around and play and make fun of each others characters and no DSmooth, my character no longer looks like the Toxic Avenger......
If you pick up this game head on over to the Game Schedule forum or visit this thread so we can setup a Tee time....see you on the links!
~Knaabi
The first game that I played on it was Tiger Woods 2006. I originally started playing with doodi at his pad and fell in love with it. We literally stayed up until 3:30 in the morning on a work night just getting his character onto the pro tour and taking turns on each hole. It was quite romantic.......
So here's the low down on TW06
At first glance you could tell that graphically this game has it all. A great looking UI and in Hi-Def you can practically see every blade of grass on the course. The menus are quite easy to use and are intuitive....until you go on Xbox Live but that's still to come. I can't say enough about the graphics. I think that with any golf game you should have a great looking course and great looking characters to get that overall feel like you are out on the links and this game does just that.
The gameplay was what I think really captured me from the get-go. From the fluid swings to the camera angles and trajectories (well, most of them) to John Daly cranking a 400 yard drive. The feel of the swing is quite realistic as well as the ball movement on the ground over hills and sand. The control that you have over the ball is also phenomenal. You can fade, draw, pop it up, knock it down and spin the hell out of it. Hell, you can even have some fun knocking down fans by swinging your ball into them.
At this point I would give this game a 9.1 out of 10 because you do get the occasional glitch and your ball goes wherever it wants and the announcers have like 20 phrases and the get quite irritating after a while.
Unfortunately the online portion of this game has much to be desired. Going back to what I said before about the Xbox Live menus it is quite confusing trying to find out at first where you need to go to load your own character to play online. Then to top it off after you are done with a round you need to make sure you load your character again before starting another match or it will revert back to being Tiger. Just a hint, go to the lobby area to load your character.
Lag is somewhat of a problem with this game as well while playing online. Sometimes you may think you took a full swing but since it lagged you only took a 3/4 swing or it takes a bit off your putt when you least expect it. I think that the lag has more to do with the EA servers though rather than the game itself. Out of the past 2 weeks that I have attempted to play online the EA servers were unreachable about 4 or 5 times and when you do get on even the menu changes seem laggy and the menus themselves are rather difficult to figure out.
With that said I have to give the game an overall score of 8.3. With online play being so important these days, hell its the premise of the 360, this game needs to get with the program. I would also suggest a tournament type format once the lag is worked out of the game. It would be great to have 32 players online competing against each other.
To recap this is a great game overall with great graphics, gameplay and realism but has some desirables when it comes to online play. Its also a great game for us old folk to sit around and play and make fun of each others characters and no DSmooth, my character no longer looks like the Toxic Avenger......
If you pick up this game head on over to the Game Schedule forum or visit this thread so we can setup a Tee time....see you on the links!
~Knaabi
