Touch swing rocks but putting is a bast!
But the key element to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 on the DS is how it actually plays and here is where the game hits the rough in a couple of places. Whilst understanding the Touch Swing system will take you two or three holes at most and you should’ve pretty much mastered it after a couple of full rounds, there are some oddities that crop up from time to time.For example, when you select a club, the marker gives you a rough idea of where the ball will fetch up dependant on shot type and club chosen. Now even allowing for the fact that wind, lie and variations in shot power mean that the ball is never going to land exactly on the spot, often this marker is so far off as to be useless. I’ve played other Tiger Woods games loads and I’m well used to how the estimations can vary but for the novice player, who might be relying on the marker as a guide, or when you’re playing blind, having the estimated and the actual landing spots vary so greatly plays havoc with your score.
There’s an odd bug in the game too, which crops up on occasion when you’re trying to select a club. When the pin is between say, a sand wedge at full swing or a pitching wedge using a chip shot, as you switch between clubs and shots trying to figure out the best one to play, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 seems to get confused and starts ignoring your choices.
On my second round it flat refused to let me select anything other than a pitching wedge for a bump and run shot rather than the lob I wanted to do with a sand wedge. I wouldn’t have minded but with a bunker between me and the green, the shot I was forced to play saw the ball ending up in the sand, cheers for that. Now usually this kind of bug would be a deal breaker for me as it precludes me playing golf the way I want to, however, in the extensive stylus swinging I’ve engaged in over the last few days, I’ve only seen it a handful of times and it’s only that one instance that has put me at a disadvantage.
So, Touch Swing is easy to learn and fairly easy to master, but that’s nothing compared with what you’ll have to face with putting. In fact, I can safely say that in the few hundred or so holes I’ve played so far, I think I’ve probably only sunk two or three putts. What happens is that once you’re near to the whole, you’re player does an automatic tap-in. The problem is, putting is an absolute bast to get right…
This is no fault of the game as such, and is most likely more down to my inexpert cack-handedness with the stylus but can I sink a putt? Can I hell. I’m most often coming up short of the hole, having been too gentle and in my defence I’ll say that the greens on the DS version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 feel a lot slower than on the PC or Xbox 360 greens… but even when I whack the hell out of my balls I still miss the damn hole.. story of my life really, gah!
