Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters Demo Thoughts.

By gingertastic_10 March 10, 2011 13 Comments

The best golf game I've ever played is hands down Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005. It had some damn good heart. It had Tiger congratulating you on every big achievement you had, winning majors, career earnings etc. The introduction of each golfer when you golfed against them in challenge modes was awesome as well. It was also, what I feel, the last golf game that didn't shoot for SUPER realism in the Tiger Woods franchise. Jump to 2011 and EA has yet another new entry in the Tiger Woods franchise. Which seems to shoot even more towards that super realism,  but with a nice snag for golf fans.
 

The last golf game I played was Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010. I didn't play 2011 since playing sports games every year can kill it for you. I liked 2010. Spent easily 25+hrs on it. Though, it lacked in any type of creative edge. It was as if EA just said "make another golf game fuck making it original". After waiting for the 1700+MBs to download onto my PS3, I finally got to jump into a game that frankly, I've been super excited for. To start it off I want to talk about how it "starts". EA wants you to know YOU ARE PLAYING AT THE MASTERS! Cause every thing is nothing but a shots of Augusta National. If you just start hitting X like I did, you'll find yourself in a video. Voiced by Jim Nantz about the History and prestige of The Masters, Green Jackets etc. Then it jumps you into a story about how Zach Johnson, Anthony Kim and Jim Furyk are battling it out on top. And Tiger makes his charge. You get to win The Masters. This is where the caddy is introduced. Which I love. While the voice is always the same and he animates the same way, it's a straight up innovative feature. He'll give you about one, two, or three different  shots to pick from. When chosen he'll explain his reasoning for that shot. I love this. It takes away from the player just saying "fuck it" and swinging blind. You also have the option of ignoring all of this and making your own shot as well. But in the "win as Tiger" part you can't. So I'm not sure if this will be the case for all challenges or not. And as a side part. Anthony Kim finishes second in this mode which is weird cause he's never finished second at The Masters (that fucking scenario was made up!!!)
 
Once you finish that mode, you get the chance to try out some of the improvement to the career mode. Basically, if you've played MLB: The Show you'll be familiar with the career mode. You start as a average weekend warrior and work your way up to the AM (amateur) Tour, Nationwide Tour, Q (qualifying) School then your ultimate goal is to finish Q-School, go to the PGA Tour and win The Masters. They don't spend a lot of time with this in the demo which sucked. Since this is the feature I'm much looking forward to.
 

Overall, I'm very impressed with this demo. Yeah I know it's a demo, but when a demo can 100% sell you on a game, that's got to mean something. Other than the caddy and new career mode, it plays a lot like 2011 (from what I've read and seen, since I've not actually played it. A lot of the same concepts are reused). The game looks fantastic, and Augusta National shines. You can tell they put so much work into that course. The other course in the demo, TPC (The Player's Choice) San Antonio, looks good, but you can tell the same level of detail was not put into that course. 
 
The list of characters along with: Zach Johnson (one of my favorite golfers), Rickie Fowler, Bubba Watson as new characters. With Edoardo and Francesco Molinari, Rhys Davis and Henrik Stenson representing new European characters, the depth of golfers seems to be great.
 
If you're a golf junkie like me then....
 

GET FUCKING HYPE!!

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