It's that time of the year when EA Sports next batch of gaming titles get their yearly airing. But this year it’s slightly different, last year many of the sports titles that EA released (Madden, FIFA & Tiger) were just pretty but soulless version of their Xbox counterparts and woefully lacking in content. Well EA has had a year to work on a fully fledged next-gen Tiger Woods golf game and I’m glad to report that they don’t disappoint.

The game starts with EA’s every present slick presentation as you fly over a practise course and zoom into Tiger doing the ball juggling thing that he is ever so good at. Then bam, you’re straight in to a tutorial to allow you to get up to speed with this year newest additions.

Not a great deal has change with the games controls (if it ani’t broke…and all that), your swing is still controlled by the left analogue stick, which allows you to control the power as well as add fade or draw to your shots. Additional Power and spin is control by tapping the left bumper button (don’t worry, if the thought of moving the left stick and taping the LB at the same time freaks you out you can swap the analogue sticks over), club choice is selected by the trigger buttons and you can perform a range of approach shots (punch, pitch, chip and flop) with the X button.

What is new this year is the ability to add loft to your shots, by moving the right analogue stick you can add extra loft to your swing allowing you to hit your ball high over obstacles, the slight downside is that you will add a lot of spin to your approach, so be prepared to have the ball roll on a fair bit. By using the same control you can also hit the ball on a lower trajectory, under trees, bushes etc. The same principles apply to the putting green, pulling back allows you to make your putt fall short and pushing forwards gives the ball a few more feet extra length, very handy for putting up or downhill.
This new feature not only adds to an already great set-up but allows you even more control over your shots. And this is something you will need once you start teeing off because once you hit the courses you will notice the other big addition to this years Tiger Woods gameplay.

Gone are the days of precision aiming, where you can target a single spot on the course to aim your shot at. Instead you are now presented with an aiming circle and your ball can land anywhere within that circle and until you start to earn experience (something I will touch on later) this circle is huge and you will see many of your shots sailing off course. This in turn has an affect on how you play the game as a rookie as you’ll tend to find yourself hitting safer shots than going for broke with long Birdie wining ones. As you progress through the game gaining experience the circle decreases in size allowing you aim with more precision and take a gamble with those game winning shots.

Once you’re up to speed with the controls the game then gently pushes you into taking on the career mode, the first step of which is to create your golfer with EA’s mind boggling Game-face tool. Be it an overweight teenager with bad skin or a tall thin dark-haired beauty, EA’s Game-face allows you to create it, the controls are never too confusing and most results are achieved by just moving either of the analogue sticks. Of course if it all seems too daunting, you can just get the game randomise a character for you.

Tiger Woods single-player career mode consists of 3 different challenges.

Tiger Challenge, which is very similar to a mode that can be found in many of the Tiger titles and sees you competing against other golfers from across the world in 9 or 18 hole rounds. In Tiger Challenge You’ll work your way up from no-hopers like Pops Masterson to harder games against the likes of John Daly or Vijay Singh and then finally against the master himself, Tiger Woods. As you beat each opponent you will unlock him enabling you play as that character in the quick game mode or online.

PGA Tour Season is for the more die-harden golfers amongst you and sees you undertaking numerous 4-day tournaments spread out across the year. Tiger woods 07 uses the FedEx point system, meaning that any points won at the various tournaments are put towards the overall FedEx leaderboard for your chance to win the FedEx cup at the end of the year. If the thought of playing all those PGA tournaments across the year is a little bit of a drag, then fear not as tournaments can be simulated or missed entirely (but of course your overall position will suffer). But before you can even think of entering a PGA tour you need to get your golfer skills up (otherwise you’ll be hitting balls all over the place) and that brings us nicely to the Tiger Woods Training Course.

The Training Course (otherwise known as The faculty) should be the first place to head to when you first embark on your career mode, the skill system in Tiger Woods 07 is quite different to other Tiger Wood games in the sense that skills have to be earned (as opposed to points won and stuck on what ever skill you like) and it’s a better game for it.
The Training Course allows you to practice certain skills (power, driving accuracy, spin, recover etc) and this takes on the form of one of many mini-games, such as a putting or nearest to the pin contest against a CPU opponent, a mini round of golf against the clock or the old favourite T-I-G-E-R.
While many of these challenges can start to feel fairly similar after a length of time they are always a joy to play and really help sharpen up your game. Once you have won the mini game your chosen attribute will increase by a certain percentage, but if you think you can just hang around the training course creating some sort of uber-golfer think again, as the game will cap you skill level at a certain percent level (10%, 15% and so on) and the only way to increase that cap is by getting experience in the real world (well real-ish). This is done by playing either the Tiger challenges or PGA tour modes, where particularly good shots will give certain attributes a boost and this increases your experience cap slightly.
So in order to achieve the uber-golfer that you want you’ll have to strike a delicate balance between practice and actual game experience.

Away from the single player career mode the quick play option offers an array of different golf games for both single and multiplayer. The traditionalist amongst you will be happy with the standard stroke, skins and match play but the arcade mode offers something little bit different. Old Xbox favourites like Best Ball and Battle Golf (if you win a round you can take away one of your opponents clubs) are all present and correct. As well as some new games like 1-Ball where you have only the one ball to play the round with. So most games can become tactical warfare as you and a mate both try to set up the most trickiest shot for each other but still make sure that you can get onto the green to sink the putt. Other arcade golf games include Stableford, Best Shot and two new team based games Bloodsome and Greensome.

Tiger Woods 07 also offers a far more involving online experience that last year. Most of the quick play modes (Stroke, Skins, Best Ball, and Battle Golf, 1-Ball, 4-Ball and Alternative Shot) can all be played on LIVE as either a ranked or unranked game. Tiger Woods 07 also offers a daily online tournament that you can take part in and try to earn yourself a position on the online leaderboard, each day will give you a different course and arrangement of holes to play (this is a great way to play online without actually playing against other people, just the thing for all you shy types out there).

Tiger Woods 07 is a vast improvement over the Tiger Woods 06 edition.

While the graphics were good last year (even though they were a tad “shiny”), EA have raised the bar again for his latest outing and I would go as far to say this is one of the best looking golf games out at the moment (well…..until the 08 version comes along).
The details and animation on the pre-created golfers are fantastic (Tiger especially) and the courses also look really good with some nice use of textures, water effects and moving cloud cover. The only downside is that some holes can look like they are floating in cyberspace with some rather flat backgrounds and not part of a bigger world (i.e. St Andrews course), but this really doesn’t detract from the overall experience.
In-game presentation has also been improved, where games in Tiger Woods 06 felt quite soulless at times 07 has more of a tournament feel to it, from the TV-like picture in picture that tracks your players reaction to his shots or the crowds that actually watch your shots and then they will walk to where you plan to play from next (the crowds can still be hit by the ball – always a funny moment) the amount of people watching your game also increase the further you make it into the tournament.

Sound in the game is pretty much as the same as other versions, commentary is still given by David Feherty and Gary McCord and their constant wisecracks about your form. There is also a nice range of ambient sounds such as droning airplanes, bird chatter and other various outdoor noises. The soundtrack is a collection of inoffensive light dance tunes, this is certainly a game to play without the soundtrack or plug in your i-pod.

Game content has also increased, (not a hard job at all compared with 06 rather feature light edition) Tiger Woods 07 offers 12 different courses such as TPC at Sawgrass, Pebble Beach and Firestone Country Club, Glen Abbey, the Prince Course at Kauai, Spyglass Hill, Bandon Dunes and the ever popular St Andrews (maybe not as many as the Xbox & PS2 versions which have 21, but more than enough to keep you busy) and you also have 15 professional golfers to unlock (with many more made-up ones).

Another welcome addition to the game, which seems to be making an appearing in many of EA’s latest sport titles, is the ability to stream ESPN live sport reports every 20 mins seamlessly into the game. This is a great feature and while it is predominantly US based news, it great to see EA bringing the world of gaming and real world sport together.

If you did buy Tiger Woods 06 you could be forgiven for thinking twice about buying yet another golf game and stay away from this latest edition to the Tiger series.
But if you are a fan of golf at all, then I urge you to forgive EA Sports for the hash job they made of last years game and purchase Tiger Woods 07.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 is a game that you will keep you coming back for more, whether it’ll be trying to hit that perfect shot or to get your name at the top of a leaderboard. It looks fantastic, plays well and is a great game to play alone, online or with a group of mates and that is what a next-gen golf game is meant to be about.

To sum up, if Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 was like an Easter egg - great to look at and with so much promise but ultimately hollow and unfulfilling then Tiger Woods PGA 07 is a Christmas dinner - highly anticipated, mouth watering and very, very satisfying.