Last year’s Tiger Woods golf game for the Xbox 360 was globally criticized for its high price tag and sparse content. Fast-forward to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 and you’ve got more courses and new features, all wrapped up in a game that still feels retro, and not in a good way. Add a plethora of bugs, broken multiplayer, a sloppy interface and misguided cheat codes available for purchase on Live Marketplace, and you have in your hands yet one more ridiculous, premium-priced coaster from EA Sports.

The Birdies

Sure, a couple of things work in Tiger Woods. Offering players a pretty exhaustive suite of character customization tools is nice, and you can indeed make some pretty wild appearances, perfect for freaking out online competitors. It may very well be the most detailed character creation system around, an important element for multiplayer so you don’t have the same cookie-cutter players running around. Chances are pretty good that you’ll never see two players who look the same, so EA scores a birdy with this feature. Unfortunately, there’s some kind of display bug I’ve seen that finds the textures going bright white, forcing the player to back out of character creation and restarting the process. One of many bugs, it turns out.

Players will find twice as many courses as last year’s paltry effort, and while this may find Tiger Woods receiving acclaim in certain journalistic quarters, the entire collection is simply a rehash of what EA has been producing since the mid-90s, when this game was originally called PGA Tour. Same old Pebble Beach, same old Spyglass and Princeville and Firestone, etc. I’ll have to take it on faith that the courses represent a fair depiction of their real-life counterparts, as I’ve never made enough money to eat at Pebble Beach, let alone contemplate a green fee.

Another birdy score comes in the form of EA’s UCAP technology, which is just an acronymious (I just invented that word, feel free to use it) way of saying they strapped Tiger Woods to a chair and captured his facial expressions. The result is rather cool, at least if you’re playing as Tiger Woods. You’ll find all of Tiger’s trademark reactions, from sly smile to determined warrior, all rendered perfectly. Unfortunately there’s 14 other pro’s in the game who apparently didn’t get the UCAP love, as their expressions are fairly standard and in no way rise to the level of the game’s namesake.

Umm, that’s pretty much it for the good stuff. Now let’s get to the bad.

The Bogies

I don’t know what my fellow game-reviewers are smoking (maybe paychecks from EA), but the graphics in Tiger Woods are not some next-generation revolution. It looks like the same game I’ve been playing on the PC since this series began, albeit with a crisper appearance and a gallery that has more than two-dimensions. Other than that, you’re left with the same lifeless courses you’ve seen before. It is obvious EA has been using the same engine for years now and is refusing to evolve it past superficial results. I expect a much richer game on the Xbox 360, terrain that actually looks like terrain, instead of the current washed-out colors painted on a relatively flat surface. I shouldn’t be sitting here longing for the days of Links LS and its ability to render a great-looking course, albeit in 2D. Nothing about the 360 version speaks to the power of the machine. It’s just the same old engine at a higher resolution. Period.

Another aspect of Tiger Woods that needs to be abolished for good is the abhorrent play-by-play commentary from Gary McCord and David Feherty. You know what EA? It was entertaining when I heard these two dudes speak these very same lines back in 1999. Sports games are often criticized for redundant play-by-play, but EA Sports sets a new standard in regurgitation. I mean, c’mon guys. Record some new audio. I think you’ve milked this audio cow to the point where the poor bovine has no nipples left. If and when you ever decide to record some new audio, make sure you engage the player in a tournament atmosphere by having the commentator remark on the current situation, the player’s position, what other players are doing, etc. As it stands, there is no sense you’re in a tournament, it’s just the same old, “Putting for birdy.” While some would argue that golf is not the most exciting sport to watch on television, it can indeed be greatly enhanced by good play-by-play, something Tiger Woods has been lacking since its inception.

Now we arrive at the real tragedy: multiplayer. Online play over an Xbox 360 should be simple, a no-brainer, requiring very little effort on EA’s part considering Microsoft has already done all of the difficult work. That would be true, I suppose, if EA had opted to use Microsoft’s online service. Instead, EA is unwisely using their own online service running on their own server and the result is a complete and total disaster. As I write this, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 is over two weeks old and, shockingly, amazingly, EA has a 50-player limit on their only lobby. So I have yet to see multiplayer in action because I cannot join a game. Instead, Tiger Woods goes into an infinite loop from which the player cannot extract himself by any means unless you dashboard out. Even this doesn’t always work, as the lobby-loop often times hard-freezes the Xbox 360, requiring a power-down. There’s no excuse for this. None. As is all too typical of EA, there has yet to be an admission of anything wrong on their end, so we wait for a miracle…or pressure from Microsoft to resolve this problem.

Marketplace Cheats

Much disdain has been earmarked for EA in their greedy plan to release what amounts to cheat codes on the Live Marketplace. I share in the disdain. Players can unlock all courses, which is fine, but they can also max out their golfer attributes to 110%, which is not so fine. Why? Because you can take this golfer onto multiplayer tournaments and destroy the competition, assuming you can get online at all, of course. So what is the point of spending the time and effort to build up your golfer when you can plunk down a few bucks and bypass everyone else? All it does it force legit players to buy their own cheat, rendering the entire backbone of the game moot. Greed, greed, greed. This wouldn’t be so bad if EA disallowed the cheat for online play, but they haven’t and I doubt they will ever deal with the issue.

Clubhouse

So it’s simple: if you’ve played every version of Tiger Woods, then there’s really no reason to pick up this latest one, especially given the amount of bugs and completely borked online play. If you’ve never played Tiger Woods before and absolutely must have a golf game, you will probably find much to enjoy, at least in single-player mode. Ultimately, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 is game that feels rushed, required minimal effort from EA Sports, received no special attention for the Xbox 360, and is riddled with bugs throughout…all of which can be yours for $59.99. No thanks, EA Sports.