![]() Hitting good shots in a consistent fashion fills up the Gamebreaker bar, and when full this can be used at the player’s discretion to tip the scales overwhelmingly in his or her favour. It’s the somewhat aptly-named Gamebreaker feature that really unbalances Tiger Woods 2006, however. One single method of applying spin would have sufficed three is slightly silly, and also helps to make the game rather easier than it needs to be. Tiger Woods now features no less than three ways to apply spin and curve to the ball – as well as the new dual analogue approach, it’s still possible to affect the ball’s flight by aiming your stroke slightly off-centre, or by battering L2 while the ball is in flight – and it’s simply overkill. ![]() There’s also a new dual analogue swing in there too, which uses the second stick to apply fade, draw, topspin and backspin to the ball, although this is a less successful addition. The new putting method, which uses the same analogue swing mechanism as the rest of the game, is a definite improvement over the old “hit and hope” method, although it’s a bit of a shock at first as putts go blithely sailing past the hole time and again. The control method has been tweaked throughout. Tiger Woods 2006 is not a small game by any means, and whether you’re in for a short session or the long haul there’s probably a mode to suit your mood. Simply playing through each of the modes and levelling a character from novice to expert involves dozens of hours’ play as a bare minimum. Elsewhere, there’s the usual brace of modes including a lengthy PGA season, more calendar-based events than ever before, a smattering of skins and strokes, a series of ring shot skills tests and even the somewhat bizarre Battle Golf mode. It’s just a twist on the previous versions’ World Tour and Legends modes, and playing early 20th century fictional stereotypes like blacksmiths and aristocrats has perhaps limited appeal, but it’s a fun and enjoyable introduction to the game and provides an accessible way for the player to level up their characters. The new Rivals mode pits the player against a series of real and imaginary golfers throughout the ages. Happily, things look brighter in single-player. Suffice it to say that anyone buying this title purely on the basis of its online play will end up bitterly disappointed. Worse, this problem affects the Xbox version as well as the PS2 version, thanks to EA’s insistence on shoehorning their servers into the otherwise reliable Xbox Live service. Games are marred by massive amounts of lag and there’s a tendency for players to get inexplicably kicked off the service in the middle of a game. So, what’s new this year? The big one, for European players at least who suffered when the feature was inexplicably ripped out of last year’s instalment, is online play. Newcomers to the series will have few complaints about Tiger Woods 2006. Furthermore, the game featured, and features, an enormous range of things to see and do and a vast array of items to unlock and characters to play. Features such as the analogue swing system, the real-time events calendar and the Game Face character creation tool were genuinely innovative at the time. The Tiger Woods series hit its peak in 2004 with perhaps the best console golf game ever made, and if EA has been treading water ever since then it’s not really a surprise. With the same graphics, the same sound effects, most of the same game modes and pretty much the same courses as last year, this barely-reheated golfing soufflè must go down as one of the most shameless attempts to separate gullible gamers from their cash that the industry has yet seen. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006 is another in EA’s seemingly endless line of barrel-scraping yearly updates, and it’s back this year with extra added cynicism and a shocking dearth of new features. In fact, you can probably scrap the “new” bit. Tiger Woods 07 has a Total of 53 playable golfers, 21 of which actually exist.If silver is the new black, and Blair is the new Thatcher, and Nintendo is the new Sega, then Tiger Woods 2006 must be… well, the new Tiger Woods 2005. ![]() Contained within the menu are the options My Skills (view and modify golfer stats), My Appearance (takes the player to the Game Face tool), My Animations (choose the various animations the golfer uses, including swing, celebrations, etc.), Pro Shop (equip over 3000 bits of clothing and accessories, though many of them must be unlocked through gameplay before they are accessible), Team Name, Team Logo, and Team Uniform. My Team is where players can modify their golfers' attributes. Choosing one will take the player to the My Team menu. If the player has already created a golfer, they will be presented with a list of their golfers. Selecting the Game Face menu will present the player with the Game Face tool (if the player has not created any golfers yet), which the player will use to create a golfer.
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