(Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Should Bleacher Report include a section about sports video games?
Perhaps or perhaps not, but it is an entertaining thought to me tonight because I've been playing the demo for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 this Memorial Day weekend.
I wanted to write about my thoughts and experiences. So here I am and here is my article: Fore! My Tiger Woods PGA Tour Preview: The Demo.
After playing the demo for Tiger Woods PGA Tour demo on my Xbox 360 a few times, I can already inform you that in terms of game play and controls, the most significant change and upgrade is in the putting game. It is called Precision Putting.
However, the general feel of the game, particularly drives, approach shots, and chips, are very similar to its predecessors of 09 and 08; even in the rain. Rain?
The demo, as the full game, supports dynamic weather conditions, a new commentary team and broadcast style introductions. Of course, rain, along with wind, adds to the realism and feel of this game.
Over and over, on the replay, I enjoying watching the rain water “spit” and splash as my golf ball barreled its way for my birdie at Turnberry, in Scotland. However, I saw no caddy to hand me my golf umbrella afterwards. LOL :-)
On the full version, we will be able to select the actual weather conditions for a course’s location via the Weather Channel or manually select our weather conditions for certain modes of play.
The demo provides four holes from two of this game’s new golf courses: Turnberry (home of this year's British Open) and Bethpage Black (home of this year's U.S. Open). The demo also permits us to take part in a two hole practice round at these two courses.
The demo also previews the new Tournament Challenge mode by offering the famous 17th hole at The Players Stadium Course: TPC Sawgrass, to play.
In Tournament Challenge we can participate in a single challenge from this feature in order to get a preview of the mode.
There are a number of feature preview screens for us to read about the other features in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10.
A demo is not the quality of a finished, published edition, but it provides a significant snapshot of coming attractions for me, especially in terms of controls.
Playing this demo helps because for me, this old gamer, Precision Putting requires a learning curve in terms of both adjusting my reads to prepare for a putt and then actually executing a successful putt.
In Tiger Woods video games from the past, the player had various putter options that needed to be selected depending on the distance from the hole. For example, a putt of ten feet could not be made with a putter of a fixed length of five feet and below.
Of course, this scenario was very unrealistic in terms of the real game of golf. And the problem with a system like this is that feel suffers, since the user needs to be constantly aware of the maximum distance that the chosen putter can go and thus, adjust accordingly.
With Precision Putting, the player only carries around one putter that has a maximum distance of somewhere over 100 feet.
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