Tiger Woods 09 Impressions Thread

 

I quit playing the 2008 game because I got tired of Ball cam before the gameplay issues broke me.  This year's Presentation Cam is still preferable to me to Ball Cam, but mostly because I hate ball cam so bad.  At least 1/4 of the time, I'm going WTF!? with some of the angles chosen... angles that deprive of seeing things happening to the ball that would help you with your next shot, paricularly putts!

 

Maybe 10% of the time, Presentation Cam comes close to delivering the sort of player perspective view, followed by a cut to a short tower (10-12') mounted camera tracking the ball is it approaches its destination.  The problem is that they are breaking away from the swing camera instantly, and jumping to a player camera that's maybe 3 feet to the left of the swing camera.  This view isn't held long enough.  It should be held until the ball reaches the apex of its flight, then the switch to the downrange camera should occur.

 

What's sad about this is that I know the current game engine can support just what I want.  The developers just don't have the vision to give the player the coniguration tools to let us design our own presentation style.

 

The club tuner has turned out to be the equivalent of "sliders" in team sports games.  I'm very happy with where I'm at right now in terms of making my golfer play a realistic game, yielding realistic numbers for: FIR, GIR, average distance, and scoring.  I'm at 20 - 23% with my Driver, Woods, Irons, and Wedge sweetpots (each one has its own sweetspot setting).  You start at roughtly 53% sweetspot, to give you some perspective.  When I combine 20 - 23% sweetspot with my created player's overall attributes hovering around an overall average of "8", I'm seeing believable real world performances out of my created player.

 

Online, the performance has been stellar, thus far.  I've had a few people quit on my after they realized they'd stumbled into a Tour mode game, but I've noticed no lag, or anomalies. 

 

The archaic, multiple putter range mechanic sticks out like a sore thumb even more this year.  It's really got to go.  Putting is still a challenge and there's some gratification to be had out of it, but it just seems like a counter-intuitive subgame. 

 

I'm hooked though... the tweakable difficulty makes this game seem so much more alive to me.  My limited player will not fare well online however.  Most online zealots are going to use club tuner to yield the lowest scores, no matter how unrealistic the FIRs, GIRs, and average distances turn out to be.  That doesn't bother me... it's just not the style of game I want to play.  I get no satisfaction out of shooting a 48 in Tour Pro mode using superhuman players.   I'd rather have a player who is rooted in a believable statistical foundation posting an occastional 63.  I think I'm going to have that with what I've got now.