By Gary Kearney

Now that the long awaited PlayStation 3 has hit the market it's also time for a lot of the old gaming franchises to make the move over to “next-gen” gaming. With that in mind comes along Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 as one of the launch titles for the PlayStation 3. Is Tiger 07 just a fancy looking port or does it really make you take notice as a true next generation title? Let's find out...

I suppose it might be a bit unfair to expect a huge wow factor right out of the gate for the next-gen games but that's exactly what I expect after shelling out college fund type money for a new console and having the games cost 10-20 bucks more. All I'm asking is to show me that I have spent my money wisely. Unfortunately Tiger Woods 07 doesn't quite give me that warm and happy feeling; it's not quite buyers remorse but it's not justification either. Don't get me wrong, Tiger 07 is a good game but it just doesn't do enough for me to set it far apart from the PS2 or Xbox version.

If you have played any past version of Tiger Woods PGA then you'll feel right at home here. One cool feature carried over from the past versions is the create-a-player, called Game Face, which allows you to have a ton of control over designing what your golfer looks like. There are 15 professional golfers including John Daly and Annika Sorenstam, but seriously, if you're not going to create your own golfer isn't there very little chance you're going to play as anyone else besides Tiger? I just can't imagine a bunch of people fighting over who gets to be Rich Beem or the breathtakingly long named Justin Charles Garrett Leonard. Oh, one thing I did learn from the golfers' bios was that Tigers first name is Eldrick. There are some colorful fictitious golfers rounding out the selections like Pops Masterson and Big Mo. One thing gamers from older consoles will notice is that they actually have bragging rights over the next-gen versions when it comes to the number of courses, roughly 20 for old school and 12 for next gen. The 12 course that are here are nicely varied and fairly detailed.

Being a next-generation title we expect great leaps in graphics. The problem here is somewhat my problem, somewhat Sony's, and somewhat EA's. My part is that I have a TV (a Sony) that only displays HD signals of 1080i and 480p. Sony's problem is that they do not up-convert 720 to 1080 signals but instead down-convert the signal so I'm left with a rather PS2 looking experience. So discounting those two factors I can still see things that I wish EA would have done. For example, with all of this new technology and the revolutionary Blu-Ray discs, if you believe the Sony hype, there seems to be plenty of power to start doing things that set this next generation apart. Like when a ball goes into a sand trap how about I see a little sand trail or footprints in the sand. And for a game the replies so heavily on grass, trees, and other environmental elements they seem to be lacking in variety. I noticed a few collision detection issues and a couple of times a player leaning on a club that wasn't touching the ground. Player animations are very smooth and with the UCAP technology going on you can really see great facial expressions ranging from stoic to happiness to frustration.

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