Swinging the club is accomplished by pulling back on the left stick to start your back swing, and then pushing the stick forward to hit the ball. It's a very intuitive way to control your swing and gives you a lot of control over your backswing and follow-through, but something has gone wrong with it this year. The stick has gone from fun to frustrating as it has become so sensitive that the tiniest deviations from the center line will send your ball slicing or hooking wildly. It's bad enough to detract from the gameplay as golf is no fun if you have no hope of shooting the ball consistently. Luckily Tiger Woods 08 marks the return of the old-style three button press swing. You can switch to this method at any time and you'll find yourself doing so fairly often for important shots. It's too bad that the stick swing doesn't work as well this year; it's definitely the most enjoyable way to swing a virtual club around.

All of the game's head-to-head golf variants are back this year and a new one has been added. Bingo, bango, bongo gives the first player to reach the green one point, another point is awarded for closest to the pin, and the last point is given for having the lowest score. It's not that great of an addition to the game considering that the first point invariably goes to the player with the worst tee shot since they get to take the next shot.

As in prior years you can play rounds of golf over Xbox Live, but this year a Gamernet feature has been added. Basically you can upload your best or weirdest shots to Xbox Live and challenge other players to repeat them. Playing these challenges is rather underwhelming, especially since there's not really a tangible award for doing so. Why spend a long time trying to get a tee shot closer to the pin than some stranger did when you can play a round yourself instead?

It's good to see that EA is adding more courses to the game this year, especially since the next-gen Tiger Woods debuted with fewer courses than its current-gen equivalents. Westchester, TPC Boston, Cog Hill, East Lake, and Harbor Town have made it into the game this year, as have eight new pro golfers.

Tiger Woods 08 is a decent enough golf game, but the overly touchy analog swing control and forced level progression will turn a lot of people off. There may be a number of new features this year, but it's hard to feel like the game has advanced that much over last year's version.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 74%. Tiger Woods 08 hits the ball long off the tee but fails to land the shot on the fairway.

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