While Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 doesn’t have all of the content or courses included in its current gen cousins, it still packs plenty of good golf gameplay to keep you occupied. And while current gen games may have more courses, they can’t come close to competing with the Xbox 360 version of Tiger Woods 07 in terms of graphics. Think you can see the logo and dimples on the ball while putting on your PS2? Not a chance, but you can while playing it on your 360 in HD. Everything about the graphics is thoroughly next-gen, from the realistic golfers and animations to the individual blades of grass in the rough. The create a golfer utility gives you an amazing amount of control over your golfer and gives you the power to make a virtual recreation of yourself or someone truly scary. Looks are great for first impressions, but it takes some personality to make a relationship last. Luckily Tiger Woods 07 delivers the gameplay to keep you hooked after the infatuation wears off.

The star of the show.

Since you’ll spend most of your time with the game swinging a club, let’s start by taking a look at how that’s done in the game. Setting up a shot is pretty easy once you learn the controls. You can pick your club by cycling through your club arsenal using the triggers, but the game will pre-select a club for you that will be appropriate for most situations. The d-pad is used to aim your shot, but rather than specify the exact point that you’re aiming for you move a circle which defines the general area in which the shot will land if you hit it right. Lastly you can set the angle of the club head to control the loft of your shot and then you’re ready to swing away. The swing itself is timing based and involves pulling back on the left stick to start your back swing and then pushing the stick forward to swing your club. The distance you draw back your club and the speed at which you move it forward determine the strength of your shot. Accuracy is determined by how true to straight up you are as you push the stick forward. It’s both a simple and intuitive system and is often the case with things that are simple and intuitive it works well.

Even if you can smack the ball with clockwork precision you’ll find that your shots won’t be PGA material. Not at first, anyway. This is because the game rates your skills in a number of categories including spin, power, and accuracy. When you start out the game you’ll be at the bottom in every category and you must build your skills in order to be ready to compete on the tour. There are two ways to build your skills and to reach your full potential you’ll need to spend time with each. The first is to compete in skill challenges. These challenges will be tied to a particular stat such as power or accuracy and will have you competing both on your own and against a computer controlled opponent. The skill games run from simple longest drive and closest to the pin type of competitions to more complex games such as 21 which is kind of like a chipping game of horse. The other way to build skills is to play in the game’s challenge ladder. In this mode you’ll square off against a mix of PGA pros and fictional golfers in a series of one on one games on the links. You’ll get bonus points to your stats when you make good shots on the course, and if you win you’ll see an increase in all of your stats and you’ll unlock the next challenge on the ladder. Play your way through all of your opponents and you get to square off against Tiger himself.

If this all seems like too much effort for you ,you can always buy a maxed out golfer. Buy? Yes, buy, as in lay out some real-world cash for one. In a disturbing trend that may mark the end of the cheat code, you can now pay real money to max out your golfer or unlock content in the game via Xbox Live. If you’re a casual gamer who just wants to play some games as part of the PGA Tour – not an unreasonable request – then you have to shell out additional money on top of the cost of buying the game in the first place. Offering extra content to hardcore fans of a game for money is one thing, but forcing players to invest money or a large quantity of time to access parts of the game is another.

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