There’s quite a significant PR exercise going on at the heart of Tiger Woods 08. It’s hardly an uncommon occurrence in most sports titles, as writers feverishly attempt to transform a handful of fresh animations into the most organic videogame sporting experience ever. The trouble for EA, of course, is that it pretty much has perfection covered with analogue swing input. Returning to any other control method but this perfect test of both power and control would seem like cavemen putting out their fire before preparing that freshly beaten vole for dinner again. Sadly, Tiger Woods 08 has brought about such a retrograde step.

Like its football stablemate, Tiger Woods 08 requires more thought, bravery and (crucially) skill to conquer this time around. The more embarrassing aspects of its putting assistance have gone, replaced by a line that shows you the ball’s movements if hit at 100 per cent with your current club, and pretty much nothing else. There’s no caddy whispering the exact point you must aim for in your ear, no commentator playing back-seat golf, other than being able to tell the difference between left and right. Just you, your club and the ball; it’s lonely at the top. Proceedings follow a similar path out on the fairways, too. While your aiming reticule remains present and correct, it’s now flanked by a tolerance zone depicting the range of areas your ball could come to rest. Like every other shot that players will take within the game, this error range will be linked to a current confidence level. Your confidence level is tied to how many pars you may have taken from awkward spots in the sand or how many well-positioned balls you’ve shanked into the water features, and so on. On top of all this, long grass has also been tweaked to affect your shots. Although no doubt realistic, it will continue to surprise and dismay for hours after your first tee shot. We’re not very impressed.

Unfortunately, we haven’t even got to the most distressing way things have been beefed up yet. Rather than have players take on such a considerable challenge from the comfort of a familiar environment, the once-great analogue swing system has become as sensitive as a Wii owner’s tennis elbow. What were once minuscule errors of judgement, changes of mere millimetres on backswing or follow-through, are now punished so severely that you’ll spend far more time looking at your own crotch than is considered healthy. To watch your thumb as the shot progresses, of course. Suffice to say, this becomes boring enough to put your average casual golf fan off very quickly.

Don’t worry, though, EA has developed a fresh control method to assist your feeble skills in tackling such a considerable task. Called the three-click swing, it involves pressing the X button once to start a moving energy bar, again to select your shot power, then once more to avoid a slice or a hook. We have a feeling most gamers will be quite familiar with this control scheme already. To confirm, EA Sports has actually made its game so frustratingly difficult that the only palatable way to interact with it has been ripped straight from the digitised surroundings of PGA Tour 96 on the original PlayStation. Now that golfers don’t stand deathly still until the exact moment before they swing, this just ain’t right.

That’s another point, too. While the virtual image of Tiger himself is as facially perfect as his worldwide fame demands, other details considered less important have been shown significantly less attention. Aside from the usual videogame clichés, such as limited crowd animation and individual crowd members deciding to stand on their own, hundreds of yards away from the green, turf details are also dropped mere feet from the camera’s focus point. Consequently, courses still appear distinctly washed out, a fact we were willing to overlook five years ago as developers puzzled over how to handle realistic outdoor environments, but such a situation is hardly befitting of the world’s most powerful games console today.

At least EA has taken a step into the whole ‘game 2.0’ thing, allowing usergenerated content for the first time, via its GamerNet service. In theory, this will allow for any number of amusing drives into unwitting spectators appearing for all to see. More seriously, players will also be able to save replays and create challenges for fellow gamers at any point during play. An entertaining prospect if only for the extra amount of life this will breathe into what is becoming a big ol’ wall of tired, standard gameplay modes. Ten minutes of quick-fire gameplay here and there, especially in such a ruthless and punishing environment, is something we could grow to love, for the same reason we’ll keep trying to play Jordan on Guitar Hero II on Expert, no matter how impossible the task. It’s just a shame that even the most benign of situations exhibit similarly insane difficulty levels, though.

Dave Shaw