At its base, not much has been altered for this late-in-the-year Wii debut. Carry over features include the involving Game Face, Tiger Challenge where a series of matches can quickly build stats, and the PGA Tour Season. Multi-player sessions also keep the fun factor, including the dangerously addictive one ball. There’s a gaping hole in the feature set though, and that’s online play. Tiger’s not the same without it.
The obvious draw here is the control scheme. It’s obvious
the development team have finely tuned the simplicity while keeping the features intact.
The basics are as expected. Hold Wii Remote like a golf club, hold B, perform a backswing,
and then swing forward. Assuming all goes well, the ball flies straight to its designated
target. If desired, a Nunchuck analog swing is available, though it defeats the purpose of
playing this version entirely.Nuances in Tiger’s franchise, such as spin and power, are still included albeit in different form for the latter. There’s no need to button mash to build power boost. Instead, this becomes a timing challenge. With a full backswing and properly timed downswing, you’ll achieve 110% power. Any delay causes the power to drop.
Spin still occurs in the air after the ball is hit via the d-pad. The 1 button will change the type of shot pre-swing, and the Wii Remote offers nice flexibility when aiming. You can now drag the aiming marker to where you’re looking to hit the ball instead of fighting with a d-pad.
What Tiger 07 is desperate for is a power indicator. There is no help in the game to let the player know how far their shot will go. It’s brutally difficult to hit a soft shot if you’re, for example, stuck under a tree. Practice swings do give statistics, but finding the same power and timing during the real stroke is almost impossible. Also, constantly practicing to figure out the strength is tiring.
Putting is forgiving, certainly more so than other editions. This is more of a mercy rule to cut down on frustrations due to above mentioned lack of information. Hitting a putt too hard is rarely a problem, though tapping it short can be common.
A second issue is the responsiveness of the Remote. You could very easily hold the controller flat, pull up slightly, and then flick your wrist downward for a perfect shot. It reacts the same. If your personal real life swing has your wrists bending at any point, the game registers this as a full stroke and usually a highly inaccurate one. You’ll need to be especially careful if this applies to you.
Menu navigation is a mess at times, especially when moving through the Game Face features. You need to move a cursor to a slim bar on the screen, hold B, and then move the Remote left or right to select an option. Simply letting the player hit an arrow would be far less convoluted, and picking your favorite +2 club shaft of power in the pro shop has never been this irritating.
Tiger 07 marks the beginning of a beautiful relationship on the Wii. With some tweaks to the system to make it more user friendly, this is has the potential to surpass the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions. However, this first attempt needs some work even though it stands as the best golf game on the console. Also, the meager time frame between this and the guaranteed 2008 update will likely be record setting.
