It is Golf time again. The weather is fantastic outside but if green fees are still too high for you EA Sports has you covered with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 for the 360 and PS3. This year, they hope the inclusion of increased weather conditions, precision putting and the ability to ‘Play against the Pros’ will make your only golfing choice the virtual kind.

Gameplay

For Tiger Woods 2010, the guys over at EA Tiburon have placed a massive focus on giving golfing fans the best virtual experience available. With that, the inclusion of various Live Tournaments will have the best golfers both real and of the virtual kind battling it out. On top of your standard fare of Daily and Weekly tournaments, the biggest selling point is the ability to ‘Play the Pros’.

With ‘Play the Pros’, using either your created character or one of the available golfers, can play the exact same course the pros are currently playing that week. Your score will reflect what is actually occurring in the real world. You will get to see just how good you are in comparison and if you time it correctly from Thursday until Sunday, you will feel like you’re actually playing with them in that day. You can play all four rounds or just one, but once you finished a round, you submit your score and see how well you do.

Offline, the key feature this year is Precision Putting. In past versions, putting felt disjointed from the rest of the game’s precision hitting with the analog stick. Now, you must properly move the right analog stick for putting. You have to be fairly precise when attempting your putts in order for them to be successful. This realistic portrayal of putting adds more depth to your shots and when you do it right, you will feel fantastic when that long-range putt falls in. It’s not a hard set-up to get accustomed to but it will be a bit of time before you completely master it and are able to putt from anywhere on the green.

Not much else has changed in the other modes for Tiger Woods 2010. You will still have to build your created character from scratch and go through Hank Haney’s tutorials to improve your character. As in the past, your characters stats will change depending on how you play, so getting the perfect character that is balanced and maxed out will take some time. It would be nice to be able to take your character from previous games and avoid having to re-train, but as you will see online, most people have already managed to max out their characters and can hit drives easily over 300 yards.

In career mode, a cool addition is Tournament Challenge. In this section, you will be given a task that you must complete that mimics a real life golf scenario from recent years. These can be something as simple as completing a number of holes in X amount of strokes or less or hitting three straight fairway shots totaling over 600 yards. These challenges will give you cash to spend on your character and will be helpful practice for your career.

Graphics and Sound

Tiger Woods looks fantastic when played in High Definition. The courses and golfers all look great with a strong resemblance to the real thing. The new real-time weather effects are also available here, but it doesn’t really stand out. While the courses will alter in performance with the change in weather, it doesn’t affect your character. Golfers never get wet and it just feels out of place. It would have been nice that when it rains, your golfer throws on a jacket or the inclusion of your caddy to cover you from the rain would have been nice. It is definitely something that is possible, so here is hoping these little touches to the realism occur next year.

The Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman returns for another year of commentating and this year she is joined by ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt, who was also previously a commentator for The Golf Channel. While both know their stuff around the course, there is absolutely no chemistry between the two. Their discussions feel disjointed and they never really offer anything interesting. The series has suffered in recent years with weak commentary and it continues yet again here.

The only saving grace to the sound comes from the great ambience sound effects on the course. The sounds from the crowds, the chirping birds and even the sounds of thunder when it’s raining add a lot to the golfing experience. So, even when you’re not getting anything of value from Tilghman and Van Pelt, at least you can absorb the atmosphere and enjoy a great round of golf.

Unlike the Wii version which offers over 25 courses to play on, the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions only have 16 courses to play on. There are currently 4 courses available to purchase via DLC but the low number shouldn’t be the case for a full-priced game. Thankfully there are a lot of great courses including Bethpage Black, St. Andrews and TPC Sawgrass to enjoy on the disc.

Even with the lower number of courses, the long career mode, great online features and other games are more than enough to satisfy any golfing fan. There is only one setback for those who will jump into the game later on. There are already a large amount of virtual golfers who are dominating the online world and it might be a bit of a detractor for newcomers. Thankfully there are ways of setting limits online so that the playing field is a bit leveled. If you really want to enjoy the online, ‘Play the Pros’ makes things extremely realistic, especially with removing the Putt Preview options and other restrictions to ensure those ‘Juiced’ up created golfers aren’t mopping the floor.

When not playing online, as long as your system is connected to the net, you can participate in GamerNet Instant Challenge. On every course that you play, someone has the farthest drive or the best pin-seeker and it’s up to you to beat them. If you do so, you will earn points on your EA GamerScore which can be used to unlock bonus stuff through EA SportsWorld. It’s not a necessary addition, but does give you a bit of incentive to play well in every mode.

Conclusion

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 is a solid addition to the long running series. The great amount of options both online and off will suffice any golfing fan for a long period of time. Precision Putting significantly improves the putting mechanics that have suffered in recent years. Out of everything available in this year’s edition, the ‘Play The Pros’ will be the one mode that Golfing fans will go back to time and time again during the course of the season. You might not be able to take on the Pros in the Real World, but at least you’ll have the opportunity to beat them in the Virtual World.