Product Description

DESCRIPTION Lead your team to glory in Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 11! Fight for honor, fight for country in the all-new Ryder Cup Challenge on The Celtic Manor Resort in Wales in 2010, which is the course of this year’s Ryder Cup. Strategy comes into play as you create your own team and take on others in Online Team Play – up to 12 versus 12.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #766 in Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Model: 19360
• Published on: 2010-05-31
• Released on: 2010-06-08
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Nintendo Wii
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .60" h x 5.40" w x 7.50" l, .25 pounds

Features

• Compete in the prestigious Ryder Cup Tournament
• Tweak matchups on the fly as you captain your team to victory
• Participate in Better Ball, Alternate Shot and Match Play competitions
• Enhanced Wii MotionPlus support includes Advanced Plus and Tour Pro swing options
• Advanced Plus tracks swing rotation and swing plane - reading the virtual path of your club through your swing

Amazon.com Product Description
You take a knee and survey the 18th green. Your ball is 20 feet from the pin, and the green breaks to the left. As you approach your ball you can feel the weight of the nation on your shoulders. Gripping the putter, you breathe in deeply and exhale as you begin your backswing. The putter strikes the ball and it begins to roll. Rising to their feet as the ball dances across the green, the crowd's cheers begin to swell. Ten feet to go. You watch the path of the ball as it approaches the hole. Five feet to go. The ball hits the lip of the cup and softly drops in as the crowd erupts — you've just won the Ryder Cup.

Compete in the prestigious Ryder Cup Tournament. View larger.

Putt on some of the PGA Tour's most renowned championship courses! View larger.

Tweak matchups on the fly. View larger.

Realistic models and textures for enhanced gameplay. View larger.

Synopsis Represent the U.S. or European squad in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 as you compete in the prestigious Ryder Cup tournament on The Celtic Manor Resort in Wales. Captain your team and adjust matchups on the fly as you fight for glory. Challenge up to 23 friends in Online Team Play as you compete in two 12-person teams to see who can rise to the top of the leaderboards. See if you can make par on some of the PGA Tour's most celebrated courses. Can you lead your team to Ryder Cup glory? Features: Compete in the prestigious Ryder Cup Tournament on The Celtic Manor Resort in Wales as you represent either the U.S. or European squad Ryder Cup mode lets you adjust rosters, matchups, tournament length and have the ability to change matchups mid-round Enhanced Wii MotionPlus support includes Advanced Plus and Tour Pro swing options Advanced Plus tracks swing rotation and swing plane - reading the virtual path of your club through your swing Tour Pro option measures the point of contact on the ball, making it possible to miss the ball completely on your swing Look down at your ball before and during your swing from the first-person perspective with True View

Customer Reviews

One step forward... two steps back...
I will start by saying that I'm a fan of the Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchise. The best years in my opinion were the last couple (09 and 10). With last years game being so great, I was excited to get 11. I was disappointed to say the least. EA try to do too many changes... some were helpful but most changes took away from the game. I'll just go with the old and trusty pro and con list.

Pros:
Addition of the Ryder Cup
Sharper graphics
Better online play
Face maker is a little better but still lacking.

Cons:
EA went to an XP only system which is spent in skills and pro shop items... In the older games, I enjoyed making money and buying new clubs etc, also making loads of money just like the pros, especially during the majors. Now you have to focus 100% on putting your XP into skill and it doesn't seem the big tourneys make a difference... Why the change????

Ghostly limbs will grab your ball out of nowhere.

Making your player better through XP points starting out isn't realistic... You pretty much put all your points into power to have a chance in tourneys.

Where's Augusta? How hard could it be to get that license? No Masters this year....

EA still haven't fixed the view problem... the one I'm referring to is the when you hit the ball on certain occasions, the view changes to something way in the distance and you can't see how to spin your ball.

Ryder Cup takes a long time to play, 80% of the time is being spent watching the other players hit.

A Downloadable course is available... 1 course for 800 MS points!!! Why?

The players haven't been updated in a while, they still have Dimarco, Montgomerie, and others that should have been replaced years ago by recent players that are doing well currently.

Conclustion:
I know it seems I've been hard on the game but I would have loved to save $60 and played Tiger Woods 10 again (I miss the money and the great situationals). I had to give it only two stars due to making a product sub par to the previous 3 titles. Next year they must bring the money factor back, newer players, and hopefully a more realistic looking set-up, swing, and divot action. The game is ok at best to play but very frustrating if you played the previous titles.

Backwards step from 2010
I'll start this off by saying that I haven't yet played through the Ryder Cup nor have I played through any of the PGA career. I have the swing difficulty set to Advanced using a WiiMotion Plus and I use precision putting. I played a significant amount of the 2010 version (2 PGA seasons, 2 times through the skills competition).

Right off the bat, nothing has really changed with the interface. You can "play now," play a career, enjoy the mini-games, go online, etc. The GUI is different, but who cares about that? The career interface is the same. When you get to the character modeling, everything looks the same, except it doesn't behave the same as the 2010 version. I literally set everything identical to my model from last year (because I had done a spot on job) and the face looked completely different. Hair and skin tones are horrible. Why did EA change something that worked fine before? Not a big deal, as it has no affect on gameplay, but annoying nonetheless.

Let's move on to your skills. You now have only 4 categories; Power, Accuracy, Recovery, and Spin. Removed are the sub-categories, putting, and luck. Luck shouldn't be there anyway, but putting?!?! How can you remove putting skill? Also, improving your skill is VASTLY different. You simply gain general XP points as you play, whether that be through good shots or winning competitions/tournaments. For each 25000XP that you gain, you get a single attribute point that can be put towards one of the 4 skill categories. So, if you git a 350yd drive, you don't get power-specific XP, you just get general XP that moves your closer to the next level. Each skill category maxes out at 10 attribute points. You can gain these fairly quickly through the skills competition.

The skills competition has also changed. You now have 16 player cards (Tiger has 4) with 3 skills competitions per card (48 total) that have the bronze - silver - gold medal system. These can be quite difficult and frustrating, but are definitely fun.

Keep in mind that I have played no actual tourneys yet, just played in the skills competition. This is enough to determine that the swing physics have changed. The results no longer tell you if you hit a fade or draw, but will tell you the degree to which your club face is open/closed at impact. Even if you hit a perfectly square shot, your ball can go off line. I have hit maybe 10 square shots so far. It is extremely difficult to do compared to 2010. Hitting out of the rough....forget it. No matter what the game tells you, it will go 50% of that. It is still difficult to stick irons on the green, as they all tend to roll forward. You can't pitch with any club aside from wedges which makes no sense whatsoever. Pitches, chips, and bunker shots seem to come out erratically. very difficult to hit accurately.

Putting is where I've seen the most problems. The precision putting seems the same. The percentage bar is on the left side and is fairly easy to read. However, if your pace is even slightly off, you will not hit the percentage you want to hit. Also, the ball seems to have very odd travel paths on the green. For example, if you are hitting on a slope, instead of the ball going fairly straight at first and then breaking more as it slows down, it seems to have a constant break regardless of speed. Again, totally unrealistic.

So far, I'm not impressed with this game. TW 2010 for Wii was frustrating and difficult at first...but it was a totally new way to play video game golf. The game is fun to play and legitimately challenging. TW 2011 seems to have changed things for change sake. Why mess with things that aren't broken? I would have been perfectly happy with keeping the same skills system and same game physics. The addition of the Ryder Cup and the changing of the skills competition is the only positive change, IMO.

Last nitpicky items. You still can't skip pre and post shot animations. Speed play option is horrible. I want to skip animations but still watch my ball flight. Its still all or nothing. Auto-save is removed and now you have to tell the game whether you want to save after every thing you do. Where are Faherty and McCord?! Bring them back! It would be nice to have a 'restart' option during skills competitions instead of having to back out all the way to the menu.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 - Not too shabby I must say :).
We'll begin this review with a bit of a disclaimer. I play a very popular online golf game quite frequently, so while I've never played a Tiger Woods game before this I do know what I like in Golf Games.

Pros:

I love the different camera options. You can choose between True Aim (which seems to be kind of like "hard mode" to me), a follow the ball Camera angle that is more well known to people who play the Golf Games I do, and a mode that I like to call "TV mode" because it kind of looks like a camera panning from player level to follow the ball from the sidelines. I really love options and that is more viewing options than most games give you.

There are, to my knowledge, two different swinging modes. The stick swing mode, which I like to call "%!@#$" because that's what I scream each time I use it, and the much more user friendly and certainly proven system of "3-clicks". You can toggle that on by hitting the R3 key and I did so immediately. My shot accuracy increased dramatically and I found myself much happier. About my only complaint with 3-clicks, is that if I decide I've got the wrong strength I, again to my knowledge, cannot cancel it and have to just go with what I've got or it'll auto slice :(. That's a super small problem and it hasn't stopped me from tying Tiger Woods Score on a course this morning which got me excited :D.

The character creation mode is super in depth, I actually gave up on all the sliders. I may take pictures of my own face so I can feel like I'm a part of the game. That is an option for those that didn't know (I sure didn't).

The courses are gorgeous, I have a nice sized television (to me) coming in at 42 inches (or is it 40?), on the TV this game looks great! I'm rarely so pleased with the graphics of a game, normally this would never be a selling point to me. I rant constantly about how graphics are often the priority over gameplay. But since the gameplay in this is rock solid I'd say that this is a PRO.

I can get the ACTUAL weather for a course I'm playing on via the weather channel! Am I the only one that thought this was super cool? I leave it on all the time. That to me is super neat and a great touch.

My character rage poops just like I do when I miss a putt, it is fun to watch him freak out as I thrash like an upset infant on the couch.

It feels like there is tons of content, 17 holes come with the game, there is 1 new one you can buy, and there is side content and a campaign mode. It's pretty sweet. Plus getting trophies for things like completing a full course is really satisfying. The game makes me feel very successful and it tends to applaud you with all sorts of bonuses along the way.

Cons:

The loading times get me a little bit upset at times. I'll sink a ball in 2 swings and then be back at a loading screen. It would be great if the game preloaded the framework for the next hole as you progressed through your current one. Then just laid out the textures during the middle screen, this would have probably cut down loading times.

I'm still not exactly sure how to officially turn on true aim, I could have sworn it was different from the cinematic view because it actually gave me experience for sinking while in true aim. I'll just read the manual though, but since I have never before had trouble being sure of a menu option this unfortunately is a negative. A small one, but a negative.

Update: I found the options menu, that really should be directly on the main screen. For those curious it is hiding behind "My Tiger 11'" :).

Both on putting and on swinging I'd like a cancel button since I already know I hit too much power don't make me watch it :(. If someone knows how to do this please comment and I'll remove this from cons (or at least put in the fix).

Yes...I know EA Sports was behind this. Could you guys calm down with your name being on every sign, shirt, shoe, sock, face tattoo, cloud in the sky, and announcement in game? Please! Jeeze guys...don't advertise to me anymore once I own your game.

There might be others, but I can't think of them so they must not be that big of a deal.

Final Verdict:

I got this game for free with gift cards and a 20 dollar off promotional thing from Amazon. But had I actually spent money on it I'd be very pleased with my purchase. I have no hard feelings towards Tiger for certain recent issues, and as a sport I find golf to be amazingly complex and mind boggling at times. This game really captures a lot of that emotion. I think if EA could cut back on their constant back patting when it comes to putting their name all over these games it would be a fully authentic experience worth the time.

I would like to see TWPGA12 have the ability to transfer all my purchases over from one game to the next. I doubt that'll be the case, but if it is I just might buy the next one too. If not I'll stick with this one :). But that's a while from now! For now I'll enjoy what is all around a fairly solid title with very little in the way of negatives.

Thank you for reading :).