Art of the iPhone

Okay, I know, Tiger Woods is in the news, what with the marital infidelity allegations and all, but I promise, I’ll try and avoid double entendres, and jokes about handling wood. Cross my heart.

Anyway, Tiger Woods PGA Tour ($4.99, iTunes link) is made by publishing powerhouse EA—so it has all the premium production values, excellent graphics, and full feature set you’d expect.

The learning curve of the game is surprisingly tough. Each shot and each course presents you with a brutal amount of information to consider. You have to worry about the hole’s par, the type of grass you’re hitting from, windspeed, club type, obstacles, swing strength, spin, etc.

To aid you, there is a set of tutorials, but they’re tucked away in the menu system and not presented automatically. Putting is even tougher to get a handle of, but once you understand the undulating grid that shows the lay of the course—and its repercussions—you can easily sink hilariously long putts. We’d have liked to see a little more realism.

The game has major issues with not providing enough information. For example, there are two game modes, PGA Tour and individual games. You can play individual games with either a custom character or pre-made one, like Tiger Woods, or Vijay Singh. However, the PGA Tour mod requires you to play as a custom character, though it’s never explained why. It’s also never properly described that you can use money to upgrade your equipment (a choice hidden in the Options menu). There’s are a huge number of modes that are never explained. It’s just assumed that you know the difference between playing off blue tees instead of black, or how Stableford rules differ from Stroke Play. The game is in dire need of a manual.

Even with these problems, it’s a damn fun game. Twice now I’ve just about killed my battery by playing it compulsively (good graphics will do that). The announcers are generally interesting, and sometimes even funny—though their dialogue borders on repetitive, and is occasionally flat out wrong. The gameplay is excellent, once you get the hang of it. There’s a lot to wrap your head around, but when you do, it’s damn fun.

Conclusion

Tiger Woods PGA Tour ($4.99, iTunes link) has a rather stiff pricetag, and a vicious learning curve. But, if you can deal with that, you’ll find a decent game, and we rate it a 7.4 out of 10.