Your Thoughts on the Tiger Woods 14 Demo

Tiger 14 is easily the most difficult scoring challenge of any of the Tiger Woods games of this generation, but I’m not fully sure its for all the right reasons. What makes its new Simulation difficulty so tough to master significantly tougher to master are: 1.) Advanced Shaping and 2.) Analog Fade Strike Meter.

If you’re using Tiger Woods in the demo, the Advanced Shot Shaping requires that you track an “outside-in” swing with the swing stick, since Tiger’s natural swing tends to produce a fade. The desired swing path axis according to the swing meter runs from 5 o-clock to 11 o-clock. If you’re using a standard Xbox 360 controller, this is tough to reproduce smoothly, as the controller is built more so to deliver an X and Y axis more readily. The swing feedback meter often shows that my traces look more like a noisy sine-wave than a smooth, linear motion along this tilted axis. The shot results bear out my lack of precision. Keeping the ball inbounds is deemed to be a victory in my experience thus far, forget about hitting fairways. I bet my FIRs are under 20% in Simulation difficulty to this point. I see where this is somewhat analogous to a golf swing, but the swing path the meter forces you to take seems to be a bit out of scale.

The Analog Fade Strike Meter seems to be a bit more of stretch in trying to correlate to the mechanics of a golf swing. You have to hold a cursor on a target on the desired impact point on the ball with the right thumbstick (although you can switch thumbsticks such that either can be the swing stick and strike meter stick), even though the cursor permanently disappears one second after you move it. It’s difficult to hold the cursor on the desired impact point when you can see it, let alone after it’s disappeared and you’re having to rely on memory. If you’re off on the strike point, the shot results vary from skulled or popped-up to shanked or toed, proportional to have far you were off with the strike meter. It can be more frustrating and difficult than the same shot in real life!?

The above aspects make the game feel more like a controller interface mastery challenge than one based modeling a golf swing with movements and actions that are more analogous to the senses. There is a learning curve with mastering Advanced Shot Shaping and Analog Fade Strike control and I have made some progress with it. I just don’t think it will ever replace the less contrived interface of Tiger 13 as one that resonates with the senses more naturally, although it does make for a better scoing challenge, if that’s what you’re after.

Even if Simulation difficulty was the bee’s knees, I don’t think I’ll ever get over my disappointment in the presentation of Tiger 14. The new Broadcast presentation is so hyper-active and perspective depriving that it puts me off right away. I want to watch the shot take shape from my golfer’s perspective and appreciate what’s happening with its trajectory and direction, rather than being whisked away at the moment of impact to a Broadcast camera that’s all too often looking skyward at a ball with no frame of reference. When putting, the Broadcast presentation takes you out of golfer’s perceptive once again at impact, and you can’t gauge how the ball reacted to the slope because of the obtuse angle the camera took. You’re not given critical feedback to gauge the break of the “comebacker” because of this. There really needs to be an option for the gamer to determine the point at which the Broadcast camera switch should occur.

I won’t go into Follow camera other than to say I’ve never liked it in golf games because of its astral traveling disruption of the golfer perspective that I crave. It’s probably a better presentation option in this game, especially for putting and chipping, but it’s not one I can play a golf game with for long term. It’s just not my preference in spite of many years of trying to accept it.

I was expecting to be pumped about Tiger 14, after playing the demo. I can’t ever remember being more disappointed in any of the current generations Tiger demos. The lack of a presentation option that makes me feel like a player rather than a spectator is the primary reason. I’ll play it heavily during the Season Ticket weekend, but I’ve already had my fill of Follow Cam and a flitty Broadcast presentation during the demo period.

I thought it was too dark