When it comes to the games people play, it's likely that none has resulted in more frustration or misery than golf. I don't mean the video game variety either. I'm talking about the kind of golf you play on a windy course with your buddies, where poorly kept fairways and debris-covered greens make life a living hell a few hours at a time. It's a sadomasochistic way to spend an afternoon, but it remains one of the world's most popular games, precisely because it's so hard to master. Video games, on the other hand, make us feel like the golfers we watch on TV, hitting booming drives that roll onto perfectly manicured greens. But is that really what we want?

Since the Tiger Woods series premiered in 2001, the developers at EA have always tinkered with the gameplay and options. They introduced new elements like the analog swing control and the ability to create nearly anyone with their GameFace system, all in an effort to make players feel like scratch golfers. This resulted in the game becoming less challenging to many people, something that EA seems to be attempting to remedy with this year's additions. While the new dual analog swing and putting controls are certainly an improvement over last year's mechanics, it feels like they could have done more to increase the unpredictability of the real thing.


The excellent left analog swing system is back this year, but this year the developers decided to add the right analog stick to the mix. During your backswing, pushing the right analog stick in a direction will cause a small black dot to move around a representation of your ball. When push forward to strike the ball, you'll hit it in the location where the dot ended up, allowing you to put in some English on it. If you want the ball to roll forward when it lands, just strike it near the top, while hitting near the bottom will cause it roll back. Hitting on the sides will let you hook or slice the ball around obstacles or doglegs.

The other major change to the gameplay is found in the putting game, where a visual grid system indicates how hard you'll need to strike the ball and where you should aim. When you step onto the green, the grid will appear, and you'll have to "read" it to see where it slopes. Red indicates a severe grade, while relatively flat areas will be represented as green lines. To more accurately judge the grade, small highlights will move like water streaming down any slope. Although the grid has been a staple of the golf genre for years, this is the first time EA has really forced players to use it. To aid you, pressing the A button will bring up a view of the best ball path, making your planning that much easier.