Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 Review

Tiger developer EA Tiburon thought they had the full-motion golf swing down last year with the addition of the Wii MotionPlus peripheral, but now they swear they have it dialed in. Sarcasm aside, the franchise’s second turn with the MotionPlus adds a new dimension to your swing that yields better results. In an odd way, I like that it adds the possibility of even more inconsistency to my swing without ruining the entire experience. The series continues to tinker around the edges, making modest improvements that are mostly welcome.

In Tiger 10, the MotionPlus peripheral was mainly concerned with whether your wrists were twisted or not as you struck the ball. Your wrists are still important, but now the game also reads your follow-through. It can be a subtle change that doesn’t factor in all your swings, but I like it because it further codifies what constitutes a good method and what that feels like. If you don’t want to use the new motion you can revert to the old one through the game’s detailed system of assists and difficulty levels that you can mix and match, including whether you want to use the waggle-style spin. One I recommend turning on is the TrueView camera, which is a first-person look at the ball as you size it up and watch it (hopefully) sail through the air.

Once again the career mode (consisting of skills challenges versus pros, a PGA tour schedule, and the Ryder Cup) has been tweaked, this time with a more measured approach towards attribute points and modifiers. Clubs – and not shafts or clothes – are the only item that confers stat bonuses, and you are only allowed to give one of your four attributes a temporary stat bump before most challenges or tourney rounds. This approach slows down the stat-jacked characters of the past, but it’s also not as fun. I like the inclusion of the Ryder Cup, but even though the tourney’s format is largely the same, it’s a little weird that the CPU doesn’t abide by the nationality rules (Americans vs. Europeans) that make the Cup what it is. The Ryder Cup is also online, as is last year’s disc golf.

Combining the progress made with the WiiMotion Plus peripheral with an expanded online footprint, five new courses, four courses of actual mini-golf, and more, Tiger 11 is a full-fledged game with a motion-based swing and not just a slight curiosity.