I finally got my copy of Tiger 09 in the mail on Saturday, sat down to play it, and wondered where the preceding 6 hours had gone.  Simply put, this is the most amazing golf game out there since Tiger ’04 or even the second Links title.  It’s doing almost everything right, from the amazing constant stat tracking and real-time player levelling, to the character management skill training.

The bottom line here is this game completely makes up for the offering that was Tiger 08, which I had to quit playing lest I embed the DVD in my basement wall after I hurled it out of sheer frustration at the horrible levelling technique which blocked the player’s progression on the very first challenge.

That said, there have been a list of bugs that have been bothering me about Tiger for years.  Some of these go back all the way to 04 (which is still my favorite golf game ever), and some of them are new to this version.  I know, I know, I’m going to talk turkey about a sports game’s game design, but stick around.  These kind of issues are what makes for good game design discussion, regardless of the title.

Top Ten Ways to Make Tiger Perfect:

1. Play the ball where it lies.  Tiger is notorious for putting the ball in a place where it can better manage the character animation, as they don’t have really robust IK controls to force the player to stand on the lip of a tall sand trap.  The problem with this is that when my ball goes into a sand trap, I should play it where it went into the sand trap, not 5 feet back from where the ball went in.  Often I can actually see the divot decal the ball left in the trap from the point where they “spotted” my ball.  It’s understandable if the ball is unplayable next to an unnatural hazard, like if it rolls up against the grandstand on the 18th hole.  You get a clublength of relief there.  But figure out a way to let me play the ball where it lies.  These are professional golfers here, not the Senior Citizen’s 3pm 9 hole league.
2. Cameras should never make objects between the player and the hole invisible.  Right now the camera forces objects to be invisible if they’re within X range of the camera.  The problem with this is that your ball could roll up against a huge tree (or they’ll place the ball there), and you won’t even know it, because the camera’s rendering it invisible.  I got my first Deer Ass prize (a 0gs Achievement called Lost the Plot which means you exceeded the shot limit for a hole) because I was repeatedly attempting to hit my ball through the trunk of a 200 year old oak tree.  Unfortunately I had no idea it was there until I moved the camera a bit to see why my ball wasn’t going anywhere when I hit it, and BAM a giant tree pops up directly in front of my ball.  I don’t care if it means I can’t see the hole.  If there’s a friggin’ barn in front of me blocking my shot, I need to see it.
3. Let.  Me.  PUTT.  Seriously, give me the putter on the tee box.  If an idiot wants to use a putter for an entire hole, let him.  Stop telling me how to play golf, because honestly, you’re doing it wrong.  If I’m 4 feet off the green, but it’s all fairway from where my ball is to the green, this is a puttable shot.  Pros do it all the time.  Hell, amateurs do it all the time.  In fact, there’s been multiple times when you’ve forced me to chip from off the fringe of the green, or when I was just one inch in the rough outside of the green.  Again, these are all 100% “use the putter” situations in real life, yet I’m forced to use a chip or a pitch because your game “logic” has decided I shouldn’t have access to my putter.  For god’s sake man, at least ask me if I’m one of these crazy “use your putter” people who likes to putt a ball when he’s just off the green.
4. Clearly defined Out of Bounds markers.  If I was playing on some of your courses in real life, and you called me out of bounds for landing in the deep rough 10 yards off the fairway, with a clear line of sight to the green, I would beat you for being so rediculous.  And yet, it has happened to me twice now in Tiger 09.  You need to show the player either with clearly marked red stakes (the de-facto OoB marker in golf), or use some sort of HUD outline when the player uses his shot aimer.  I don’t mind that you put the OoB marker where you did, but if you don’t show the player the OoB marker, you’re doing your customer a great disservice.  I’m being overly aggressive on drives that I shouldn’t be, because your hole looks like it’s a normal golf course with no OoB markers between holes.  You’re not communicating effectively enough to the player the rules of your course, and that’s just bad or lazy design.
5. Clear Shot Meter Percentages.  The natural swing mechanic of moving the analog stick like a golf club swing (that you awesomely stole from Outlaw Golf, if memory serves) is certainly the only way to play a golf game, as it helps with the immersion factor, but why would you make the better swing mechanic the inferior one when it comes to accuracy?  If I use the 3-click-swing mechanic (the old golf meter where you click a button three times to start, reverse, and stop a moving meter bar), I at least can see what % I am through my swing, and that’s a really important number to know when attempting to line up my shot.  You could argue that I need to visually find where I’m at in my natural swing motion animation, but if a player hangs at the top of his swing too long, or at any point in his swing, you start reducing the shot % without showing this to the player.  So unless a player stops his backswing exactly where he wants it and then immediately follows through, he has no real idea where he is %-wise on his shot.  I’ve done what felt like the exact same motion 3 times in a row, and wound up with 83%, 75%, and 59% respectively, depending on how long I paused at what I thought was about 90% of my shot meter.  Please, please give me some way to know just how much power I’m giving my shot on a natural swing meter.
6. More Stats, not Less.  In Tiger 04, the player had something like 10 or 12 statistics they could manage, and level up.  In Tiger 09, there are four.  Four.  4 stats.  Where’d spin go?  I don’t mind that luck isn’t there anymore, but really, “power” and “accuracy” are just too broad of stats to apply to every golf swing.  This would be like only having one “distance” stat in a football game apply to both your kicker and your quarterback.  Okay, maybe that was a little bit extreme of an example, but you don’t swing a driver like you do a short iron; it’s pointless to have just one stat apply to both.  Some people are amazing with their woods; others (like me) struggle with them.  Players like micromanaging their player’s stats.  Give us something to manage.  At least something more than four bars.
7. Better Skill Challenges.  Okay, your challenges are pretty awesome, but I’m tired of this idea of a “ring” that every shot has to wind up inside of.  Specifically, I’m looking at you, Power stat challenge.  When you’re trying to increase a stat that is only goverened by distance, having someone shoot at a circle is just stupid.  Why, you say?  Because it’s possible to actually shoot past the ring, and not get credit for the distance, because you’re outside of the challenge’s victory condition.  That’s right, the Distance challenge punishes you for hitting the ball too far.  The stat isn’t governed by good ball placement, or making sure you didn’t trickle into that trap guarding the fairway.  It only cares that you’re A).  On the fairway, and B).  X yards average per drive.  The hooks are already there to measure this properly.  Just detect if the player’s on the fairway (using your Fairway In Regulation detector) and beyond the yardage line the coach has set (using your Farthest Drive tech you use for the player set challenges).  Stop punishing players for crushing drives because they missed your circle.  That’s what your accuracy challenge is there for.
8. Better Game Mode Rules.  There’s a few game types that aren’t tracking victory conditions properly, and it can get a bit annoying when you’re stuck with them.  One of them, specifically, is the “skins” matches.  On one of my Tiger Challenge matches, I was informed that I needed to get 3 skins from some fictional Scottish golfer on 5 holes.  In the first three holes, I took 3 skins (won the first and third holes, pushed on the 2nd hole).  This is a winning victory condition.  There is no reason to continue playing the challenge, as skins are not “stealable.”  You can’t lose them.  It’s not like stroke play where you can be ahead by two strokes on the 3rd hole, but then lose the next two holes and come out losing.  The challenge was to win 3 skins.  I won 3 skins.  Imagine if professional teams were tasked with winning 3 out of 5 games, and after winning the first three games straight, were still forced to play the 4th and 5th game of the series.  It’s just kinda a bit ludicrous.  But it actually got worse.  We pushed the 4th and 5th skin, and the game actually went to a tiebreaker.  I’m winning 3 to 0 after 5 holes, and I’m now forced to play a tiebreaker.  Where there is no tie.  I was actually considering just throwing the hole if it looked like we were going to tie again, as there didn’t seem to be a losing condition for having the other player get to 3 skins (I got to 3 skins, it said get 3 skins to win).  Fortunately, I managed to win the sixth hole and take 6 skins, but the whole affair was just redonculous, and turned me off from playing more Tiger Challenges.
9. Better Commentary Timing.  The commentary is normally pretty great, but the timing on it is awful.  Quite often, on even long putts, my ball will be going in the hole, actually going over the lip, and the audio commentary for the putt will kick in, saying “I don’t know if this is going to have the distance…”  I mean, the ball is already in the cup.  Your commenters wind up sounding like they’re not even remotely paying attention, or are just lazy.  I know you can predict if the ball is going in the cup or not; you have the tech to show me where my putt is going if I ask you to with the Left Button on my Putt Preview.  So figure out how to get that audio to come up earlier.  There is a nice feature where if my ball is heading for the rough but I manage to spin it out, your color commentary woman will correct the play-by-play commentator when he says “where is that shot going?” with a snippy “well it looks okay to me!”  That stuff is great.  Just, figure out how to make the on the green commentary work better.
10. I’m approaching nitpickery status here, but get Ball Physics in the Cup.  If the camera is high, I can see that you’re cheating once the ball goes over the lip of the cup.  It just freezes in midair.  Maybe the physics on the ball in the cup gets all crazy?  It surely can’t be a performance/CPU issue.  I know you’ve cheated the ball phsyics on putts in the past; in Tiger 04 I’ve seen a ball stop at the lip of the cup and then just take a dive over the edge multiple times.  But I don’t understand why the ball stops moving once it gets past what you think is the player’s vantage point.  It’s silly.  I could see there being horrible physics interpenetration issues if the stick was in the cup still, but hey, it’s a golf game.  Figure out a way to make it work like one.
11. If you’re not going to care about Voice Talent for the Create-a-Player, don’t ask me to.  It’s awful.  I’d rather turn it off, but I don’t think there’s an option for it.  If I have to listen to this loser say in a B-Movie “Not over there” style whine again, I’m going to lose it.  I’d replace my guy with a Game Face player (who in 08 stopped talking, thank god), but as you can see from my next entry, I can’t.
12. Could you Make Game Face Actually Work?  Maybe I’m the only guy it doesn’t work for, but after taking 20 minutes to take the photos, find where on the EA Sports website to upload my photos, upload the photos, edit the photos, and save them off, I had the wonderful displeasure of having Tiger 09 tell me it couldn’t actually use or access the photos.  I could see them, I could even select them, but then the game just refused to use them.  And here’s the kicker:  I know that it’s going to take at least 20 more minutes to render my face if Tiger 08 was any indication.  It’s a 40 minute process, for pretty much anyone.  You could at the very least make efforts to make things go a bit smoother.  Finding where you can upload your face to wasn’t very clearly marked on the website, and then it didn’t even work in game.  I put this one next to last because I’m just hoping it was due to an overlogged server, but the game has been out for over a week.  I don’t get why this has to be so difficult.
13. XP Everywhere.  Tycho already ranted about it enough, so I’m not going to go into it here.  But if you get XP for finishing a hole, you should get that XP if you’re online, offline, in a practice mode.  Everywhere.