I don’t play golf and I don’t watch golf, yet I can’t get enough of TIGER WOODS 2003. Why is that? Well hopefully I’ve explained it well enough in the following review.

Options aplenty is the first thing you’ll notice, just about every form of golf you can think of is represented here and should keep you occupied for a long time. There are plenty of tournaments to enter and some of the harder ones are very tough indeed. They are not all available from the start, but once you do well in some of the easier tournaments, the harder ones will become available. Apart form the tee positions being tougher, the computer opponents are practically super human, The leaders sometimes being at 14 under after 1 round. Now that’s not a bad effort, but it is possible for you to achieve similar results after plenty of practice, and that’s what you want isn’t it, something to aim for? Well, TIGER WOODS 2003 does that very well, its all about improving your game and getting yourself up to the level of the other players.

Your game can be improved in a few ways. Apart from just practicing and improving your club selection and swing timing and accuracy, you also earn money from your wins and this money can be used to buy attributes for your custom player. Attributes such as power, accuracy, spin, putting and a few more are gradually improved through winning tournaments and it takes quite a while to build yourself up to a top class level. New equipment is also unlocked along the way.

Controlling your swing couldn’t be easier, simply pull back the left thumb-stick and then push it forward to complete your swing. You really get the feeling of swinging the club and the system just works brilliantly. It’s very easy to complete a full power swing and not slice or hook it, perhaps too easy, it’s very rare to come up with a poor shot, but don’t think that makes the overall gameplay too easy. Judging anything other than full power can be a real challenge. There are no gauges here telling you when you are at half power, it’s purely a judgment call and that’s another thing that makes the system so great, it really is like being on the course, luckily my judgment is much better here than on a real course though, otherwise I’d never get off the first hole.

I don’t want to harp on it too much, but the control in this game truly is top notch. Apart from the swing system working so well, you can also put some pretty severe spin on the ball after you hit it by repeatedly tapping the black button. The amount of spin you get is measured firstly by the rating your player has for spin and secondly by how rapidly you can tap the button. By tapping the button and moving the thumb stick you can assure the ball will spin in the direction you want it too. It’s not exactly realistic, but you can also turn it off if you so wish. By tapping the white button you can also give your shot a bit of extra power. You have to do this while simultaneously completing your swing and that is one area where you can ruin your shot if your coordination is a bit out. So it comes down to whether you want to play it safe or try for that extra it of power.

The variety of courses is also excellent. There are 12 basic courses plus Tiger’s dream 18, which is a course made up of Tiger Woods’ favourite 18 holes from around the world. Around 4 of these courses are fantasy courses and some of the designs are quite interesting and also quite challenging. It’s a completely different experience playing on the fantasy courses and it gives the game a good shot of variety.

Multiplayer is also a highlight. You can play the usual skins and stroke play matches, but there’s also the addition of Speed Golf. This option pits against another player in split screen and the aim is to get the ball in the hole as quickly as possible. One of the fun parts however, is that you actually have to chase after the ball following every shot and the faster you tap the white button the faster you run. It’s extremely addictive and great fun. Truly a great addition. Golf games are always pretty good multiplayer games, but this one just takes it a step further.

About the only thing it doesn’t have is a mini golf option. Well actually, it almost does. There a few special skill zones which a are basically driving ranges where you have to hit targets in the distance, some of them moving. These aren’t just flat fairways, they have targets up on hills, guarded by trees and just in some generally tricky positions. They just add even more variety and value to an already feature packed game.

I’m probably sounding just a bit too positive here so lets get down to the negatives. After taking a shot, the camera will often not give you a clear view of where the ball is in relation to the hole, so when you want to apply some spin it’s hard to tell how much is required. Also, you can’t save mid round. This is slightly annoying as you can’t just get in a few quick holes before going to bed, although it only takes about 20-25 minutes to complete a round so it’s not too big of a problem and well, I mentioned that it was a bit too easy to strike the ball well each time, but apart from these small faults it really doesn’t fall down in any area apart from graphically.

On first sight, TIGER WOODS 2003 is a very good looking game. Look a bit harder however and it doesn’t quite stand up. The golfers themselves look fairly good, Tiger especially, the animation is top notch and they also alter their stance based on the position they have to hit the ball from. So if the ball is on a hill, your player will alter his stance to keep himself upright on the hill, so you won’t see players standing in impossible and unrealistic positions. The close up cut scenes on players face after taking a shot also reveal some nice detail, although some players look better than others.

The courses however, don’t look quite so good. For one thing, the water at times, looks very poor, not taking any advantage of the Xbox’s power, I think we’ve all seen what the Xbox can do with water effects and in this case they just arent up to scratch. Sometimes it’s a scrolling texture and other times it just looks like a mirror. The mirror effect isn’t that bad really, it’s not as if the water traps on a golf course are going to have huge waves, but the other effects on some of the more open water areas are poor. The grass textures are reasonable enough and obviously they are going to be the main thing you see in a golf game, but the trees are basic and although they do move with the breeze, get up close to them and they look very poor, as do the buildings that surround some courses. The cliff faces are just basically a brown blur and some of the mountains don’t look too bad at all but they are still blurry up close. The textures have the look of an N64 game at times actually. Then there’s the crowd, I don’t know what’s going on there, they look like characters from a 15 year old PC or Amiga game, triangular heads, no facial features and no textures. They would have been better off leaving the crowds out all together as they don’t exactly add to the immersion, seeing as they look so poor.

Don’t think that it looks like complete garbage though, as I said earlier, at first sight it does look very good and it does look decent even after putting it under the microscope, it all runs nice and smoothly and it is a golf game after all, so you wouldn’t really be expecting it to blow you away graphically, but it would have been nice to see some more detail.

The sound is quite good, as you would expect, there’s nothing to get overly excited about, but the sounds that are there sound as they should. There are some nice ambient effects which help add to the immersion and the commentary is repetitive, but pretty sparse so it doesn’t grate on the nerves. The music is of the rock/alternitive variety, nothing inspiring and no custom soundtracks.