Get in the swing

So you have a choice. If bobble-head golfers, speed-running caddies and blazing clubs are your thing, head straight to Everybody's Golf: World Tour - a brilliant game in its own right. But if you take your golf a teensy bit more seriously, then Tiger 'nine times PGA Player Of The Year and not stopping yet' Woods is the one for you.

Tap out

It's nine years since EA's techni-magicians created the 'analogue' method of golf control - using the right stick to pull back and thwack the ball like a tiny, thumb-controlled, golf club. Analogue is still here in 2009 and now offers even greater control over your shot. The smart new Feedback feature shows you exactly where you're slicing or hooking. A few minutes using this method and you'll never want to return to ye olde tap-tap-tap power meter controls again. Although that is still here, for when your thumb is having an off day.

Not all of PGA Tour 09's other improvements make such a dramatic impact. The new Club Tuner, for example, can help offset problems with your swing, but will only appeal if your evening and weekend hobbies include fiddling with power bars and gazing at percentages.

Speech impediment

Tiger's very own coach, Hank Haney (Best Golf Instructor In Dallas 2003!) is new, too. Hank offers advice and drills geared to raising your Power, Accuracy and Putting stats. Good stuff - but his droning delivery can makes it feel like you've befriended a railway tannoy.

It's left to Tiger Wood's more familiar features to make PGA Tour 09 a golfer's best friend. For example, there is the always brilliant Photo GameFace, enabling you to bring your very own gurning head to the bemused spectators at St Andrews.

EA haven’t stinted on the online features either, somehow managing to improve on last year's extensive efforts. GamerNet brings you challenges 'live' as you play a hole. Better still, four online players can now take their strokes simultaneously. This doesn't just shorten game time to less than the life of a medium-sized sun, but also uses rainbow-hued streamers to show your rivals’ shots. Pretty.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about PGA Tour 09 is that it's a good walk spoiled by the scenery. Woods veterans may well be used to rough-looking, scratchy distant tree trunks. But for real-life golfers hoping for their next-gen console to paint a next-gen countryside, it could be a distraction. Compare to other EA sports games, such as the remarkable Fight Night, and weep.

Improving on perfection

The last thing you want from PGA Tour Golf is a radical overhaul. Incremental improvements on what's an already near-perfect formula will do very nicely, thank you - and that's exactly what the latest edition delivers. You may end up never wanting to hear another word from Hank Haney's robotic mouth but at least you'll have spent many happy hours on the green getting there.

GAME's Verdict

• The near-flawless controls we've come to expect from the series.
• So many courses that even Tiger Woods probably hasn't heard of half of them.
• Limitless replay value, courtesy of the extensive and well-implemented online features.

• Not as pretty as you might hope, especially when you're playing online.
• Hank Haney and the new commentators will make your eardrums cry. Stick on a CD instead.
• Everybody's Golf: World Tour offers more party fun (and blazing clubs) per pound.

Review by: Mark Scott
Version Tested: PS3
Review Published: 09.09.2008