Start your journey down the “Road to the Masters” with Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 12: The Masters. Embark on the “Road to the Masters” as your career begins on the amateur tour and work your way through Q School, Nationwide Tour, and finally, the PGA TOUR. Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 12: The Masters has something for every golf fan and is the must-have title this year! Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 12: The Masters is also PlayStation Move Compatible.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters is a multiplayer golf game for PlayStation 3, that allows players to step into the shoes of some of the greatest pro golfers on the PGA tour as they go for the ultimate prize in the sport, the Masters title. Play championship courses like Augusta National Golf Club, Royal Melbourne Golf Club (Australia), Atlanta Athletic Club, TPC San Antonio, St Andrews Link and others. Rely on the advice of your trusted caddie. Relive memorable Masters moments and climb in the PGA ranks in your quest for the legendary green jacket. Additional features include: an all-new career mode, commentary by Jim Nantz and David Feherty, 4-player support online and offline, over 20 in-game golfers and full PlayStation Move support.
The Quest for the Green Jacket Begins
Winning the Masters Tournament represents one of the sport’s greatest accomplishments. Now for the first time in franchise history you too can take part in golf’s annual springtime tradition at Augusta National by competing against the world’s best for the legendary green jacket. Start your journey down the “Road to the Masters” with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters. Rely on the advice of your caddie to strategize and focus your game while feeling the intensity of the PGA TOUR season. Your career begins on the amateur tour and work your way through the Nationwide Tour, Q-School, and finally, the PGA TOUR. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters has something for every golf fan and is the must-have title this year.
View larger.
View larger.
PlayStation Move
The PlayStation Move control system offers a new and innovative gaming experience for PlayStation 3 (PS3) by fusing realistic, high-definition gaming along with accurate, intuitive control. Consisting of PlayStation Move motion controller, the PlayStation Eye camera and the optional PlayStation Move Navigational controller, the PlayStation Move controller system enables sophisticated motion control and immersive gameplay only possible on PlayStation 3.
Key Game Features
- Play the Hallowed Grounds of Augusta National Golf Club – For the first time ever in Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchise history, players will now be able to compete at Augusta National Golf Club. Experience the historic holes that comprise Amen Corner and make a run at capturing the distinctive Green Jacket.
- Masters Moments – Relive and play through memorable, historic moments of the Masters. Take the challenge and see where you measure up against the greats who have played in this legendary tournament.
- PlayStation Move Support – Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters for PS3 contains complete PlayStation Move support (Move motion and navigational controllers and PlayStation Eye camera).
- The Caddie Experience – Play like a true pro with a caddie alongside, assisting and supporting your every swing. The caddie will evaluate all pre-shot factors, such as wind, lie, and yardage, to provide a recommended shot. As your caddie’s knowledge of each course increases, he will level up through “Course Mastery,” making him even more valuable to your success.
- Climb the World Ranking – Feel the pressure of an all-important putt while working your way through the amateur tour, the Nationwide Tour and Q-School. Perform well enough to earn a spot on the PGA Tour. In Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 12: The Masters, the all-new career mode closely mirrors the real-life journey of an amateur golfer as they strive to make it onto the PGA Tour.
- Gameplay Enhancements – Enjoy new features like Fast Golf which allow you to complete a full round in half the time. The new save system provides the flexibility to save, and later resume, your round at any point. In Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters, players will have the ability to jump start their career mode as they will be able to carry over their XP from last year’s game.
- Broadcast Presentation – Jim Nantz teams up with David Feherty to lead the all-new broadcast presentation package. Enhanced visuals showcase high fidelity character models and course details that bring to life all the sights and sounds of a round of golf at Augusta National. For the first time in franchise history, the game will feature 3D grass, which will appear and respond more like actual grass.
- New Players – Over 20 professional golfers to choose from, including Zach Johnson (2007 Masters Champion) and Bubba Watson (2010 Ryder Cup — Team USA).
- Championship Courses – Take on the best of the best on sixteen of the world’s most celebrated courses, including Augusta National Golf Club, Royal Melbourne Golf Club (Australia), Atlanta Athletic Club, TPC San Antonio, St Andrews Links and Pebble Beach Golf Links.
Additional Screenshots
The best championship courses.
View larger. |
True caddie experience.
View larger. |
A lineup of 20 pro golfers.
View larger. |
An all-new career mode.
View larger. |
- For the first time ever in Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchise history, players will now be able to compete at Augusta National Golf Club.
- Relive and play through memorable, historic moments of the Masters. Take the challenge and see where you measure up against the greats who have played in this legendary tournament.
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour: The Masters for PS3 contains complete PlayStation Move support (Move motion and navigational controllers and PlayStation Eye camera).
- Play like a true pro with a caddie alongside, assisting and supporting your every swing. The caddie will evaluate all pre-shot factors, such as wind, lie, and yardage, to provide a recommended shot.
- Enjoy new features like Fast Golf which allow you to complete a full round in half the time. The new save system provides the flexibility to save, and later resume, your round at any point.
List Price: $ 59.95
Price: $ 37.00
Complacent, “Good-Enough” Programming,
Tiger Woods 2012 is a disappointing manifestation of complacent, “good-enough” programming by a team of talented and brilliant, but uninterested programmers, unwilling to work up a sweat for the money they receive. Many of the positive reviews of this game here on Amazon were clearly posted by company shills, while some of the negative reviews, as others have noted, have mysteriously been deleted without explanation. We’ll see how long this review lasts.
My own biggest disappointment with this game is that there is no 3D support. In December of 2010, I purchased a Sony Bravia 3D set primarily because I assumed (foolishly) that EA Sports would follow the lead of other PlayStation game creators and provide 3D support for Tiger Woods 2012. MLB The Show, for example, supports 3D and makes you feel like you’re actually at the ball park. It’s incredible. Even five-dollar downloadable games on the PlayStation Network now support 3D. Yet EA thought that the current release was “good enough.” Let’s not overwork ourselves. Not too many people own 3D sets at the moment. We won’t get into trouble with those paying our salaries. Next year, we’ll probably be working somewhere else anyway. Who cares about 3D? It’s “good enough.”
Imagine looking out on a 3D golf course or lining up your putt actually seeing the undulations in the green, making the grid unnecessary. This was a golden opportunity missed by EA. Oh well, the game’s “good enough” as it is.
Another illustration of lazy programming is the audio. This game reminds me of PC programs from the mid 1990s, which couldn’t do motion video and audio at the same time without stuttering. After certain holes in TW 2012, music starts playing then abruptly comes to a grinding halt, like a tone-arm’s being knocked off an old-fashioned record player. After the scorecard finally appears, the music lurches onward again. How did this ever pass beta testing? Throughout the game, there are intermittent pops and stammers where sound and video cannot seem to coexist in peace. On a PC, one would probably say that this problem is due to insufficient system RAM or a slow CPU, etc. But EA Sports knows precisely what hardware will be used to play this game. So there’s no excuse for the program’s lethargic behavior. Oh well, the game’s “good enough.” We don’t care if clunky programming eventually puts the game out of business entirely, like Microsoft’s Flight Sim, which was likewise plagued by uninterested programmers, reusing obsolete code to avoid the work of writing new code. Unless there is a marked change of attitude on the part of the programmers, the Tiger Woods franchise will surely suffer the same fate as MS Flight Sim, and very soon.
Tiger’s in-game commentary about the Augusta course is thoroughly depressing. He sounds almost suicidal. His post-round press conferences (in the real world) are invariably fascinating as he dissects his game and the round he just played. In past years, Tiger’s EA in-game commentary was superb and added much to the game. He was enthusiastic. In TW 2012, however, he says nothing interesting whatever. “Don’t hit the ball past the green.” “Don’t hit the ball in the water.” Yes, Tiger, even I knew that already. I can almost see Tiger walking away in a rush from the EA Sports microphone the first moment he could get away, unconcerned about whether he had contributed anything substantive. He didn’t. It was “good enough.” Now let me out of here. I need some pancakes.
Other elements of the game that I dislike are: the annoying caddy (the new Clippy, as someone said) — the removal of the classic putter — the overly sensitive “precision” putter, which can knock a two-foot putt fifty yards off the green — the EA Sports advertisement popping up between literally every single shot! — the removal of player-reaction animations — the extra charges for downloading courses that were previously part of the on-disk collection — the overly rapid fairway-shot preview, which doesn’t permit you to see the terrain over which the ball will fly en route to the landing zone — the lackluster Move controller support — I could go on.
One final observation to document my assertion that the programmers were not too interested in doing a meticulous job on this year’s version of the game. In certain views of the golfer, there are stray, white pixels surrounding him, indicating that the foreground is not even cleanly rendered over the background. Now, in early beta versions of a program, such a sloppy cut-out is common and to be expected. But this sloppiness should be cleaned up before final release. It wasn’t cleaned up here. Because the release of this game, unlike most games, had a hard deadline (the week before the real Masters tournament at Augusta), the game had to be shipped as it was at that moment — unfinished and unpolished, due to a complacent, careless, wait-til-the-last-minute attitude…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|Still not definitive, but an excellent edition,
So, EA Sports is back with yet another edition of their long running golf franchise. There are surely two things that fans have been asking for for years in the Tiger Woods franchise. First is to play as a virtual Phil Mickelson, and the second is to play at Augusta National.
Luckily, this year one of those dreams has been fulfilled. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 comes complete with the home of the Masters, and the entire game, from the introduction, to the menus, to the special features is decked out to display the beautiful course located in northern Georgia. From the second the game turns on, it sounds like a telecast of the Masters is starting.
Along with the new course, another new feature is called Masters Moments, where you re-live some of the greatest memories from Masters lore, from Tiger Woods’ miracle chip-in in 2005 to Gene Sarazen’s double eagle in 1935. If you can perfectly replicate all of these moments, you’ll receive an automatic bid to the Masters tournament once you reach the PGA tour in career mode.
Speaking of Career mode, it has been fleshed out and expanded wonderfully. This year’s edition now includes an Amateur Tour, the Nationwide Tour, Q-School, and finally, the PGA tour. This adds a wonderful layer of depth to the game, and it really makes it feel like you’re working your way up from the bottom, as opposed to just starting and winning on the PGA tour right out of the gate. In addition to the events, there are also challenge and sponsor events each week. Challenge events consist of matching you against a PGA/LPGA Tour player in one of the game’s various modes, such as Match Play, Skins, or Battle Golf. If you win, you earn an enormous amount of XP. Sponsor events have you play a few holes in order to accomplish certain goals, such as minimizing your amount of putts or hitting all the greens in regulation. Doing so will unlock certain items or gear from that sponsor that you can use without having to pay for them.
Your coach from the last two years, Hank Haney, is no longer present in this version, but he is replaced by a very helpful, nameless caddie who will provide you with some advice and at least two options for each shot before you take it. You can choose to take his advice, or you can create a custom shot of your own. If you liked things better the old way, the caddie option can be turned off entirely. For the most part, the advice and shot placements you get from the caddie are rather good, but at times he can lead you astray if you automatically choose his first choice each time. Luckily, your caddie levels up as well as you gain your own XP, so his choices gradually become more reliable and his putt reads improve significantly as your career progresses.
The PS3 version of the game can be played using the Playstation Move controller, and for the most part, the actual mechanics of the golf swing are duplicated beautifully. Slight turns and twists of the motion controller can impart a slight draw or fade on the ball, whereas a strong derivation from the swing plane can result in a very errant shot. Putting in particular can take quite a while to get accustomed to, especially when the tension starts to rise and your putt meter disappears very quickly. There are times when the Move controls don’t work as well as they could. For one, there must always be a wireless controller on and functioning. The Navigation controller seems to serve no purpose at all, and the wireless controller only needs to be used for switching clubs if you want to create a custom shot. Unfortunately, you aren’t able to slightly alter your caddie’s suggestions, either. Instead of simply moving your caddie’s suggestion a few feet to the left, you have to create your own custom shot from scratch. The controls for adjusting your shot or lining up your putt can be finicky at first, but after a few rounds they become very intuitive. Though the Move controller can also be used to navigate menus, it is pretty much a disaster, as many of the menu options scroll right/left as well as up/down. It can be gotten used to, but the controls are very sensitive and you’re better off using the standard controller to navigate the menus.
Using the Move controls adds a new layer of depth, and it no longer makes the game too easy. It can be a challenge to craft a consistent swing to pull off good shots, and you’ll struggle to keep your rounds below par. Once you get the hang of it, however, it’s a great feeling of accomplishment when you nail that approach shot within 3 feet or sink that tournament winning putt on the 18th green. To make the game a little easier, the focus system introduced last year remains in effect, allowing you to power boost, improve your accuracy, or use putt preview.
There are other facets of the game that just aren’t up to what they could be. Though the commentary team is improved…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|