Review: Stephen "Chaos" Ruxton
Editor/Design: Allan "Zardon" Campbell

 

When it comes to sports games EA Sports usually reigns supreme. I’m sure most of you are familiar with their NHL hockey series and their Madden football series; well today we are going to have a look at a much slower paced sports simulation, Tiger Woods 2004. This new version of the Tiger Woods golf consumes a whopping 1.89 Gigs of disk space for a full install. The package consists of 3 CD’s, the Install disk, the Media disk and the Courses disk. All 3 of the disks are required during the install and then to actually finish you need to insert the 1st cd again to complete the install.

Ok now that we have installed the game, it is time to fire it up and have a look around. There are many different ways you can play this game, so for today we are going to concentrate on the Career mode and Simulation mode.

What is EA SPORTS Game Face?

” EA SPORTS Game Face is possibly the most innovative feature in an EA SPORTS title to date. This revolutionary tool puts users in the game like never before, and it’s only in Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 2004. Create and personalize a golfer and adjust tons of attributes such as body and hairstyles, clothing, celebrations, and more. When you are through, take your golfer out on the course, earn money, and BEAT TIGER WOODS ”

The next step is to choose your golfer. If you took the time to create your own player model, your name will be listed as an available golfer and if you don’t appear here just click on the create golfer and recreate your player.

Once you have selected a player just click next to proceed to the game play options. Now you are presented with several choices; I strongly recommend going into the Golf Lessons. The main reason is so that your character gains valuable attributes that they can use to build their skill level. The lessons are simple and straight forward so even if you have previous experience with this type of game, go for it.

Each lesson will cost you $750 but the cash came easy so trust me when I say it will be money well spent. Now that you have completed the 4 lessons you should take a look at your players attributes. Here you can buy additional attributes for your player. In the beginning these attributes are cheap and can be purchased for $130 per additional attribute. You can purchase from any of the 5 available categories. You can buy power points, long game points, recovery points, short game points and putting points.

Now that we have configured the attributes of our player it is time to move on and experience the different types of game play. We start off at the amateur skill level, and after clicking on the World Tour option you will see a world map with 3 courses that you can play. The courses that you have access to are marked with a red ball. Once you have decided on which course to play, just click the icon to enter that section.

For each of the 3 courses that are available, you have to complete and capture a medal in 6 events prior to making the championship course available. Once you have completed the championship course you are ready to move on to the next course and next 6 medal events.

After completing the championship courses you will also unlock access to different items such as new equipment, courses and other features that will help keep the game interesting as you progress though the various skill levels. Below you can see the different options for game types. You can play a casual round, with or without gimmies and mulligans. You can play a tournament against the tour pros, or you might just want to play the front or back 9 holes on whichever course you select.

 

 

Next: Game Options