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Game Reviews

PGA Tour Pro

Highs
Photo-realistic graphics and video-captured players; PIP windows are fun.

Lows
Poor club suggestion; targeting arrow limits play; requuires a monster system to enjoy.

Final Verdict
PGA Tour Pro is great to look at, but the gameplay doesn't match the graphics.

70%

Category: Sports

Published by: EA Sports







Review courtesy of our friends at PC GAMER.

BoxThere’s no denying that EA Sports has created some of the best sports games on the market today. From the incredibly fun Triple Play series to the mind-boggling good NHL series, EA easily dominates the sports gaming scene on PC.

But when it comes to golf, EA (and every other company) has long been trying to catch Access Software and its king-of-the-hill Links series. Thanks to its gorgeous graphics, outstanding features, and realistic gameplay, Links LS has been atop the leader board ever since its release last fall.

This latest update of EA’s PGA Tour series may not blow the Links dynasty out of the water just yet, but it does comes close to matching Links LS in one way: the graphics. The courses look almost photo realistic. From the clean-cut greens and the reflections on the water to the shadows of the trees, EA has created another game that is absolutely stunning to look at. And you never see the graphics redraw -- even on a slow machine. The only time you’ll question the look of the game is when you are stuck close to a tree. The trees tend to get a little pixelious up close, but the rest of the time, the graphics are incredible.

Faithful recreations of PGA Tour Pro’s three courses help show off these stunning graphics with awesome results. The Tournament Player’s Club of Scottsdale Stadium is a sandy, wide-open course in Arizona that is a great course for getting used to the feel of the game. Once you feel confident in your hitting, tee off at the Bay Hill Club in Orlando, Florida, which is long and mostly flat, with lots of water and sand traps to give you trouble. But if you want some real fun, load up Pebble Beach Golf Links. Located on the spectacular California coastline, Pebble Beach (provided on a separate CD) gives you plenty of breathtaking views -- and lots of hills, water hazards, and sand traps.

EA provides three Picture-In-Picture (PIP) windows to let you view all aspects of these great courses. They also give the game a nice TV-viewing feel and a fluidity that you don’t find in most golf sims. On PIP 1, you can have a tower-cam view, which watches the ball from the side; a gallery view, which follows the ball from a fan’s perspective; a ball-cam view, which trails along behind the ball; or a blimp-cam view, which follows the ball from overhead. You can also randomize PIP 1 to spice up the viewing. On PIP 2, you can have a view from the pin or from where your ball is landing. PIP 3 is a targeting PIP, which shows you the shot you are aiming for after you set the targeting arrow. This is great for hitting a tricky shot when you can’t see where your ball is going to land. Each of these PIPs is easily customizable to your viewing pleasure.

What isn’t so customizable is your player. You can play as one of four different amateurs or one of 14 pro players, including Fuzzy Zoeller, Davis Love III, Chip Beck, and Craig Stadler. All of these players look fabulous in their video-captured form -- even if their shadows are always falling the same way. But because they are video-captured, you can’t customize your player’s look in any way.

After you see the beautiful players and the gorgeous graphics, you’ll soon realize that that’s the best PGA Tour Pro has to offer. EA has made the fatal mistake of offering style over substance.

When you start playing a round, you’ll notice some strange things. First off, when you select a club from your bag, PGA Tour Pro shows you what distance you can expect to hit with each club. But in many instances, these ranges are misleading. The distances are set up for maximum hits with stiff club shafts and don’t reflect the player conditions you set up, so you never know for sure how far you can hit your clubs. You have to guess distances depending on whether your player uses stiff, regular, or flexible club shafts. Obviously, this makes club selection a dubious process.

Club selection is even more dubious when your caddie gets involved. Many times, the caddie suggestions for club selection are woefully wrong. If you have a long second shot to the green, you’ll most likely be given your driver to hit off of the fairway; this is not a typical club selection. And one time, I was surprised to see the caddie give me a 5 wood to hit the ball 91 yards -- out of a sand trap!

Once you’ve ignored your caddie’s club suggestion, you’ll want to try ignoring the targeting arrow, too. It’s supposed to tell you how far you should be able to hit with your selected club. But in reality, it limits your playing ability. There are many times when your targeting arrow won’t let you hit the full distance of the club you’re holding -- even if you are using stiff shafts. For example, I was stuck in a sand trap that was 91 yards from the pin. I picked up a sand wedge. The club selection menu said I could hit a sand wedge 90 yards, but the targeting arrow would only let me hit the ball 40 yards. Granted, I am hitting out of a sand trap, but with a good hit, I should have been able to hit it farther than that. I switched to a pitching wedge, and the targeting arrow would only let me hit the ball 43 yards. So I gave up and hit the ball hard and accurate -- and only went 40 or so yards, so I was stuck chipping the ball the rest of the way in because the computer wouldn’t let me hit the full distance with my chosen club.

After you’ve overcome the obstacles of the club menu, your caddie’s poor advice, and the targeting arrow, there are few surprises in rest of PGA’s game. You’ll use the same swing meter found in most golf sims where you try and perfectly time three clicks of the mouse, to hit the ball. This isn’t nearly as intuitive as FPS: Golf’s TrueSwing approach, where you use your mouse to hit the ball in much the same way as you do in Virtual Pool, but the old swing meter does the trick pretty well. EA has added one new element to the meter, though. It’s called the Risk Meter. It doesn’t affect your hitting in any way, but it does tell you how risky the shot you’re planning is. It’s a handy little device that becomes helpful when hitting tough shots.

Another strange situation found in PGA Tour Pro is chipping. When you’re near the green, it’s only natural to attempt a chip shot. But PGA Tour Pro doesn’t switch to its chipping meter; it stays on the normal swing meter. This seems strange at first, and reveals yet another of the game’s weaknesses: The chipping meter will only let you target the ball to go up to 18 or so yards. Any farther than that, and you have to use the normal swing meter and just barely hit the ball. EA would have done better to either do away with the chipping meter altogether or lift the targeting restrictions that plague every aspect of the game.

When you reach the green, you can use two different guides to help you make your putts: a putting grid or putting lines. The lines are a great help in determining the slopes of the greens. Unfortunately, neither the lines nor the grid will show you the breaks in the green all the way to the hole on super long putts. So, just like in real life, you are left to your own instincts to make your putts.

Possibly the strangest thing you’ll discover about PGA Tour Pro is your ability to change course conditions for each player. You don’t set up course conditions when you select which course you want to play. Instead, you determine the course conditions when creating your players. So Player 1 could be playing on the tough course conditions of breezy wind, fast greens, and heavy roughs while Player 2 could be playing with no wind, slow greens, and short roughs. This is just silly, unrealistic, and downright odd.

The most unrealistic part of PGA Tour Pro has to be the system requirements. Don’t expect to play the game on the required system requirements and enjoy it. PGA Tour Pro runs incredibly slow on

a Pentium 120; even on a P166, you’ll have to wait three to four seconds to see a shot executed. If you want to really play this game without a wait, you’ll have to have a P233 or better.

If all of these negatives don’t turn you off, you can play PGA Tour Pro against your friends with a LAN, modem, or the Internet. EA makes it real easy for you to play any of these ways, and you can even compete in Internet tournaments of up to 80 players. Whew! That’s some competition.

Unfortunately for EA, PGA Tour Pro is no competition for Links LS. The graphics are incredible to look at, but the gameplay just doesn’t hold up to the same high standard.