Last year’s game doesn’t seem to have been out for long (it was only August last year) and here’s TW12 already? I can only presume that EA think that this year Tiger’s sex-addiction hit career is going to completely implode and so rushed this pretty but substance-lacking half-sequel out on the shelves while The Masters is all still fresh in everyone’s mind. One thing’s for sure, it’s going to be fresh in poor Rory McIlroy’s for some time.

I immediately detected that TW12 has been given another slight graphical ‘lick of paint’, so, while course-side buildings, spectators and suchlike are still very low detail, the trees seem to be genuinely random now, so no two look alike which gives the scenery a more organic look. “The Road to the Masters” is the main difference for this year’s game, and this is basically just another career mode with you earning the right to compete in the famousest (it’s not a real word) golf championship in the world. You can do this by passing qualifying school, competing on the tour and by successfully replaying ‘Masters Moments’ (a series of the most memorable scoring feats from past Masters tournaments).

Apart from the focus on the Masters, the beautiful Augusta National course and the option to play The Presidents Cup, the other main feature is the caddy who will “read” a putt for you and even line up shots, giving you the correct amount of power to apply and even allowing for slope and wind when lining you up. He will however sometimes just bail out and say “uhhh... I’ve got no shot for you here” and leave you to aim a shot anyway, making you wonder what you pay him for. For veterans this will seem an unnecessary addition that makes the game far too easy, but the point is that, like you, he’s not very good at the start (CRAP, in fact) and you improve his putt reading and course knowledge by achieving certain objectives on each of the courses you play during a tour season, to hopefully become the perfect shot-planning and putt-reading team eventually.

As before you can make your own player character and use a digitised “Gameface” via an Xbox Live camera or by uploading a higher res image of your mug to EA’s website and then downloading it back to your 360. The results of this process seem to vary considerably but my golfer does, for better or worse, look more like me than ever before, but thankfully you can change your golfer’s appearance at any time. The game’s ladies still don’t look overly attractive or look particularly feminine and, perhaps shockingly in these days of mo-cap everything, all the golfers (including new boys Rickie Fowler, Bubba Watson and Zach Johnson) have generic swings that lack any character or personality. I’m not even convinced that Tiger’s is his, and if it is it has none of the club-twiddling, leaning and mannerisms that he has these days. The players do look quite smart in their varied clothing and the player models react to shots more realistically than ever before, so don’t just act like a golf robot that switches off as soon as the ball has been hit—it’s nice attention to detail that hasn’t necessarily been lavished elsewhere.

The 15 courses (2 less than last year!) are: The Augusta National Course, TPC Sawgrass, St. Andrews, Pebble Beach, East Lake, Celtic Manor, Liberty National, The Greenbrier, TPC Scottsdale, Whistling Straits, Waialae Hawaii, The Dunes Course at Costa Navarino, Atlanta Athletic Club, TPC San Antonio, The Royal Melbourne Golf Club and the 9-hole Augusta National Par 3 Course (as used annually for the pre-championship tournament) is in there as a little bonus. There are a truckload of other courses (19!) already available to download for the Xbox 360—some of which are what I’d term an exorbitantly price (320-560 Microsoft Points each, with two packs “Birdie” and “Eagle” featuring 5 and 13 courses and costing 1200 and 2800 MS points respectively.) Some DLC courses have even been (cheekily) inserted into the career schedule, so you have to skip the event if you don’t want to or can’t afford to buy the course required. I don’t want to get on a high horse here but I personally think this is the most cynical proffering and use of premium DLC yet, and with more courses available as DLC than are actually on the game disc you may well feel that “EA have got a bloody nerve”, especially as TW regulars will feel they have bought some of the courses already, 9 months ago or less.

In-game weather is now truly dynamic and the wind isn’t constant and easily allowed for either; meaning that you need to wait for the wind to drop or at least settle in a constant ‘blow’ before hitting a shot (although it seems to constantly swirl around in a circle at the 12th at Augusta for some reason) or your carefully aimed and perfectly hit shot may be blown 20-30 yards off line by a sudden gust. If it comes on to rain during a round this’ll also affect the speed of the greens substantially, and the rain may also stop, leaving the greens wet for a while before drying out and speeding up again…

The “True Aim” mode (which was frankly, rubbish) has been dropped and instead we get a new “Choke” tweak for shots that realistically simulates your player gripping the club lower down, which means you can swing to 100% power but hit the ball slightly less distance. Sadly they didn’t bother to alter the way the player actually grips the club. Once again shots out of rough or bunkers seem to have been completely randomised and the guideline percentage distance you’re quoted literally means nothing when you’re in a bad lie. While a bad lie in the rough obviously affects the accuracy of a shot and the distance it’s possible to hit the ball, this wild inaccuracy and inconsistency isn’t very realistic for the typical shot with an average lie in short rough. While any increase in the difficulty in a TW game is a good thing in my opinion, this isn’t the way to do it.

Focus is recharged with good shots that don’t get “tweaked” by you, and items can be bought from the pro shop to enhance the recovery speed of the focus gauge. If this all sounds a bit too fiddly and like cheating then you can of course play the game on “Tour Pro” setting which doesn’t allow for any power-boosted shots or in-flight spin control.

Focus is vital to reading the greens as well as fine tuning accuracy, and pressure moments also rob you of focus. This can leave you in the unenviable position of not having a putt preview or a caddy read or your precision putting gauge available when putting for an eagle (which is nearly always a pressure moment). This wouldn’t be so bad if weren’t so difficult to judge your putt’s strength without the precision gauge, which, you soon come to realise, spoils you rotten with its accuracy and makes the game incredibly hard if you have to judge putts by the length of the player’s backswing.

I’m delighted to say that apart from some people reporting problems with the 3-click control method (3 button presses instead of using the analogue stick to swing the club) the controls seem relatively bug-free, although we have had the game lock up when saving or quitting a game.

We reported a daft habit that the replay cameras had in last year’s game; they frequently pan out so far during a shot that you can’t see where the ball is (even on the 42” screen we playtested the game on). Tiburon seem to have improved things slightly here but the cameras still lack a simple “view from the flag or hole end” facility, often inexplicably switch away from the view you want to see the shot from, and during gameplay the camera still frequently cuts away just as the ball reaches the hole, leaving you momentarily clueless as to whether the ball actually went in or not! Sometimes the replay camera will even be placed behind trees, leaderboards or, ironically enough, a camera tower! How daft is that? It makes you want to slap the virtual TV director just like when this sort of thing happens when you’re watching a real sporting event on TV, the difference being that it happens once in a blue moon during real sport coverage but all the time in TW12. There is also still (it was in last year’s game too) what can only be described as a bug that means that sometimes during a shot the camera will cut off while the ball is still moving; the screen goes BLACK until the ball rolls to its eventual position. It even happens with putts on particularly quick or slopey greens! (of which there are plenty thanks to the inclusion of Augusta).

As usual in the TW series every improvement seems to be countered by a new or recurring flaw, so while Tiburon (finally) seem to have got the rules regarding drops after the ball is hit into a hazard, in water or out of bounds correct (most of the time) you still aren’t given the all the genuine options of what to do with a ball that’s landed in a hazard. There’s still no “gimme” option during matchplay! Given the fact that the all-matchplay President’s Cup is featured in this year’s offering it seems a stupid thing to omit (and your caddy even calls some putts “a gimme”). And returning to the Presidents Cup (a team event similar to last year’s Ryder Cup that pits the USA against a “Rest of the World” team), I was again amused to see that the game doesn’t actually contain enough likenesses of US male players or RoW players to actually stage the event, so a selection of Brits and Women golfers have to make up the numbers!– Oh dear, surely an officially-licensed PGA game should have more real players on the roster?-Especially when you compare the number of players on offer to FIFA or Madden. Also as the game loves to spout the rules of golf at you (until you turn them off), it’s kind of ironic that the game frequently flouts them, or at least doesn’t allow you to take advantage of all of them. At least you can now save a game mid-round, so dedication to a game of TW12 is less likely to cause spousal/mum-related problems.

So there you have it; another flawed Tiger Woods game that looks a bit nicer and brings some good new ideas to the table, but does so in its usual rushed and frankly, half-arsed way. It’s still just about the best game of golf out there (John Daly Pro Stroke fans may argue that point) and the presentation is second to none, but really needs more dedication, care and attention if it’s to recapture its best form, not unlike poor old Tiger himself.