Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14: Take a swing at time travel

Here is a line I have never used in 15 years of writing about sport and video games: Man, that niblick is a handy club.

 

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14

From: EA Sports

For: Xbox 360, PS3

Four stars (out of five)

 

You might prefer the jigger. Or the brassie. Or the mashie. Or the cleek. And the great thing about the latest golf game is that you can use them all.

Yes, in the spirit of the man himself going all retro - he is back to No 1 in the world, and winning for fun again - Tiger Woods 14 gives gamers a chance to step back in time and have a whack with the clubs of fore, sorry, yore.

The new mode is called Legends of the Majors, a series of challenges in which you recreate great moments from golf's four biggest tournaments over a period of 120-plus years.

You play as Young Tom Morris and Gene Sarazen and Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and others, dipping into various tasks that range from extremely simple to fiendishly difficult.

The older challenges are recreated with a certain level of authenticity. So, as Morris, you whack your way around a links course with the aforementioned clubs - which hit the ball about a fifth the distance of the modern rockets - and the graphics even turn to crackly sepia tones.

I'm a sucker for any sports game that features a clutch of challenges or minigames.

Last year, Tiger Woods had a superb Legacy mode, in which you played through the key moments in Tiger's career. This Legends mode tops that.

Elsewhere, there are enough bits and pieces to keep both hardcore and casual golfing gamers happy.

All four majors are available, for the first time in a Tiger title, and the usual exhaustive career mode forms the heart of the game.

There are 22 courses, with up to 22 more available as DLC. And, in another first, you can play golf at night. It's not a wholly successful part of the game, but it's quite a novelty.

Inside the game, the swing mechanics have been tweaked but not overhauled. I've found the game to be slightly tougher than in the past two years, which is not a great problem because it was quite dumbed down. Though putting can still be a frustrating experience, just like in real life.

Presentation-wise, the game is utterly lovely. The course, scoreboard, trophy presentation and broadcast visuals are top notch.

Tiger Woods might win another major now his life seems back on track, but I'm not quite sure where his video game can go from here.

Does it need to come out every year? Possibly not, but there will be few complaints if it keeps improving the product.