Wii game Play

[howmanyletters]

To those responsible for me throwing my wii remote,

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08!! What a brilliant idea and a pants result.

I picked up the 07 game and found it to be really good, the right amount of skill required to progress and good progressive gameplay. When I saw 08 I thought great, should be even better.

How wrong could I be? It all started so well. With no skill enhancements at the start of the tiger challenge, gameplay was a doddle and the points started to come in thick and fast. But then, the more skilled I became, the harder the game became. All the basic rules of physics were thrown away and frustration became a standard feeling after playing.

At the start of the game using a standard swing, tilting the wii remote generated fade or draw and I could generally predict where the ball would land based on the wind speed and direction. Now my driving accuracy is maxed, I apply the change of direction and tilt required and the ball ignores the wind completely or reacts completely differently to before. Surely as the skills get maxed things should be a little easier?

Putting is a stroke inducement in it's own right!! My putting skill is maxed out, I use the putt preview and 12% puts me right in the hole, I return to normal putt, don't change a thing, and 12% leaves me 2 foot short!! So next time putt preview says 12% for the hole, I hit 14% to allow for buggerance factor and I shoot 7 foot beyond the hole.

Chipping is another area of frustration as you can never guess wether the short swing you try will induce 125% or 85% and wether the 125% will launch you in to orbit as it did last time or drop you short like the time before.

I love the concept of the game but I am finding myself swearing at the TV whenever I play the game as what should happen when I do as I've learnt invariably doesn't happen.

Come on EA, we pay a lot of money for these things, sort it out.

[HoleinoneP3]

Yes I have problems with all that too.

The game is really very good but with all the fiddles going on like balls bouncing at right angles to get into the bunker and balls totally ignoring wind speed etc as the game progresses.

I found originally that unless the WII remote was turned 90 deg then no fade or draw could be made to happen. However at max difficulty with all aids turned off then I find that the twisting of the remote does make a difference. However getting started was difficult because some of the training would not let you complete until a draw or fade shot was completed several times.

I have set everything to max and with no help appart from the normal information your caddie would give you. (By the way where is my caddie) and I have progressed to half of the tiger woods challenge.

I hardly ever chip because the camera angle makes it almost impossible to see the line of the shot.
Putting can be very difficult especially when the camera angle is fixed and one cannot see the hole because the players head is in the way!!
Pressing the A button zooms to the hole but you still can't see it because the up/down/level info box is right in the way.

I agree that lately the laws of physics seem to have gone out of the window.

I think being able to add spin after the ball has been hit is a cheat.

I have bought some better clubs and this seems to have made some difference to the very short shots in that now I can reduce power somewhat. The original clubs were all or nothing with virtually no control to reduce power.

I find that I putt much better without the putting aid preview just as I would in real life. The ball still defies the laws of physics sometimes by going right when it should go left.

I found that some of the training events were almost impossible when getting a ball to even on the lip of the cup got the response "Close but not close enough" I mean how much closer can you get. I managed to do a punch shot straight into the cup and it did then admit that this was close enough. Perhaps on some of the training events the programmed flag position is different to what is on the screen.



It would also be nice to be able to move the camera position with the cursor buttons so that we can see where the hole is when putting.

Sometimes the camera does not even show our shot going in the hole or even missing so it would also be nice if the camera always showed the result of our shot and the shots of other players.

With all these bugs ironed out it would be a super game because the graphics are good and it looks realistic.

[HoleinoneP3]

Still getting problems with reducing power.

For instance on the game "Target" I cannot complete the first hole because I cannot sufficiently reduce power on the HLW even swinging in slow motion I still cannot get the power down to less than 94 percent which still lands the ball too far. Cycling though the other shot selections does not help with the Pitch shot giving a first max of 104 percent which is too short and then the next step up is 120 percent which is too far.

This is my main bug bear with the game I have bought and it would be so nice if all the clubs responded reasonably to reduced swing rather than all or nothing for some shots especially the short important ones.

There are many times when certain games just cannot be completed.

The wiimote also does not seem to mimick the correct swing when sometimes a fast swing does not even register and then the player swings for you with a weak shot.

Really the only thing that controls the power is the club head speed at impact and the angle of the face to the ball. I am not sure the wiimote is giving this information correctly as sometimes a slow swing produces a powerful shot.

[s368]

> Natural fade?
> When I hit the ball with a driver or even a 2 iron, it fades left. When my pal who
> is left-handed (And possiby a servant of the devil) hits with a driver or a 2 iron,
> it fades right. The arrow shows Straight and green.
> Possibly correctable by applying the oposite fade but only if you hit for less than
> 110%. If you hit it full on, 110% even with a little slice or hook, the ball goes
> almost in a straight line. It even ignores the wind.
> If I hit it straight, I want it to go straight. (except for wind drift of course)

Thank you very much for your excellent review!

1) It was the starting point of my doubts… because I could not believe such a company made so evident mistake and missed the wind factor completely. Even Wii Sports mixture makes an excellent adding for wind – and increase the variants of the game by order.

And it looks I found. There is a setting:

Options->Difficulties->Force_of_the_wind

(it could be slightly different titles – I have a French version of the Game

By default it's set to 20%. So "normal" PGA wind – 20 km/h would be "transposed" into only 4 km/h ~ 1 m/s. Guess you neglect this on Wii Sports run either

I've set it to 100 % and now I indeed need to take into account the wind factor. Probably I will set ALL difficulties to 100 % as it would give more realistic game play (?) But for me it hard to judge because I don't play "real life" golf But the wind factor is so evident…

2) Many complaints I found about tuning the power of the shot. And of course they were more evident to notice during "getting the green/mid-range" shots.

As it pointed out there are TWO important moves: backward and forward. And I would interpret both as in REAL life… We have two objects in strike: club and ball. You need take into account the masses for both and velocities. And in real life it does not matter how you gain the club velocity just before the strike: with long backward movement plus steady forward movement OR with short backward movement plus fast forward movement.

What is important IS the velocity of your club just before the strike. But from the point of the view HOW your muscles like to do it it's easier to adjust the backward move (actually how far you put your club from the point of the strike) IN COMPARISON WITH the tuning your forward movement.

And you can do it! Simply make FULL backward move for 100% shot and HALF-WAY backward move for 50% shot: see (on TV) and adjust the POSITION of your club during the backward move! It was assumed here that your forward movements are practically the same in both cases...

P.S. To math/phys lovers I've got such a simple evaluation for a distance which you can play (without many real factors taken into account!):

L=m1/m2 * a/g*2sin(2*alpha)*twist

, where
L – the distance which you will shot
m1,m2 – masses of club and ball respectively
a,g – acceleration of your forward move (if constant and acceleration due to gravity respectively
alpha – club's loft (the angle which ball starts its fly)
twist – the length of you backward move (how far the club from ball – on the circle of your forward move[twist] of course: the club is moving on the circle, right?).

So the proportion between the DISTANCE played and the PRELIMINARY backward movement is linear: twice more preliminary twist – twice more played distance.

But I'm afraid (i.e. really hope! EA took into account many others factors: like spinning the ball, the direction of this spinning, upward force due to this spinning, air friction etc. And seeing the trajectories displayed by "history feature" on the run I strongly believe to that

3) Fades and draws (twisting/spinning the ball on the left/right). There is an explanation in "Didactics" (my French version title about how you can do that (and probably you do UN-INTЕNTIONALLY). When you twist/spin wii-mote in vertical-down position you will get the corresponding twist/spin for you ball. Pay attention!

P.S. I wish to say thanks to EA for such a complete usage of wii-mote features (by default thanks to Nintendo ! And would say the game itself (golf) is so perfectly suited for wii-mote that there was no chances don't create such a simulator

P.S. The only [true] complain – is the expected [and not gotten] reply from EA about above problems…