Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 is the last game in EA Sports’ long-running golf series to carry Woods’s name, developed by EA Tiburon for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2013. It is a solid, mature entry in a franchise that had been refining the same swing for more than a decade, and its one big idea, a trip through golf’s history, gives it a personality the annual updates around it lacked.
Trailer, via EA SPORTS MADDEN NFL.
Legends
The headline mode sends you back in time to play against Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and other legends in their prime, on the biggest stages in the sport, using the equipment and wearing the clothing of their era. The presentation changes with the decade: the picture quality, the commentary and the gear all shift, and playing a persimmon driver against Palmer is a genuinely different experience from the modern game. It is the kind of mode that makes a sports game feel like a tribute rather than a product.
The Swing
The core is the analog swing the series had built over years. Pull back, push forward, and the tempo and the line of the stick determine the shot. It is precise enough to reward practice and forgiving enough to be fun on a first evening. Putting is the weak link, as it has been in every game in the series, with a green-reading system that is more suggestion than science.
Night Golf and Twenty-Foursomes
Two additions round out the package. Night golf, with illuminated balls on darkened courses, is a novelty that stays charming longer than it should. And online play supports groups of up to twenty-four in what the game calls a twenty-foursome, which turns a round into an event.
Where It Falls Short
It is an annual sports game, and most of it is the previous year’s game with a new mode on top. The courses outside the Legends tour are familiar. The career mode is a grind of tournaments with little structure. The graphics were at the end of their generation and look it. And the licensing that makes the Legends mode possible also means the roster of playable modern pros is thinner than the sport deserved.
The Verdict
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 is a good golf game with one excellent idea, and it closed a chapter of the series with more dignity than most farewells manage. If you want a round with Nicklaus in his prime, this is still the place.
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