Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 [X360]

"This year's Tiger Woods is going to change videogame golf forever." I remember thinking those very thoughts when I first saw Tiger Woods 08 at EA Sports' Tiburon Studio. Maybe it wouldn't change the way the actual act of golf is played - the controller is still in your hand after all - but the boatload of GamerNet features and the ridiculously cool facial mapping technology meant that the extracurricular activities were going to be a serious focal point for this year's game. But would the gameplay be able to make the same leaps and bounds?

We were just recently out in Los Angeles to check out EA's entire fall lineup of products, and boy did they have a boatload of titles to flaunt at gleamy-eyed editors. Tucked away in a little corner was the key to our first hands-on with Tiger Woods 08. Two debug Xbox 360s were spinning early builds of the game, so I helped myself to my hometown favorite, the TPC at Sawgrass.

After blasting a 350 yard drive off of the first tee - a Par 4, 423-yard hole - with Mr. Woods I immediately checked the simplicity of saving a clip to upload to GamerNet. Luckily it was as easy as pressing start and selecting to save your clip: easy as pie. Actually setting the challenge and point levels would take place once you upload your piece to GamerNet. It's also important to remember that you aren't forced to upload true golf accomplishments. You can blast a driver from the fairway into a crowd of people and see how many you hit, or bounce it on the cart path and count how many times the ball bounces on the pavement. Either can be set for winning criteria on GamerNet.

But you already know all that there is to know about GamerNet and what's involved with capturing your mug and slapping it onto a golfer; what we were in LA to check out was the gameplay. From the onset it was clear that the core gameplay dynamic hadn't changed all that much. You still use the left analog to swing and the A-button or left bumper to power up your shot. One of the few significant changes that were on display for us to toy with was the new three-click swing. By pressing down on the right analog stick, a new power meter appears at the bottom of the screen. As the name would suggest, it takes three clicks of the A-button to send your ball into the air. One to get the power meter going, another to stop it to achieve the perfect -- or not so perfect -- length, and a third as the meter comes back down to stick the accuracy.

Three-click hitting probably won't be used much when you're hitting from the fairway or tee box, but it's very helpful for those in-between shots. Like when the game tells you to hit 68% of full power. Previously there would be no real way other than guesstimating at what 68% of the animation was, so now there's a true meter to let you know.