The new control scheme that we know from the PS2 and XBox is back. Just like in the current gen brother of this game you need to move back and forth with the left stick to make your hit and with the right stick you determine your spin. With bashing the power button you can make your swing more powerful and stronger. No surprises there.
Clumsy, certainly in the beginning, is the fact that the power button appears to be the left shoulder button. At the same time pushing your left stick straight forward while quickly bashing the shoulder isn't at all easy!

This fact made, at least for an amateur like me, that the difficulty degree of the game in the beginning really caused problems. After a while you'll get the hang of it, but don't expect many easy hole-in-ones!

Another difference with nextgen is the career mode that still forms the biggest chunk of the game. You won't find some options like Time Travel Mode back on the X360 but there's an extensive training present (some being incredibly difficult) and you can model your character to your liking. Luckily you can upgrade your persona already during the tutorial sessions so that after some time you can overcome even the hardest handicaps and become better and better.

This will be necessary as once training school is over, it seems like all three cpus of the X360 have only one goal: make you eat grass! This grass is also less varied than you might think. The amount of different holes is even less than half of those from the Xbox version (6 instead of 14) and for the gold lover this will most certainly be a disappointment.

In exchange you do get 6 pearls of surroundings that have been finished in the greatest detail possible, look incredibly sharp and offer the typical atmosphere of the real golf game. The water clatters against rocks, the sun shines through the clouds, trees wave in the wind and make shadows appear on the grass and sand. Grafically things are quite alright and also Tiger Woods looks like he's going to step out of your TV. Only too bad that your own character shines a bit too much and looks like he's made out of plastic. All in all, EA succeeded in transfer the relaxing effect of golfing to your living room, without a doubt thanks to the visuals.

The sound is equally relaxing and pumping techno beats are luckily not present. The audience is there but their reactions repeat themselves a bit too fast and too often. Although the commentators do their best, they don't succeed in solving the eternal problems of commenting sports games.