When I found the always “blessed” package which carried the Fragland label, I could barely contain myself. Hop, hop inside the house, getting ready for a 30 minute wrestling match with the plastic wrapping and then, when I finally won the battle, I put the disc in my 360. I threw myself onto the sofa and began staring at the TV screen, waiting for the EA Sports logo to pop up.

Once that was over, I noticed many things. The first thing I saw was that the menu-interface hadn’t really changed, rarely a good sign in terms of “new and improved gameplay”… Did the renewal-spree of this game come to an end? Well, it appears I was partially right. Just like the previous year (06-07), there aren’t many new elements to be found, but there are several small improvements and fun, new elements to be discovered.

Photo Game Face is one of those new, amusing things to be found. With this option you can use your Xbox Live Cam or an ordinary digital camera to put your face on the screen. It’s like this: you have to make two pictures, one of your face and one of the side of your head and, magic, the game transforms the face of your character into your actual, real-life face! Another newcomer is the EA Sports Gamernet, an online gaming service by EA Sports where you can share movies with other players or you can take on another player’s ghost. This ghost is a representation of that player’s major performance on a certain hole. You can look at it as some sort of offline multiplayer where you try to beat another player’s record while you see him at work. It’s a way of comparing your skills as a golfer to those of another TW 08-gamer.

Next to that, there are also two new courses together with eight new pro-players and a party game called Bingo Bango Bongo, a game-mode which can be played with two to four players. The goal is to gather as much points as possible by gaining one of three title-elements.

I’ll clear this up a bit: Bingo equals first on the green, Bango is the equivalent of being closest to the pin and Bongo is the reward you gain when you manage to have scored most points at the end of a round. All previous examples aren’t real improvements, they’re more like cool additions to an existing formula. However, some things that do add more tension and fun to the game are the “new” way of shooting the ball, the influence of confidence on your game and the Putt Preview.

The 3-Click Swing lets you forget about using the left thumbstick to launch the ball. The only thing you’ll need is the A-button. The name says it all. To swing the club, the only thing you need to do is push the button three times. Once to start the motion, a second time to determine the amount of power applied to the shot, which is done by stopping a meter near the bottom of the screen, and a third and final time to set the shot’s direction and accuracy, also set with a little meter. Actually, this way of striking isn’t new at all, it’s like a trip to the past. It dates way back to the older Tiger Woods games. I find it’s the ideal way for new players to get to know the game a bit. My personal favorite does remain the thumbstick since it adds a certain difficulty to the game (it’s not all that easy to hit the ball straight forward) which makes the euphoric feeling even greater when you hit that hole in one.

Another newbie which affects your game is your character’s confidence. If you’re playing quite well on a certain hole, the confidence meter will go through the roof and even make your character’s persona lean to egocentrism which comes with thoughts as “Hey, I’m the best! How about you clean my shoes?”. The real consequence of a filled confidence meter is that you’ll play better on this same hole next time you come to play it (same goes for certain shots or situations like bunkers and such). This does work the other way around as well! If you start playing really bad on a certain hole, the next time you visit it, you’ll experience you’re golfer doesn’t hit as accurate as you would expect him to. In other words, you virtually lose some of your gained skills.

In the predecessors of the 08 version, we found something called the “ideal putt”. This option gave us the possibility to see how we should hit the ball to make the putt. People over at EA decided to give this concept a little twist! Instead of showing us how we should hit the ball, they now demonstrate how the ball will roll when you hit it with the current choice of clubs and swing. This new functionality was named Putt Preview. Do mind, you can only use this once with each putt and this does have its pros and cons. The advantage you get here is that you can’t over do this previewing since you can only use it once. On the other hand, I believe it’s utter BS you can use it again at the next putt. Putt Preview demolishes the art of putting, it’s simply no more in TW 08!

In the audio-visual field there hasn’t been much of an improvement. It’s like playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 all over again. To compensate they did put their works into the controls and the improvement of certain gameplay elements, something which was a far better choice than to making the game look better. In my opinion the game looks and sounds just fine! On the other hand, something which could use a little make-over is the multiplayer. Absolutely nothing has changed and although it’s not a major disaster, it would have been fun to participate in an online season or to be able to play a match without lagging.