The list of #1 games is a bit slow to reflect it, but the Wii was a humungous success in the UK just like the US and Japan. A narrative didn’t take long to form in the West, though, that it didn’t solve Nintendo’s problems with third party publishers, and that Nintendo would be the only company whose games would be able to succeed on it. This would prove spectacularly wrong, as I will get to explore at length in future, and rested on the usual limited assumptions of what gets to count as games. Even before that, though there were exceptions. EA saw one of their big multiplatform sports franchises sell best on Wii, and all it took was being perfectly suited for it.
The golf bit of Wii Sports was great, and completely sold the idea of swinging the controller as a golf club. But it was understandably limited in scope, more one for a quick face-off with friends or family than for a dedicated developing golfer. Enter EA and their Tiger Woods PGA Tour series, last top of the charts back in 2003 but continuing in the interim to refine a simulation of golf with many bells and whistles. The less-powerful Wii wouldn’t be able to match all of those on the Xbox 360 and PS3, but it had a much more distinctive selling point. And with enough sports sim players on budgets that meant a PlayStation 2 version was still an important part of the release, the same team could port to PS2 and to a Wii equivalent with motion controls added.
A lot of the same effects as in previous versions are used to try to amp up the emotion of playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08. When you pull off a big drive, you get a monumental thwack of club on ball, and the action pauses to pull back and replay from different angles. It’s a familiar idea. Yet it feels completely different when it comes after the real kinetic action of a swing, however far removed my gold-coloured Zelda Wii Remote is from a golf club. The swing action has its own learning curve and is far from perfect, but it’s good enough to be transformative. It may take a bit of getting used to having to make really tiny movements to make putts which don’t skitter away to the other end of the green, but finally pulling it off is a moment of triumphant connection that it wouldn’t be without the physicality.
With that central success successfully sunk, the rest of the changes are just a matter of running through the various tweaks and developments that affect what you can do with it. There is an even more detailed character creator than ever, which has so many different permutations of face adjustments that I gave up part way through in fatigue and settled for looking like a blond George Russell. There are options from a full on PGA Tour to a challenge mode which varies things up nicely and accessibly while still giving you a feel of playing deeper golf matches than Wii Sports could offer. The chucklefuck announcers are still around, but at least the way they switch disconcertingly to and from addressing you directly makes the unease come off as more deliberate.
In mechanical changes outside of Wii specifics, there is a new putt preview mode which takes the logic of the practice swing a step further for the most difficult part of the sport. You get a limited time to make virtual shots and watch exactly how they would play out, before returning to reality. This is helpful, generous, and for those of a superstitious mindset extremely dangerous. As an erratic putter, there comes a certain fear in managing to get one of these virtual putts in and then having solid certainty that there is no chance of managing to repeat it a second time. It’s an excellent addition, in other words. And taking a set of those and bolting on motion controls is enough to make for a fine new experience.
Top of the charts for week ending 22 September 2007:
