By Lewie Procter on September 12th, 2011 at 11:16 am.
Oh dear. It appears as if some customers of EA’s latest annual hitting a ball with a stick simulator aren’t too pleased. The Tiger Woods series has been absent from the PC all the way since Tiger Woods 2008, but this year marked its return to the almighty desktop. Sadly, it seems that instead of being a port of the high-end console version, like what EA used to do, it is apprently based heavily on the free-to-play, Unity-based, Tiger Woods Online.
Some customers were confused by this, and had expected the PC version to include all of the features from the Xbox 360 or PS3 version (and their confusion wasn’t helped by this page on EA.com implying the PC version might be the same as the console version).
Truepcgaming.com have taken a good look at the disappointing disparities between the console and the PC version here, citing problems like “clunky and stiff golfer animations”, “mediocre at best graphical presentation”, and the advertised “The Caddie Experience” appears to be nowhere to be found. This is of course not officially confirmed, but they allege that “TW12 plays, looks and feels exactly like Tiger Woods Online.” Emails to us from readers who’ve bought the game offer a similar sentiment.
The game even comes with a three-month trial for Tiger Woods Online instead of its own, fully-fledged multiplayer mode, while clothing and equipment upgrades for your character allegedly require microtransactions. More detailed observations and complaints have cropped up on Reddit.
A number of complaints on the official forum have been wiped by moderators, who claim this is solely due to the use of profanity. Thankfully, it appears that EA are however offering refunds to gamers disappointed with the PC version.
If you want to try and wrangle a refund, speak with someone over at EA’s livechat.
We’ve asked EA for comment, and whether the refunds are standard policy or judged on a case-by-case basis.
12/09/2011 at 11:20 formivore says:
Well, it looks like they’ve ruined a way to ruin the best way to ruin a good walk..
12/09/2011 at 11:27 Calneon says:
Wait, they’re selling a free to play game off as a fully priced EA sports title? That’s fucking terrible, I hope this comes back to bite them massively in the ass.
12/09/2011 at 14:49 Vagrant says:
Honestly, I would think it was a decent idea, if they replaced transactions with content for those of us who don’t want a microtransaction/time grind. Perfect example: I’d love to play a World of Warcraft retuned for single player and sold for $50.
It sounds like this is not quite so elegantly handled.
12/09/2011 at 17:29 TODD says:
“I’d love to play World of Warcraft retuned for single player.”
Am I the only one who thinks this is insane? Single-player gameplay mechanics are the worst part of any pretty much any MMO.
12/09/2011 at 18:02 Vagrant says:
I think you’re missing the point. I don’t want to play the MMO solo, you can do that anyways. I want them to make a single player port based on World of Warcraft. (See Ragnarok for DS for a good example)
I want to jump in, play a 20 hour long game in the WoW environment and art style, have fun with the Diablo-style loot drops, and move on to the next game.
12/09/2011 at 11:29 Red_Avatar says:
Believe it or not, but I always enjoyed golf games. They were generally better looking than other games at the time since it used rendered terrain most of the time. My first golf game was a demo of the Scottish Open on the front of PC Gamer back in 1994 – it’s just relaxing to do and with the right background music, can be a nice way to spend some time on a rainy day, enjoying the nature in the game.
A darn shame that it’s nearly impossible to find a proper golf game on PC anymore these days …
12/09/2011 at 11:47 metalangel says:
Gosh, one of my first ever PC games was Mean 18 in glorious CGA.
(and http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/mean-18/screenshots/gameShotId,32043 – here’s what that looked like)
We had Microsoft Golf (good heavens) and a few others but my parents made a concerted effort to genuinely take the sport up (including training from a 'golf pro') and I had to show teenage apathy lest they say 'how come you only want to play a stupid computer version?'
Now I'd love to play a modern golf game to relax (I find outdoorsy games like golf, fishing and hunting to be ideal Sunday afternoon with some real ale pasttimes) with but alas, all that's out there is Tiger Woods' DLC-ridden server-switched-off-18-months-later-o-fest and John Daly's game which is almost impossible to find on 360 and I think was designed around motion controls (and there's no demo to try it).
Yes, I'd like some cheese with my whine.
12/09/2011 at 12:19 johnpeat says:
We had Mean18 on the first (and original) IBM PC (at work, of course!!)
It persisted as the most popular game for eons too!!
12/09/2011 at 12:31 Moth Bones says:
Oh, I believe you. Playing PGA on the SNES actually got me into golf. Altogether now… “Come back! Birdie bye-bye birdie bye-bye… I admit I was a clown.”
12/09/2011 at 14:59 djbriandamage says:
Mean 18! I played it as well and revelled in its 4-colour beauty! It was a very playable game with nice animations and decent graphics for the time.
What really blew me away was Links, and later Links 386 and Microsoft Golf (all basically the same game). Those games took forever to draw the scene but holy moly did they ever look realistic. I appreciated all the different ways they gave you to swing your club as well.
Anyone remember Sim Golf? To my knowledge that was the first game that let you slide your mouse back and forth to swing.
12/09/2011 at 15:09 sg1969 says:
Yeah golf games can be very relaxing.
I don’t watch or play golf, but I like golf video games.
Was wondering, has there ever been a golf game that actually lets you walk aroudn the course? Liek after you hit the ball, you walk down, or get into a cart and drive down to the next shot.
Can’t be hard to code, and would add to the immersiveness (with of course the ability to skip straight to your next shot)
12/09/2011 at 11:30 Lazaruso says:
If you think that’s bad, you should see what EA did to my dog.
He’ll never walk again.
12/09/2011 at 11:40 JackShandy says:
EA passed my gran in a dark alley once.
They found the last piece yesterday.
12/09/2011 at 11:48 garlandgreen says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7moTZBEVtRc&feature=related
12/09/2011 at 11:54 Burning Man says:
This is one of the silliest things I have read all week.
12/09/2011 at 11:55 Flukie says:
Bleh, I don’t get why they don’t just port the 360 version. Nice and easy, I wouldn’t mind playing a decent Tiger game again but I won’t dust off my 360 and enjoy awful AA to do it.
They are doing it for Fifa (I have no interest in the franchise) this year so why not just do it for all the EA sports titles and launch them on Origin, showing a interest in PC rather than this awful shit.
I mean they are launching the (potentially) biggest PC title of the year, why not at least try and paint a image of not being like Ubisoft or Activison.
12/09/2011 at 11:58 westyfield says:
I hear PC gamers are very tolerant of 360 ports.
12/09/2011 at 12:03 Burning Man says:
They are less tolerant of porting a free-to-play game from the PC to itself.
12/09/2011 at 12:23 metalangel says:
EA hold all their customers beneath contempt, but especially PC owners.
12/09/2011 at 11:57 SirDigsby says:
This is actually atrocious; I worked with the Unity engine a lot at uni and while it is decent enough for learning/practice/students, it is far from suitable for creating fully fledged games.
And I thought EA were starting to turn it around on PC…
12/09/2011 at 12:42 c-Row says:
“Far from suitable for”, or “I couldn’t create something similar to”? Various members of the Unity community would probably disagree with you.
12/09/2011 at 13:34 Iain_1986 says:
Unity is being adopted by a lot of “high profile” devs, and from personal experience I’ve seen that in the right hands Unity can more than produce “fully fledged” games.
12/09/2011 at 13:39 bit_crusherrr says:
Interstellar Marines says hi.
12/09/2011 at 15:10 SirDigsby says:
I meant in the sense that it was hardly an established platform, or ready, for creating the next game in an enormous (offline) gaming brand; my words came as a knee-jerk reaction to what seemed to be an almighty shafting for the PC.
I misinterpreted the article as meaning that they were releasing the pricey game built on Unity – which was stupid of me; or them, if I’m confused.
12/09/2011 at 12:01 Advanced Assault Hippo says:
Nick Faldo’s Championship Golf on the Amiga is the best golf game ever.
12/09/2011 at 12:23 WhatKateDoes says:
Leader board on the C64! Created the swing/power thing as we know it!
So sayeth old crone Kate!
12/09/2011 at 13:05 3lbFlax says:
Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge, surely.
12/09/2011 at 13:43 rustybroomhandle says:
@Kate – I remember the original Leaderboard having rather bizarre island-hopping courses, followed by a somewhat more realistic sequel later on.
I loved and hated those games. There were friends of the family who’d always come to visit and insist I load up Leaderboard for them to play, thereby cutting my access to my C-64 for hours. Maybe that’s why today I prefer playing single player games. :)
12/09/2011 at 13:55 GameOverMan says:
I loved Leaderboard Golf on the C64 (I played it a lot with my high school buddies) and PGA Tour Golf on the Amiga. Those were the days.
12/09/2011 at 12:15 Shortwave says:
EA would.
12/09/2011 at 12:23 J. says:
That screenshot confuses me, as Tiger12 doesn’t have crowds on teh PC.
12/09/2011 at 12:44 blind_boy_grunt says:
think of it as a glimpse into what life will be like when you STOP BEING A DIRTy PIRATE and start being an honest, upstanding citizen… and get a console.
13/09/2011 at 12:36 Starky says:
I buy all my PC titles and pirate all my 360 games just to fuck with their heads.
12/09/2011 at 12:57 GallonOfAlan says:
EA – It’s Not In The Game ™
12/09/2011 at 12:59 scudly says:
It’s interesting to say the least
12/09/2011 at 13:02 Unaco says:
Also revealed… Battlefield 3 is a reskinned version of Battlefield Heroes. And, Mass Effect 3 is just the rejected ME1/2 DLC thrown together with a couple sex scenes acting as a ‘narrative’.
12/09/2011 at 13:46 drewski says:
Even for EA, this is hilariously despicable.
I would be so effing mad if I’d paid £30 for a free MMO with the MMO bits cut out.
12/09/2011 at 14:21 Ergates_Antius says:
So, people are upset that the PC version *isn’t* a console port?
Makes a change I suppose…
15/09/2011 at 06:05 Rand says:
At this point, yes a bad console port is generally the best that can possibly be hoped for. I should qualify that as a console port of the PS2 variant, a port of the PS3/360 one is definitely too much to be hoped for.
And we seldom get even that.
Such is the state of the PC in the land of EA Sports.
12/09/2011 at 14:29 db1331 says:
Good thing EA has Origin now, so they can deliver PC gamers the quality content and support they so desperately want to, without having to fight with a 3rd party retailer.
12/09/2011 at 14:49 Javier-de-Ass says:
got a refund without any bullshit within a few hours of emailing last night. no big deal. try getting any support at all from garbage like steam within a week.
12/09/2011 at 14:58 Zabinatrix says:
Yes, I’ve gotten replies from Steam within a week. In fact, I’ve gotten replies within an hour, “without any bullshit”.
And you’ll say “Well, you were just lucky!” and then I’d say “Well maybe you were just lucky too?” Look, one personal anecdote is not data in any of the constant wars of PC vs. consoles, Steam vs. Origin, big companies vs. small companies or anything else. One personal anecdote is just a single uncertain data point that might be a huge statistical outlier as far as you know. That you got a a reply fast from EA doesn’t prove anything about them, just as my positive contact with Steam doesn’t prove anything about their service.
13/09/2011 at 12:30 ankh says:
EA has live chat support…
12/09/2011 at 15:15 Rii says:
Sounds like the problem here is the title and price point.
12/09/2011 at 19:56 Axyl says:
Pfft. The best Golf game on PC is Albatross 18 anyways.
EA Sports seem to churn out samey sequels year after year, but without getting the backlash of say CoD, for example.
Honestly, that’s the complete extent of my opinion on this. Riveting, huh? ;)
12/09/2011 at 23:28 Megadyptes says:
EA Sports hates PC gamers. I think the next FIFA will supposedly be the same build as the 360/PS3, but this was after years of using some PS2 engine. And then there’s all the other sports franchises that just disappeared on PC altogether. I want my NHL back.
13/09/2011 at 00:28 Jason Moyer says:
The good versions of Tiger Woods for the PC (2001-2008) were not based on the console versions. They were developed separately by Headgate Studios, who made the greatest golf game ever (Sierra’s PGA Championship Golf 2000). I don’t even think the games shared superficial qualities aside from Tiger appearing on the box.
13/09/2011 at 04:43 BeamSplashX says:
The Witcher 2 is the best golf game.