It's often said that golf is a game played as much in the mind as on the course. One round you can do no wrong, every drive is straight and long and your putts are dropping like rain. A couple of errors later however and you start overanalysing everything you're doing. Your ball is spending more time in the sand than Lawrence of Arabia and, when you finally make it onto the green, it seems like the only reason for the flag is to act as a sundial, marking the time until you finally hole out. The problem with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 is that it seems to have gotten it into its head that it needs to fiddle with a lot of things from last year's outing and, whilst it still plays a very respectable game of golf, some of these changes set the series back rather than carrying it forward into the next generation.

Many budding, big game golfers will begin their hunt for the Tiger by creating their own character in the game. As with previous titles, this can be done by altering a base computer model in the My Appearance section or by using the new Photo Game Face, which allows you to take pictures of your mug on a compatible digital camera and turn them into a golfer who's a graphical doppelganger of your handsome self (lucky guy). Whilst the My Appearance option usually allows you to create something close to what you were looking for, Game Face can achieve some extremely impressive results, although success with either method often depends on how much time you're willing to invest. Once you've finished making yourself look good, it's time to start playing some serious golf.

In a very welcome move, Tiger 08 features five new courses (Westchester, TPC Boston, Cog Hill, East Lake and Harbour Town), giving it sixteen in total. All of these crop up in the main career mode, although the multiple visits to each emphasise the disappointment that more locations haven't been included. As with Tiger 07, the career includes a calendar of the year showing all the PGA Tour events you can enter. To avoid irritation, the game gives you the ability to fix the number of rounds you play in each competition, and the first of these takes place at The Prince Course in Hawaii. It's here, in scenes reminiscent of a popular TV show, that, after only a couple of holes, you'll quickly realise you're stranded on a beautiful island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and completely 'lost'.

There are several reasons for the confusion, the first of which is the changes that have been made to the control system. All recent Tiger Woods games have employed EA's revolutionary shot stick, which require that you dictate your golfer's swing by using a pulling towards you then pushing away from you motion with the left analog stick. While this method remains the default control option, EA have taken the opportunities provided by the new generation of consoles to return to the old school and bring back the three-click swing meter, where you hit a button once to start the gauge rising, a second time to fix the shot power and a third time to set the accuracy.

The three-click definitely has its downsides; unlike the shot stick it doesn't replicate the feeling that you're actually swinging the club and, unlike in real golf, it's often easier, for example, to hit a five iron with a seventy percent swing than a six iron with a full swing, as the further you go up the meter the quicker it moves. Despite these points, its inclusion is a blessing as, for some reason, EA appear to have got a swing doctor in to fiddle with the previously fine swing stick mechanics and, unfortunately, he's turned out to be more David Cameron than David Leadbetter. The result is that the stick is now ultra sensitive, meaning that hitting two seemingly identical shots will see one go straight down the fairway while the other sails out of bounds. It's an infuriating tweak, especially in a sport where one bad hole can colour an entire round and, after a while, it starts to mess with your mind as you struggle to work out what you did on your last accurate shot. How did you move the stick? Were you leaning forward or back? How were your undercrackers arranged?

Whatever your control system preference, it doesn't really matter that much in the early stages because your golfer is so bad. Although he's supposed to be a rookie professional, you almost have to check that he's holding his club the right way up and his accuracy is so bad that it's surprising he managed to find the course at all and that he's not wandering around in a Siberian forest with his nine iron wondering where the clubhouse is. All of this seems to be the game's way of putting you firmly in your place and teaching you that, unless you follow the way it expects a new player to progress, you're going to suffer. The sad thing is that, even if you decide to do as you're told, you're still in for some hard times.

When you finally concede defeat and retreat from The Tour to the safety of the menu screens, you may decide to head for the Tiger Challenge option and work on your rock bottom skills. This time the Tiger Challenges are set out in a solar system style HexGrid with the great TW at its centre as the final test. The tasks are a nice mix of solo events, such as driving a require distance, and individual matches against the twenty-one professional golfers that feature various different rules, such as the new bingo, bango, bongo - where points are won on each hole for being first on the green, closest to the pin and finishing with the best score. Success in a challenge allows you to move on to any of those connected to it and also unlocks bonuses items, money and, most importantly, skill upgrades.

While the Tiger Challenges are not as difficult as the PGA Tour, even the first one is still a pretty tough ask for your unimproved player and it may well convince you to regress even further to the basic skills training option. Once again, however, this is also frustrating as, whilst the drills are useful, they're far too difficult. One, for example, sees you trying to chip a ball closer to the hole than Chris DiMarco. Unfortunately, compassion does not appear to be Chris' middle name and you need a fluke or a lot of patience to get near enough for the victory and the slight skills upgrade that comes with it.

What all this means is that Tiger 08 is difficult right from the start - so difficult in fact that it may put off the casual golfer, or anyone new to the franchise, before they really get started. This is a real shame, because after a few hours you will start to see some progress, although the game still isn't ready to let you off quite yet.

As with previous titles, your skills are broken down into different areas such as driving and putting but, unlike previous outings, TW08 doesn't reward you achievements with skill points that you can allocate to different areas of your player's makeup as you wish. Instead the game increases your abilities as it sees fit, depending on your performance across the game, and it won't let these rise too much until you have completed specific requirements on The Tour or in the Tiger Challenge. Whilst this does seem to be another way for the game to make itself harder, it also gives a touch of realism that improvements only exist if shown in competition. Some less debatable authenticity added by EA however comes in the form of the new confidence feature, which keeps track of how well you play each different type of shot on each hole of each course. The higher your confidence is in any given situation, the smaller the size of the targeting circle and the more precise your aim. It's a subtle device, but one that the developers really deserve credit for.

After all the tough love, there are points at which Tiger 08 seems to feel repentance and tries to make it up to you with some golfing gifts. The first of these is the putting, which is incredibly easy. Whether you're using the shot stick or the three-click, as soon as you reach the green, the game seems to switch to an alternative golfing dimension where, instead of the controls being ultra touchy, suddenly it's like your ball is on an invisible rope to the hole. Finding the cup is made even easier by the new Putt Preview, which gives you one look at exactly where your shot will finish, allowing you to make any adjustments you wish before you finally draw back your club. The second present from the big cat is the way that, as your skills increase, the game actually gets easier. After all you've been through you probably won't care that it was harder for you to avoid the out of bounds markers early on than it is to now consistently challenge at the top of the leaderboard, but the inverted difficulty level does feel strange. Despite this, it does mean that the game becomes extremely enjoyable, allowing you to enjoy many wonderful golfing moments.

As a final party piece, Tiger 08 introduces the all new EA Sports Gamernet, which allows you to save replays of specific shots, holes, or rounds that can then be uploaded onto the Gamernet for other players to watch and try to beat. The feature comes across as a nice idea to create a community for the game and increase its lifespan. Whether it is as revolutionary as EA suggest, or as popular as they hope, remains for the community to decide, but whilst trying to beat other players' scores has obvious longevity, the fluke/trick/amazing shot options, like those included in the game's TV advert, does not.

Graphically, Tiger 08 is a bit of a mixed bag. Most of the golfers and courses are spot on, but some of the surrounding scenery, such as foliage and rocks has a distinctly top-end PS2 look to it and there's also a slight juddering to the animation on some of the hole fly-bys. As for the sound, EA have compiled another mix tape of songs for the menu screens, some of which you'll warm to more than others, while the commentary remains of the same respectable standard as before, which may be because what's said is often similar to that in previous games.

If you're a serious member of the videogame Pringle club then, with all its options, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 is definitely worth a purchase. If you're more of a Sunday morning hacker, however, then the game's difficult beginning may mean that you never reach the entertainment that lies beyond it. No matter how much you love your golf however, it's hard not to concede that if EA had spent less time on window dressing like the Gamernet and more on including extra courses and getting the controls and difficulty gradient right then they would have been much more likely to score a hole in one.

Reviewed by James Hamblin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).