Tiger Woods 2004

Having abandoned anything that involved too much thought on the gaming front I turned to the old tried and trusted EA sports range for a bit - mostly Tiger Woods PGA tour 2004: a good walk wasted without ever getting off the sofa... What gets me hooked is having targets to reach, improving your game and hitting the perfect round. For the most part playing this is so mindless you can do it in your sleep, but in that is something quite soothing - it beats beating people up or blowing their heads off, for me anyway (in a virtual sense, naturally). The range of courses, golfers, games and options here is all you could wish for from a golf game, with the added bonus in career mode of doing a bit of shopping to get the perfect outfit, some matching equipment, even a nice watch or a lucky rubber band. You can also design your very own game face - although I tried and failed to get one to look like the real me; in the end I went for what I would look like if I had a few million to spare and the best plastic surgeon in the land - what's the point of playing games if you can't fantasise? By the end of January I had played this to death and just about achieved everything there was to achieve, nevertheless a quick round at St Andrews may appeal from time to time and I will need a very good reason to ever buy another golf game. 8.5/10 Kx