It’s difficult not to become cynical with EA Sports titles, considering the annual updates of each and every franchise. And it’s not that easy to update a sport – after all, the game’s rules aren’t exactly in flux. So now Mr. Woods is back with his golf game update, can we expect to see any kind of improvements to warrant yet another full price Tiger title on our game shelf?

2008 was a good year for Tiger, and his PGA Tour franchise provided a game that was decidedly easy to use, yet intricate in operation. Any update to that particular version should really be confined to aesthetics lest the excellent game mechanics suffer for wanton change. And indeed the development team at EA Sports has handled its previous achievements with delicacy and respect – tweaking only where necessary and leaving the better parts fully intact.

As always, you begin your career with a ham-fisted base baller who’s been given three rusty golf clubs and decided to go and hit stones at trees in the park. The core of the gameplay focuses on you developing this physical dimwit into a world class golfer not only through full, 18 hole grinds but select training challenges to work on weaker areas of play individual to each virtual sportsman.

Your statistical progress in PGA Tour ’09 feels distinctly less forgiving, and simply maxing out the stats and staying at that level is much harder. Flunking out in any of the areas of good golfing means you descend down the ladder quite rapidly, so there’s no room at all for any of the complacency from Tiger’s previous tours. This isn’t to suggest the difficulty level has been ramped up, but the realism of professional participation seems to have been balanced out in a very considered, and more demanding, fashion. Good for the hardcore, but a bit grating for the casual gamer.