THW Golf Headlines

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Mission Possible

by MacTHW

The golfing trio of bink, MacTHW and enderdog are on a mission…take as many of dude’s course records as possible before the season ends. And of course, increasing their rankings along the way. Is it Mission Impossible or Mission Possible? These are your headlines for the Feb. 22nd golfing weekend.

Alphabetical order seems to be the choice of attack on dude’s course pro records. enderdog starts off at Blackwolf Run, where he ends the round at 63, five strokes ahead of binkdog and fifteen in front of MacTHW.

Not to be outdone, binkdog answers back, shooting a 61 at Kiawah Ocean, besting enderdog by one stroke and MacTHW by ten.

Next, the golfers head to Royal County Down. enderdog goes low but MacTHW is close on his heels at the turn. enderdog maintains his lead throughout the back nine and shoots an even 60. MacTHW comes in second with a 66 and binkdog is close behind that, having shot a 67.

A record attempt is made on TPC Scottsdale but the record proves to be too low. The best enderdog could muster is a 62, which is good enough to win the round but not low enough to take the record. binkdog folows with a 64 and MacTHW settles for a three under par 68.

On Saturday, they golfers resume their attack, starting at TPC Sawgrass. Dude’s 61 proves to be tough to beat, even as the golfers take two cracks at the record, playing back-to-back rounds. 65 is the best anyone could do, binkdog coming in with the low score.

Next up, the golfers decide to take a break from breaking dude’s records and head to PGA National for a preview round of the upcoming THW National tournament. bink takes the lead at the turn, going 5 under par and stranding MacTHW three strokes behind. enderdog having a rare difficult evening, musters par. bink keeps his lead throughout the back and heads to the clubhouse with a 64 on the scorecard. MacTHW is still three strokes behind and enderdog six strokes.

Not happy with his last performance, enderdog suggests Whistling Straits as the last round of the weekend. binkdog holds the record at 70, which always looks beatable at first, that is, until the greens dash all hopes of that. binkdog finished the front at two under par, while both MacTHW and enderdog are two over par. No charge ever materializes on the back nine and binkdog easily wins the round, besting his previous record by one stroke. enderdog manages to pass MacTHW up, edging into second place by stroke.

While not all of dude’s record fell this weekend, enderdog scooped up two records and binkdog one. Next weekend is the THW National at PGA National. Join us then.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Badder With Kinect?

by MacTHW

Yeah, so I totally lurk on the EA forum pages waiting for new information to drop regarding Tiger Woods 14 and the Kinect.

While EA has not said anything in regards to online play and Kinect, a small nugget of information caught my eye today.

“...I don’t disagree that Kinect is bad. It can’t compete with the Wiimote nor the Move and I am afraid we won’t see a better version of TW with Kinect until we see new consoles.”

I would quickly dismiss this, except the person making the comment happens to be a senior EA forum moderator who has previously stated that he has had a chance to play with Tiger Woods 14.

Doesn’t really bode well for the Kinect now does it?

And then that comment was quickly followed up with this

“...if you enjoyed the WII version trust me go down the ps3 route as the kinnectsucks”

This is from a PS3 MOVE player who happens to use the SimStick, A.K.A the ChickenStick on the Wii side.

As far as I can tell, the most active motion-enabled users of Tiger Woods 13 are on the PS3 using the MOVE. Probably because it actually works…unlike the Kinect.

I purchased TW13 for both the Xbox and PS3. I am able to say first-hand that the experience with MOVE on the PS3 closely resembles the Wii experience, which I considered to be ground-breaking when it first came out. While, obviously, our club went in the direction of the Xbox and the Kinect, I did play the PS3 version a few times and I never experienced frozen backswing, auto-hit, auto-putt, 10-foot hits, 90-degree mis-hits off the tee like I do every single time I play the Xbox version. I did have a wicked slice on my drives but that was most likely just my real drive. Since I couldn’t try it with the SimStick, it was a bit awkward swinging just the MOVE-mote. Motion-based gameplay was solid on the PS3 but I had high hopes for the Kinect.

The Kinect should be able read your body, the shifting of weight, the swing plane, did you keep your head down and flick of the wrist. It doesn’t. The best I can tell after many, many, many trips to the practice course with notepad in hand, it just looks for a smooth, even-tempoed swing arc. After figuring out what works and what doesn’t (hint: the swing I have to use does not resemble a real golf swing) the single biggest barrier to creating a true competitive tournament atmosphere is consistency. I don’t know if it’s the Kinect or EAs jankness but the Kinect will work fine for a few holes and then fly off the handle, losing you on the backswing or hitting the ball a mere 10 feet. Our club thrives on competition and as a group we are very competitive-natured (hence our stats and ranking and points and other things used for bragging rights). Having the Kinect fail in consistency absolutely kills a round of competitive play and has actually driven some to quit playing the game altogether (like our friend over at IWGC).

That said, the comment made in the forum today is concerning. Let’s hope the moderator is wrong. If he’s not, then we could be in for yet another sucktastic season of Tiger Woods golf on the Xbox with Kinect. While I could easily hop over to the PS3 side, most of our crew owns an Xbox and it doesn’t make much sense at this point to sink any money into a PS3, given how late into the PS3 lifecycle the console is.

Here’s hoping for some good Kinect related news from EA soon. My pre-order is already in.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Tiger Woods 14 Demo

by MacTHW

The demo for Tiger Woods 14 should be available for download on March 5th!

Thursday, February 14, 2013

The 2013 THW Calendars Have Arrived!

by MacTHW

The calendars have finally arrived after sitting for a week in New Jersey, unable to leave due to a small snowstorm.

binkdog graces this year’s calendar cover, playing a shot from the water at Liberty National. Yes, from the water. It was one of the funnier glitches I’ve seen this year and I managed to grab a screenshot just in time.

Our calendars are perks for all current playing members. If you would like a calendar, it’s easy to obtain one. Come and join us on the virtual links Friday and Saturday nights (MST). With the Kinect, it’s a funstratingly good time!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Slow News is Slow News

by MacTHW

EA continues their slow information trickle regarding the new TW14 game. Building on interesting features like “play in a twentyfoursome” and live time-of-day gameplay, we’ve learned recently that there will 18 courses offered as downloadable content and a plethora of in-game presentation features.

According to the forums at easports, there will be 18 courses available for download. Fourteen of them will be available together in a DLC pack for $40. Another four TPC Courses will be available in a separate pack for $10. The extra courses included in the Historic Edition of the game will NOT be available for DLC.

EA posted a blog entry promoting the new presentation features in TW14. EA has gone all out on this one, aiming to re-create the atmosphere as if you were watching golf on television. Stats will flash on the screen showing your current score along with other goodies such as how many other players have eagled, birdied or pared on the particular hole the player is on. Tournament scores will display on leaderboards throughout the game. Displaying eagle, birdie, par and bogey stats is always something I’ve wanted to display on the TeamHousewares web site but found it impossible to keep track of since everyone would need to submit their scorecard after a round and then I would have to input them into the system. I would need to hire a non-playing entity to keep track of all that. Showing tournament stats in-game sounds very cool.

Unfortunately, EA has been quite mum on online play or Kinect features so far. It’s hard to say if any of these features will pertain or work with online modes or better yet, Kinect. The Kinect integration will have to work this year. Some folks have figured out the secrets of the Kinect, feeding it what it wants. That fodder, most likely, is not a true golf swing. Others have yet to overcome mis-hits, frozen backswings, auto-hits, auto-putts, delayed hits and other glitches TW13 has to offer. And it has turned many people off to the game…especially those that came from the Wii, where the experience was game-changing. The Wii programmers most likely have gone on to work on the MOVE. I doubt any of them would claim the Kinect programming in TW13 as their own. Having to select whether you are a CONTROL or POWER golfer, HIGH or LOW trajectory and FADE or DRAW golfer seems very cool. But if it doesn’t translate to the Kinect, I forsee another LAME season ahead for Kinect golfers (of those that are left and haven’t MOVEd on).

Kinect related information should trickle out soon. Hopefully EA was saving the best news for last. A demo should be out before we know it.