The next big golf video game on the Wii, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 adds mini-golf. Why? Best answer I got from EA Sports yesterday is because they like to add something every year. But is it true mini-golf?
Donning my average-man cap, I asked some EA Sports representatives who were showing the new Tiger game about some mini-golf basics that may well matter to no one but me (and all the other everymen out there).
In the brand-new Tiger mini-golf mode — four wild courses included — can I knock the ball from one hole to another? That's one of the main things I recall as a hallmark of my adventures playing miniature golf.
Answer from EA people yesterday: No, though all the holes are indeed presented in one fully-loaded part of the game, meaning they are all there at once and no loading screens will interrupt your transit from one hole to the next.
Do the final holes of the course require me to shoot the ball back into some sort of device that reclaims the golfballs so I can't walk away with them?
Answer from EA people yesterday: No. Of course not! (The balls are virtual; EA doesn't need to reclaim them.)
Is there a windmill?
Answer from EA: There's an airplane propeller.
What does Tiger Woods think of miniature golf?
The EA reps didn't know.
Sorry, folks, I don't know what serious questions there are to be asked about mini-golf.
The mini-golf looks like a fun extra for this year's game. Note that racetrack course pictured up top. EA recently stopped making NASCAR video games. But they have made what appears to be an unofficial NASCAR mini-golf course. Maybe they should have set a course in a baseball stadium too.
Tiger Woods PGA 11 is out for the Wii in June. The game also adds a first-person golf, which is pretty cool and improved online play that supports the returning disc-golf mode.