Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 PS3 Review

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 arrived at an interesting point for me. I had put a full year into Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12, so returning to EA Sports’ golf series twving me plenty of changes to learn.

My first couple of days with the PlayStation 3 version were surprisingly underwhelming. Tee shots sometimes produced visible frame-rate stutters, loading between sections could feel awkward, and I experienced more freezes than I expected. One lockup at the end of an online tournament wiped out around 40 minutes of progress.

That poor first impression gradually improved.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 is packed with ways to play, from the historical Legends of the Majors challenges to Career Mode, Country Clubs and Connected Tournaments. EA also expanded the underlying golf mechanics with individual Swing Styles, a revised Strike Meter, improved ball physics and a new Simulation difficulty.

The result is one of the most ambitious Tiger Woods games of its era, but also one held back by ageing presentation, inconsistent PS3 performance and an aggressive reliance on additional course content.

Legends of the Majors Brings Golf History to Life

Legends of the Majors was easily one of my favourite additions.

The mode takes players through six eras of golf, beginning in the late 1800s and progressing into the modern game. Rather than simply putting famous golfers into contemporary tournaments, EA changes equipment, clothing, presentation and aspects of the ball physics to reflect the period being represented.

Early equipment produces lower trajectories and less spin than modern clubs and balls. Historical club types include Mashies, Brassies, Baffing Spoons, Jiggers and Niblicks.

That distinction matters because the historical presentation affects the way each era plays rather than existing purely as a visual filter.

Nine golf legends form the core of the mode: Seve Ballesteros, Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Sam Snead, Lee Trevino and Tiger Woods.

As someone interested in golf history, I loved this part of PGA Tour 14. Playing as Arnold Palmer and working through famous moments gave the game an identity beyond another annual update.

The era-specific clothing and presentation also help the challenges feel different from the normal Career Mode. I particularly liked how the older equipment changed the behaviour of shots, because it made moving through golf history more than a cosmetic exercise.

For the first time in the series, PGA Tour 14 also incorporates historical events from all four men’s major championships: the Masters Tournament, U.S. Open, The Open Championship and PGA Championship.

There is a lot of content here, and some of the challenges can become genuinely difficult. They were usually satisfying enough that I wanted to keep trying rather than feeling as though I was simply completing a checklist.

Swing Styles Give Golfers More Identity

The basic act of playing a round will be immediately familiar to anyone who spent time with the previous Tiger Woods games, but PGA Tour 14 adds several meaningful refinements.

There are 24 Swing Styles.

A created golfer’s style can be shaped around four main attributes: power versus control, draw versus fade, trajectory and handedness. Professional golfers also have individual Swing Styles designed around their real-world characteristics.

This was one of the gameplay changes I noticed most.

Golfers no longer feel quite as interchangeable when shaping shots. Choosing between power and control or favouring a draw instead of a fade gives created players a clearer identity, while trajectory affects the type of shots they naturally produce.

EA also revised the Strike Meter.

The meter responds to the lie of the ball and can move laterally when the golfer is dealing with situations such as a sidehill lie. That forces the player to account for the ball’s position rather than treating every swing as though it came from a perfectly flat fairway.

Ball physics have also been revised, and putting took me some time to adjust to.

During my first few sessions, I found long putts considerably harder than I remembered from PGA Tour 12. Once I adapted, I appreciated the extra challenge, although players who preferred the more forgiving feel of older games may find the change frustrating.

Making a difficult putt now feels more rewarding precisely because I was not sinking them as easily.

Simulation Difficulty Removes the Safety Net

PGA Tour 14 introduces Simulation as a fifth difficulty level for players who want substantially less assistance.

Simulation disables aids including the swing meter, green grid and zoom-to-aim function. Advanced shot shaping then becomes much more important because the player has to judge conditions and construct shots with far less information on screen.

It is a significant jump from the more accessible difficulty settings.

I would not recommend jumping straight into Simulation unless you already understand how the game’s swing mechanics, lies and shot shaping interact. It deliberately removes many of the systems that normally tell you what is about to happen.

That makes it one of PGA Tour 14’s clearest attempts to serve experienced players without forcing the same level of difficulty on everybody else.

Career Mode Finally Includes the LPGA

Career Mode also received an important expansion through the introduction of the LPGA Tour.

PGA Tour 14 includes more than 35 playable golfers across the PGA Tour and LPGA, with five playable LPGA professionals: Stacy Lewis, Paula Creamer, Suzann Pettersen, Natalie Gulbis and Lexi Thompson.

Female created golfers can pursue an LPGA career, while the men’s route incorporates Q School and the Web.com Tour as part of the path towards the PGA Tour.

That gives Career Mode more variety than simply repeating the same progression structure from the previous game.

The base game also contains 20 championship courses on disc. These include Augusta National Golf Club, the Old Course at St Andrews, Pinehurst No. 2 and TPC Sawgrass.

Night golf appears for the first time in the franchise as well. Courses can be played after dark using an illuminated ball, while different time-of-day settings alter the atmosphere of a round.

There is certainly no shortage of content before DLC enters the conversation.

Country Clubs and Connected Tournaments Were the Highlight Online

My opinion of PGA Tour 14 improved considerably once I moved away from the offline content and started using its connected features.

Country Clubs were excellent.

I was automatically placed into one when I first signed in, which immediately gave my rounds a greater sense of competition. Strokes played across Career Mode and online competition contributed to club statistics and leaderboards, and I quickly found myself caring about where I ranked.

Country Clubs support up to 100 members. Clubs can communicate, track statistics and organise their own competitions.

I also found the voice-chat functionality genuinely useful because I could talk with other club members rather than treating every online round as an isolated match.

Connected Tournaments were even more impressive.

Up to 24 players can compete simultaneously, rather than everybody waiting for one player to complete a shot before moving to the next. Other players are represented through live shot arcs, so you can see balls moving around the course while concentrating on your own round.

That sounds like a relatively small presentation feature, but it changes the atmosphere dramatically.

Seeing other competitors’ shots happening around me created the sense that I was taking part in an actual tournament rather than playing a single-player round that happened to upload a score afterwards.

Before the full game’s release, EA also offered a Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 demo that previewed Legends of the Majors, LPGA content and Connected Tournaments. The demo even allowed players to see as many as 23 other shot arcs during an online event.

The social systems were ultimately some of the strongest reasons I found to keep playing PGA Tour 14.

Graphics Are Uneven on PS3

PGA Tour 14 can still look excellent under the right conditions.

Some courses are genuinely attractive, particularly when the lighting, sky and surrounding landscape come together. Colourful environments and the new time-of-day options can produce some impressive views from the tee.

The quality becomes much less convincing when you look closely.

Trees often appeared heavily pixelated during my PS3 playthrough. Some surfaces looked overly shiny while others appeared strangely flat, and character faces were noticeably behind what I expected from major sports games at the time.

Crowds also felt familiar from earlier entries rather than representing a substantial visual upgrade.

The historical presentation fares better.

Legends of the Majors uses different visual treatments to distinguish its eras, and those changes work because they are tied to the equipment, golfers and historical setting rather than being applied randomly.

Overall, though, I did not see a major graphical leap over the previous games.

Audio Is One of the Weakest Parts

The audio disappointed me considerably more than the graphics.

Commentary frequently felt disconnected from what was happening on the course. I wanted the commentators to react naturally to shots and provide some personality between them, but much of the dialogue came across as flat and uninspired.

At one point I actually checked my audio settings because the presentation felt so lifeless that I wondered whether something was missing.

The soundtrack did little to improve matters. I found it mellow to the point of becoming dull, and it rarely added energy to menus or the broader presentation.

I also encountered voice clips with audible crackling during my original playthrough.

Individually, none of these problems would destroy a golf game. Together, they make PGA Tour 14 sound considerably less polished than its wealth of modes and licensed content would suggest.

PS3 Performance Has Noticeable Problems

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but this review is based specifically on my experience with the PS3 version.

EA included support for the PlayStation Move motion controller alongside the standard PS3 controls. The console version does not provide the sort of selectable graphics and performance modes found in modern sports games, so its technical quality is better judged through stability, responsiveness and presentation.

During my own PS3 playthrough, those areas were inconsistent.

Frame-rate stutters were particularly noticeable around some tee shots. Loading transitions could also appear choppy, while occasional freezes created a much more serious problem.

The worst example occurred after I had spent roughly 40 minutes playing an online tournament. The game locked up near the end and I lost that progress.

I have not found reliable evidence establishing an exact internal rendering resolution or fixed frame-rate target for the PS3 version, so I would rather leave those figures unspecified than attach unsupported numbers to the game.

The relevant PS3 features and my original performance observations are:

PS3 Feature	Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14
Reviewed platform	PlayStation 3
Standard controller	DualShock 3
Motion control	PlayStation Move supported
Selectable graphics modes	None documented
Connected Tournaments	Up to 24 simultaneous competitors
Country Club capacity	Up to 100 members
Frame-rate behaviour	Visible stutters encountered during my original review
Loading	Some transitions appeared choppy during my original review
Stability	Occasional freezes encountered during my original review
Internal rendering resolution	Not reliably established
Frame-rate target	Not reliably established

Those issues had a meaningful effect on my original score because the freezes were not merely cosmetic faults. Losing a substantial amount of progress during an online tournament directly affected the experience.

DLC Made the Complete Experience Expensive

My biggest problem with PGA Tour 14 outside its technical shortcomings was the way additional courses affected the online experience.

The base game already ships with 20 courses, which is a substantial selection.

The problem was that some online events I tried to enter required courses I did not own.

During my original review period, I found roughly half of the online events I attempted to join were inaccessible to me because they depended on additional course content. At the time, the DLC package I was being directed towards cost around $40.

That was frustrating because Connected Tournaments were one of the parts of PGA Tour 14 I enjoyed most.

I also calculated at the time that buying into the broader range of additional content could push the total cost beyond $100. I would treat that as part of my original 2013 experience rather than a current price, since those storefront prices and purchasing options no longer represent the game today.

The underlying criticism still stands.

When online events depend on courses sold separately, the value of an otherwise excellent connected mode changes according to how much additional content the player owns.

A Strong Golf Game Held Back by Its Rough Edges

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 ultimately gave me far more to enjoy than my first few hours suggested.

Legends of the Majors remains its standout addition. I loved revisiting different periods of golf history, playing as figures such as Arnold Palmer and seeing historical equipment affect the way shots behaved.

The deeper Swing Styles, Simulation difficulty, LPGA Career Mode and extensive course selection also make this much more than a bare annual roster update.

Online is where the game really came alive for me. Country Clubs gave individual rounds a persistent competitive purpose, while Connected Tournaments made multiplayer golf feel populated without forcing 24 people to take turns one shot at a time.

Unfortunately, the weaker parts are difficult to ignore.

Audio presentation is poor, some of the visuals were already showing their age in 2013, and my PS3 playthrough suffered from frame-rate stutters and freezes. The DLC structure also undermined the online experience whenever a tournament required a course I did not own.

I originally scored Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 7.4/10, and the expanded review still supports that judgement. There is a very good golf game underneath its problems, particularly for players interested in golf history and online competition, but it never felt polished enough for me to consider it essential.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 Quick Facts

Developer

EA Tiburon

Publisher

Electronic Arts

Reviewed platform

PlayStation 3

Release Date

28 March 2013 (UK)

Genre

Sports / Golf simulation

Game modes:

Single-player and multiplayer

On-disc courses:

20

Playable golfers:

More than 35

Swing Styles:

24

Motion control:

PlayStation Move supported

Connected Tournaments:

Up to 24 simultaneous players

Country Clubs:

Up to 100 members