Occasionally we’ve posted links to online games for your gaming enjoyment and for comparing high scores, and this time we have a great one for you.  It’s Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online.   In the demo, you get to play 3 holes.

Now you may be thinking this will look generic, like many Flash games, but it’s better than normal.  You have to install a plug-in called Unity 3D, which allows for 3D graphics to be rendered in your browser.  After that, there’s nothing to (permanently) install.  The data for the game streams to your computer as needed.  Some think this may be the future of game delivery.   Anyway, you can try it here for free.

Here’s the link to the free demo.

I’m not an avid golfer, but I can enjoy playing golf games, if they allow me freedom to hit bank shots off trees and buildings.  I like flexing my creativity to make a shot.   Below is a picture of a building I hit, and the ball actually landed on the upper deck balcony, then rolled off.  This was out-of-bounds, of course, so the next time I cranked it over the clubhouse.

There are plenty of sites that have full reviews of this game, along with “normal” screenshots.  I decided to have some fun with it, by seeing what it would allow me to do.  Following are a few more screenshots of some other interesting areas, including one where my golfer was trying to hit a shot while crouching, and his hands and the club would have to pass through his knees to pull off this angle.  But somehow he hit it.

Feel free to post your high scores (or low scores) here for everyone to contemplate (and/or talk smack about).

As far as my review of the game (based on the 3-hole demo), I would prefer better graphics.  (I know, realistic graphics aren’t the most important thing — no need to start that rant.  But I’ve played older golf games with better graphics, so I expect more, especially since golf doesn’t require the same amount of graphics and physics processing of some other games.)  I don’t know if the full version has announcers or not.   Of course, they can sometimes get annoying, but they’re sometimes funny, and to me it was missing in the game.   I like the idea of them adding content (such as more courses) with it being online, but that can be done in the PC and console versions in most cases.  From what little I saw, I would prefer to install the game on my PC instead of having it “portable”.

Regarding gameplay, the advice it gives you on how much power to use made it easy, except on putting, where it doesn’t seem accurate.  I suppose that can be turned off, though.  Hopefully the camera angle can be adjusted, because sometimes the ball just disappeared over the horizon and I never saw where it went (even if it was onto the next hole, it should show me).

On a semi-related note, there’s a post here with numerous comments about how to make golf less boring.  If some of these had been incorporated into the game, it would be even better.  🙂