Review

posted 9/29/2004 by Charlie Sinhaseni
other articles by Charlie Sinhaseni

One Page

Platforms:

At the start you’ll only have one course available, but you can unlock the rest of the courses by winning tournaments. All of the courses are really well done and offer enough variation to make them feel unique from one another. The courses in the game are: St. Andrews, Bay Hill, TPC of Scottsdale, The Highlands and The Predator. The first three are real courses while the second set features fantasy courses from the minds of the developers. Like Andrews, The Predator is available only through N-Gage arena.

Multiplayer has been touted by Nokia ever since the system was launched but few games really featured true multiplayer. Sometimes it’s hard to find another N-Gage user who lives close enough to you to use Blue Tooth. For this Nokia has introduced N-Gage Arena which is the online gathering place for N-Gage users. It’s kind of like Xbox Live except that it’s portable and allows you to access it with the data portion of your service provider. Via Arena you can unlock the new content and challenge other gamers around the world. The game also tracks your record so that you can keep tabs on how well you perform against others. If you’re too stingy to purchase the data content from your service provider Blue Tooth and single-system passaround are still available. Passaround is exactly what it sounds like; up to four players can play on one system, players pass it around for their turn. From multiplayer they can compete in the Skins game, straight up stroke play and battle mode (where players steal clubs from each other after winning holes). This is the real meat of the game as playing with other people is really addicting. My girlfriend and I usually get in a game or two before we hit the sack. It’s pretty impressive considering I’ve still got games like Fable, Sims 2, SRS and Call of Duty: United Offensive to review.

TW2004 doesn’t look brilliant but the visuals definitely get the job done. The only animation in the game comes in the form of the golfers but what’s here is brilliant. I haven’t been this impressed with portable animation since the first time I booted up Tony Hawk 2 on the GBA in 2001. It’s fun to watch all of the individual frames of animation when you’re executing your swing. As for the courses they’re all rendered but the only time that you can get a good view of the course is during the swing interface. As the ball travels the game switches to a top-down view in order to give you a better vantage point of the landing area. It’s kind of hard to tell changes in elevation (especially in the Highlands course) but they don’t factor into the gameplay all that much.

I don’t really expect much in terms of audio from my portable games and since TW2004 maintains the status quo I wasn’t too disappointed. All of the effects sound pretty decent as does the music that populates the menus. Some of the ambient effects sound pretty bad (especially through the earphones that come packaged with the N-Gage) but they can be turned off if you wish. It’s not an aural treat but it definitely gets the job done.

The best game available on the N-Gage has arrived and its name is Tiger Woods 2004. Some people have been talking about Tony Hawk, drooling over the beautiful graphics and full audio clips, but the truth is that playing the game on the N-Gage is a chore that’s too bothersome for most to deal with. Tiger Woods 2004 not only looks great, but it plays well and feels like a complete winner all around. If you own an N-Gage, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Tiger Woods 2004. It’s not just the best N-Gage game in town, it may very well be the best portable game ever made.