Whilst not exactly being the most rock ‘n’ roll sport on the face of the earth, golf is most certainly one of the more satisfying. You see, I have just landed my second shot on a par 4 into a greenside bunker. Jay meanwhile has middled his shot and left himself a longish putt for a birdie. He thinks he’s safe. Was that perhaps a smug smile from his direction? Poor, poor Jay. You see, what he is just about to discover to his cost is that I am the master of recovery. In terms of getting myself out of situations I shouldn’t have gotten into in the first place, I am the king. A short back flick of the sand wedge later and my ball trickles to within an inch of the hole. A potentially crucial hole is saved, and I go on to win the match. Smugness ahoy!

We’ve been playing Tiger Woods 08 quite a bit as you may have guessed, unless you were thinking that we’ve actually become brilliant at real golf, in which case you’d be tremendously incorrect. Yup, it’s the time of year for Tiger to dust off the virtual clubs and smash a freakishly long drive straight up the gaming charts, and this time he’s brought along a brand new challenge mode and an additional 6 courses to add to last year’s 12 alongside a whole host of more minor changes. Any good, then?

Well, yes. I’ve always been a bit partial to a bit of the ol’ ball and stick, and this year’s effort from everyone favourite gaming juggernaut EA has expanded and shifted itself far enough away from last year’s effort to make it a worthwhile purchase. It’s not without its faults as we will discuss a little bit later, but before any of that ballyhoo let’s take in some of the options you’ll find yourself exploring.

As with recent Tiger games, the main meat of the single player game is to be found in the Career offering. Creating your own personalised golfer for the mode now has the option of pasting your ugly mug in via Game Face, leaving you with something that could in theory look pretty much exactly like you under your control out on the links. This may or may not be a good thing depending on to what degree you like looking at your own features (in my case I’d need a special plastic bag accessory to be fully satisfied), but it’s really quite uncanny to see a virtual you slicing your approach shot into the nearest spectator tribune. It’s even more uncanny to see a virtual Jay hole a putt, but that’s just plain harsh.

Be it through the completion of tournaments or progression through the revamped Tiger Challenge, levelling your golfer’s stats up to a point where you are able to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Tiger himself, Luke Donald or Colin ‘cosy’ Montgomery will take a good deal of time and patience. The tournaments and Fed Ex cup route will see you partaking in a number of three or four day tournaments (if you make the cut, mind) during which good bits of play will up your individual abilities in areas such as shot power, shot accuracy and putting, and for the most part the golfing is enjoyable.

There are, however, a couple of things that work against Woods 08. The first is that the difficulty level seems to auto adjust to however you’re playing each round, meaning that on the first day you could see opponents race off into the lead, only to then suspiciously drop 15 or 16 shots the next round to keep you in contention. Whilst this does perhaps quell a little of the frustration that could arise from using a golfer with basic skills and getting thrashed for the first dozen hours of gameplay, it somewhat tarnishes the sense of progress and achievement as you begin to get better yourself.

The second is an issue that almost cripples what is otherwise an excellent reworking of the Tiger Challenge. Gone is the ladder system of yesteryear that saw you taking on opponents in order, replaced with something that brings back memories of watching Blockbuster as a wee lad. Scattered across a wagon wheel of hexagonal blocks are a number of challenges such as completing a number of par 3 holes in a certain amount of shots or beating an AI opponent in a closest-to-the-pin-wins chipping contest. Completing these events will allow you to unlock a face-off against a number of increasingly difficult opponents that will raise your maximum attribute level, allowing you to make use of every single stat point that you’ve been collecting. The big prize – the centre of the wheel, quite literally – is a face-off against Mr Woods himself, by which time you will have unlocked everything and given yourself plenty of stat points to boot.

But, yes, that problem I mentioned. At a couple of points in the challenge the game literally freezes solid, leaving you no other option than to reboot. A patch has been promised and holding the A button down on launch of the game will get you around the problem too, but you can’t help wondering if the QA department had gone for coffee and donuts when they probably should have spotted what are two pretty obvious issues. The mode itself is actually very enjoyable and the switch across from a standard series of matchplay face-offs to a number of small mini games is a good one, so it’s not all bad news.

The golf itself is very similar in feel to last year; you aim using the digital pad, then swing forward and back on the left analogue stick to take a swipe at the ball. New for this year are two staples of previous golf titles, namely an ability to draw of fade your shots around corners (or off the fairway into a tree, if my efforts are anything to go by) and the option to replace the analogue swing method with a classic three-stage power bar should you prove too cack-handed. Something that you could perhaps level at this year’s game is that, particularly when using the lesser golfers, the analogue sensitivity is much higher than in previous years, leading to all sorts of mishaps as you desperately try to make up for the lack of power your chosen golfer has.

Elsewhere and away from the career mode, online options return and are – for the most part – pleasingly lag-free. The standard match options are all present and correct, and bolstering the whole package is the addition of the Gamer Net feature that allows users to upload their most epic moments and challenge others to match them. Particular favourite moments of mine include managing to use a spectator grandstand as a pinball bumper to knock a wayward approach shot within a few inches of the hole (completely intentionally, of course) and putting a ball that spun around the rim of the hole a good half-dozen times before eventually dropping in. Having completed said shots I was given the option to save them for future use, and finding them in the Gamer Net menu allows you to put them up on Xbox Live for the whole world to gawp over or try themselves. Hoorah!

Obviously, this influx of user-created content is something that expands the lifespan of Tiger Woods 08 greatly. It’s not as if it needed it either; the plethora of offline options and a number of solid online modes should see you happily chipping, slicing and putting your way around the sixteen courses for weeks, if not months, on end. Mixed in with the usual EA blend of excellent, well-realised player models and course textures and a selection of modern tunes you’re all set for another round with Tiger. Better than last year’s title? Certainly, although the bugs that exist and the frustration with the fluctuating opponent level really should have been ironed out and do detract from the experience. For any golf fan though, or anyone who fancies an enjoyable and sociable online experience, this is a good place to tee off.