Fresh off strong appearances on "last-gen" consoles and the Xbox 360, Tiger Woods makes his debut on the PlayStation 3. Anyone who has played the series on the PlayStation 2 will find that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 on the PS3 plays quite a bit different than what you're used to, though the game is virtually identical to the Xbox 360 version--which is a good thing. The create-a-character is better than ever, the courses look great, and an all-new aiming system makes the game more challenging than ever. There's still room for improvement, but Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 is a great golf game that plays as good as it looks.

Creating your own golfer is still one of the game's highlights.

There's certainly no shortage of ways to occupy yourself with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07. You can select from a number of different match and scoring modes, including stroke play, match play, skins, practice, stableford, alternate shot, best-ball, and four-ball. Battle golf is a twist on match play, where the goal is to win the most holes--as it always is in match play--but here you are able to remove a club from your opponent's bag after each hole you win. Needless to say, it's great fun to watch your rival tee off on a par five with a two-iron because you've taken all of his woods. Bloodsome and greensome matches are both team-based best-ball events. After you and your teammate hit your shots in greensome, you get to pick which ball you're going to play; in bloodsome, your opponent will choose which lie you'll use. One-ball is a new game where you and your opponent share the same ball and alternate shots. The strategy in one-ball lies in trying to set your opponent up with difficult shots so that you're the one left with a makeable putt. If you're the one who drains the putt, you win the hole. Before each shot, a large blue ring that represents the target area appears on the course. This is the area in which your shot must land, or else it's a "betrayal," and you'll lose a turn. For example, on a par four you may be able to put the ball on the green with your second shot, but that will leave your opponent with a putt--and that's not good. You can, however, shoot the ball into a sand trap that surrounds the green, thereby forcing your opponent to be the one who has to put the ball on the green. This play mode is great for learning how to recover from bad shots, but it can be frustrating to play against the tenacious CPU and is best played against another person.

Right off the bat you'll notice the improved presentation. As soon as the game loads the camera sweeps around a beautiful driving range, finally zooming in on Tiger, who's juggling a ball with his club, a la the Nike commercial from a few years back. From here you can immediately hit the range to practice or jump into a quick game, but you're encouraged to immediately create a golfer so that you may embark on a career. Tiger's unrivaled character creation mode makes it a breeze to create a male or female golfer in your spitting image, and you're limited only by your imagination when it comes to making zany, off-the-wall characters. You can also customize your player's swing, as well as their reactions.

Your created golfer has unlimited potential, but at first they stink. It's up to you to head to the training course to help them develop their skills. Each of your golfer's attributes--power, power boost, ball striking, driving accuracy, putting, recovery, approach, and spin--can be improved by completing short minigames. You can face other golfers in a longest-drive or putting contest, play quick, competitive rounds of T-I-G-E-R or 21, and race the clock in minigames that test your mettle with long irons and your shot-recovery skills. The number of minigames is impressive, but many of them are little more than slight variations of each other. After completing a challenge your individual attributes are raised, based on what skills the challenge focused on, as well as your performance. In an effort to keep people from training their golfer over and over before venturing out on the course, your attributes are now capped based on your experience. You'll need to actually go out and win some matches before you're able to go any higher than 25 percent in any skill category. This does work as the developer intended, slowing your progression through the game, but it's frustrating to have a skill artificially held back when you've already earned the points to raise it. Should your skills need a little boost, you can always pick up some new clubs or some jewelry for a small skill bonus. New equipment and clothing can be purchased in the pro shop, which, thanks to a new sorting option, is easy to browse.

You're going to spend lots of time on the training course.

The team tour mode from the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC versions is nowhere to be found; it has been replaced by the Tiger challenge. Here you'll take your created golfer up against fictitious golfers like Pops Masterson and Big Mo, PGA professionals, and, eventually, Tiger himself. It's understandable that EA wanted to show off new animation for each golfer, but the inability to skip your opponents' turns makes rounds last far too long. However, you can skip the CPU's pre- and post-shot routines once they've started, and you're able to fast-forward their shots once they're in the air. If your interests lie in more-traditional golf, the PGA Tour season, which now uses the FedEx points system to rank players for the PGA's new playoff format, offers up more of a challenge than ever before. You'll first need to train your golfer and then win a few matches in the Tiger challenge, or your golfer won't have a prayer against the punishing schedule of four-day tournaments. You can simulate rounds of a tournament and you don't have to enter every event, but it really would have been nice to have the option of setting how long you'd like tournaments to last.