It's like, he has to copy everything I do. Sheesh.

emember back in February when I played prophet and predicted that Wii MotionPlus and Tiger Woods were going to do really awesome stuff together?

But I must also fess up to becoming really, really skeptical about a week later, when EA Sports’ PR guy stated that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 was going to be “compatible with, but not dependent” on Wii MotionPlus.

To my mind this meant that MotionPlus was clearly not integral to the Tiger 10 experience if Electronic Arts was content to publicly distance itself from MotionPlus, and that we, as Wii gamers, were probably in for another round of half-assed “tacked-on” functionality… the old familiar sting.

What he didn’t tell us and possibly didn’t know at the time was that a) when the new Tiger game shipped in June, it was going to be conveniently offered in a cost-saving bundle WITH the MotionPlus dongle (ok, so I think of it a dongle, what do you call it?) and that b) it was going to be just fucking outstanding.

That’s right, this video game is so good, I would confidently recommend it to anybody. But don’t even think of playing it without MotionPlus—it may not be dependent on it to function, but it’s definitely dependent on it to be awesome.

MotionPlus and another axis of Wiimote awareness means that you can add draw or fade to your shots organically by twisting your wrist, not with some clumsy push-button binary system. But even the Wii’s interpretation of your standard, back-to-front golf swing mechanic is helped along by the additional data provided by MotionPlus, which means that all around, your new, smarter Wiimote golf club is startlingly more efficient at interpreting and mirroring your swing than ever before, and the results enhance the video golf experience more than I imagined possible.

They’ve also fixed the putting interface, which was badly broken in Tiger ’09, along with patching a lot of other minor problems which, by themselves, weren’t anything major but together created a lot of annoyance for a lot of people. All of that is gone now. They’ve added new courses and golfers, and finally there’s a quick play option. You may take an obsessive amount of control over your swing and shot selection and golf shoes IF you choose… but this complexity isn’t forced on you; you’re free to just whack the ball. In fact, I recommend you take a day or so to do just that, getting used to swinging with the Wiimote and mastering the art of deliberate and tactical draw and fade (and eliminating accidental hook and slice).

You can't accidentally-on-purpose hit spectators with the ball, but it's still pretty realistic.

There’s a frisbee golf mode that caused me to immediately exclaim, “that’s stupid” when I saw it in the menu. I was wrong. I never imagined throwing a virtual frisbee with a Wiimote could be so much fun. The frisbee golf mini-game is so well engineered, it would be viable as a stand-alone Wii game; no shit. If not for the frisbee action in the upcoming Wii Sports Resort, I guess.

Ok, back to golf.. in addition to a bunch of new courses and golfers, this version also has—get this—online tournaments.  You can play in real time in daily single rounders and four-round events on weekends, just like the pros. You can compete against people all over the world and no cumbersome 16-character friend codes required (it uses the EA Sports Network you’re undoubtedly familiar with if you’ve played an EA Sports title on PS3 or Xbox).

Beyond providing a vital talking point for Nintendo fanboys (who can now confidently assert that the Wii now has the best version of a high profile cross-platform release, period), Tiger 10 provides an experience I imagine anyone on earth with at least one arm can enjoy, and it provides something else—innovation (which is the mother of all of something, probably). Inherent re-playability (it’s a sports game after all) bolstered by the added depth of its tournament and career modes, unlockables, and genuinely fun extras like frisbee golf make this game one of the best values in console gaming, too.

With Wii Sports Resort and undoubtedly other games coming down the pipe equipped to utilize the MotionPlus add-on, you’re inevitably going to want more than one of them, so with Tiger 10, Buy. The. Bundle.

And I guess I should come up with at least one criticism… ok, uh… the loading times between holes and sometimes between shots can be kind of long. But then, if you’re playing with someone else and chatting away you probably won’t care.

Speaking of criticism, more than a couple online game critics have, in talking about this game, followed a line of reasoning which has been followed before with other games: Tiger 10 merely builds on Tiger ’09, they say, which this makes it evolutionary but not revolutionary.

That is utter BS in a real-world sense. In a semantics contest, maybe. But an invisible line got crossed and a new realm of awesomeness was entered here; Tiger 10 denotes several firsts for the Wii, and for home video games; and it’s a giant leap forward in implementation of motion-based control,  and end-user experience, turning a figurative routine play into a game-changer. It will undoubtedly make devs and publishers everywhere take notice.

How is that not revolutionary? And how does being evolutionary exclude something from being revolutionary, anyway? Give me a break.

I still can’t believe how great this one turned out.