Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008 Review

Tiger Woods seems to have the perfect lifestyle. A drop dead gorgeous Swedish supermodel wife, an enormous mansion, fame, money, on Forbes list of celebrities, an adorable daughter, close friends with Charles Barkley, thirteen major championships under his belt, and his very own video game.

Tiger Woods 2008 is the next iteration in the fairly long series of Tiger Woods video games. If you are an avid fan of the Tiger Wood games, you will feel very much at home with the latest installment. Electronic Arts have been notorious for making arcade Tiger Woods golf video games to appeal to the casual gamers, but his year seems different. Unrealistic scores (like 50 under par) are virtually impossible to achieve this time around. The gameplay is similar to the previous games in that it keeps the player immersed in the golf course. One new feature is a revamped putting system which allows you to anticipate the line of trajectory that your golf ball will travel on the green. Even though it is not as useful as Tiger Vision, (which was introduced in Tiger Woods 2005) it still helps to line up the putt. There is a limit to how many times you can utilize this feature, so players should not expect to abuse other players with their putting. Your skill level and difficulty will determine how many times you can use the putt preview.

Another element of the game that might turn a few players off is the golf swing mechanic. The analog sticks are no longer used to hit the golf ball; however, the buttons are used. This alteration may have been because of the lack of challenge with hitting the golf ball with the analog stick. The new way to make contact with the ball is to press the button three times (ala Madden kicking field goals). Once to start your swing, twice to start your downswing, and a third time for accuracy. If it seems too intricate, it really is fairly intuitive. Madden fans can easily make a smooth transition with this gameplay mechanic. Photo face is yet another new feature of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008. It gives gamers the opportunity to generate their own face and put it in the game. This feature appears to be exclusive to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Electronics Arts has not corroborated a Photo face feature for the Nintendo Wii. Sorry Nintendo Wii owners. The create a golfer aspect is back, and it has the usual things you would expect. You can create a golfer as skeleton-like as Nicole Richie, or as putrid as Rosie O'Donnell. It is all up to the gamer. All of the mini-games remain intact in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008. The visuals in the game are brilliant. Everything from the beautiful golf courses to Tiger Woods' millions dollar smile will appease anyone. Shot Confidence is another original aspect of the game. In a nutshell, playing well gives you confidence. Playing poorly lowers your confidence. Many will be dissatisfied with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008, but other will be elated. Overall, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008 is a solid improvement over Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007.

Final verdict 8 out of 10

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AP - Though Barack Obama isn't accused of anything, the charges against his home-state governor - concerning Obama's own Senate seat no less - are an unwelcome distraction.

Best PlayStation 3 Games For Christmas

This holiday season will bring some exciting new titles for gamers. The hardest part is deciding what new games to ask for. So what are the best PlayStation 3 Games for Christmas? Read on to find out.
There's something for everyone in this season's line-up. If you go for racing, you'll love "Motorstorm: Pacific Rift". Using every possible vehicle from monster trucks, to motorcycles, to quads, and more, racing is on in mud, through trees, around lava, and well, you get the idea. Lots of different tracks and terrain promise high interest whether in single player or multi-player mode.

For total involvement in the first person, "Mirror's Edge" is the best of the season. You have to deliver courier packages to certain destinations, all the while trying to navigate dangerous environments. Every action is done in the first person, not you tailing behind your character with the controller. It's so vivid that you feel like you are doing the running, rolling, and climbing.

For family fun, try "LittleBigPlanet". The object of the game is for you and up to three friends, to try to manipulate the world in an attempt to get across it using level creation tools. The beauty of this unique game is that it allows gamers to try their hand at game creation. It promises to be a big part of the PS3 line-up in the future.

Finally for those who love scary games, there's "Dead Space". It's already being talked about as one of the scariest, skin-crawling survival horror games of all-time. Shoot the limbs off alien monsters before they mutate into something even more sinister, as you explore space.

This is only a few of the best PlayStation 3 games for Christmas. There are some amazing sequels and lots more first person games to immerse yourself in too.

Article by Zak Mann. Zak is the owner of http://www.videogameconsoles.ca and an avid video game enthusiast.

AP - A German cruise ship plans to evacuate passengers in Yemen and fly them to the next port of call Wednesday to avoid any possible encounters with pirates off the coast of lawless Somalia.

Bunco From Man's Gambling to Ladies Social Event

The loud roars of laughter and the smell of delicious food as you hit the door makes one wonder what could be going on. An event that is so special that it happens once month in neighborhoods all over the country. Women leave their children home with the men to get the chance for some "me" time and socialize with their neighborhood buddies. The name of this social event is called "Bunco". The game is a 100% game of chance with no skill involved. You have set of three dice at 4 separate tables. The players rotate around and get a great chance to socialize with different friends. Anyone who has ever played the game says it is best to play with at least 12 players. Most get together of bunco have a 5 dollar buy so the winner of the night can win a little money and help pay for gag prizes. Now the game itself is fun but what really drives this social event is ..well.. to be social. You get to eat food and enjoy a few adult beverages with your buddies. No one is competitive to go outplay anyone for a small cash prize and since its 100% luck even an unexperienced player can win her first night. The dictionary word for Bunco is very interesting. In general, Bunco is called a gambling game or scheme.

Many believe the game derived from the 1700-1800s in England. The game found its way to America as a gambling game. Many a man lost his weekly wages throwing those three dice in hopes of winning the big "pot" from others. This game was not played in a saloon or parlor until after the civil war in America. The Bunco gambling became so bad that during the prohibition era that police had to break up the game in gambling parlors. This pretty much quelled the game for many years.

In the 1980s, the game reemerged as a social event with suburban women in their neighborhood. Its as if tea time or poker nights with wife and husband had been replaced with Bunco. Just as easy as it was to set up card tables with cigarettes and beer to play poker. It is easier and more acceptable to have the same card tables and use dice. Cigarettes are frowned upon now and food has replaced it.

All a hostess has to do now is download score sheets from http://www.buncoscoresheet.com and figure out what food to make.

AP - Chileans have a new hero: an apparently homeless dog that pulled the body of another dog through traffic off a busy highway. A surveillance camera on a Santiago freeway captured images of a dog trotting past speeding cars to pull the lifeless body of the other canine, which had been run over by a vehicle, away from traffic and onto the median strip.

Play Pokemon Online

The people in charge of making Pokemon popular again have done a great job. Pokemon was big a few years ago and it's recently made an amazing comeback. A whole new generation of kids are trying to catch them all.

It's a very good time to be a Pokemon fan. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl for the Nintendo DS have been in the Top 10 best selling games for months now and the Diamond and Pearl cartoon is pretty popular too. But why stop there? I have a vision and Pokemon people feel free to borrow this idea from me, that would make Pokemon an even more dominant gaming franchise. I'd like to see a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) based on the world of Pokemon.

Sure, I know that's there's a few Pokemon games online like Pokemon Crater and Pokemon Online (POL) but those games are pretty simple and based on the game play of the Game Boy Advance version of Pokemon. And I don't even think that Nintendo has anything to do with them. They could be one cease and desist letter away from being shut down.

I'd like to see a World of Warcraft style Pokemon game online. Use the same story line and game play as Diamond and Pearl but put the players in a cartoonish 3D environment. Choose your trainer avatar and start your adventure. Think about how cool it would be to wander around different towns and cities, catch wild Pokemon, train them, battle other trainers, do gym battles, collect badges and enter tournaments and do it all in a online 3D environment that you share with other Pokemon trainers. And to make it interesting they could add some members of Team Rocket to mix. Jessie and James could be bots that come along and try to steal your Pokemon.

This would be a great game for the Wii's Online Service. Pokemon Battle Revolution is out and it already has online play in Japan but that game is just an extension of Diamond and Pearl. Without a DS, that game isn't too good. No, they need to start over with a whole new online Pokemon game.

The Nintendo Wii is the hottest selling new video game console right now and it's outselling the PS3 and XBox 360. The Wii is still hard to find in the stores and that isn't going to change anytime soon. The Wii's only weakness seems to be it's online play which is weak at best. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is going to have online play but it's release has been pushed back to February. My Worlds of Warcraft Pokemon game idea (let's call it Worlds of Pokemon for this article) if done right, could become the game that puts the Wii Online Service on the map.

Hopefully someone at Nintendo has already come up with this idea and programmers are already hard at work on Worlds of Pokemon. If not, then I hope they have enough free time to read this article and get inspired.

When Anthony Tripp isn't teaching his son how to catch them all, he's coming up with ideas about how to play Pokemon online and writing about it on his blog, http://www.pokemontoday.com

AP - Chileans have a new hero: an apparently homeless dog that pulled the body of another dog through traffic off a busy highway. A surveillance camera on a Santiago freeway captured images of a dog trotting past speeding cars to pull the lifeless body of the other canine, which had been run over by a vehicle, away from traffic and onto the median strip.