I Hate when Games Bullshit

I first saw this while playing NBA Jam on the old Sega Genesis gaming system. My friends Chris and Granville played that game head to head a lot and found that if one player pulled too far ahead then his opponent could pretty much sink shots at will for a few minutes until the game equalized. When this happened you could tell because one of them would should how the game "is bullshittin!" The scoring rubber band wasn't a game killer because it kept the games close and didn't seem to come into play at the end. We had a lot of fun with that game for a while at the old apartment. We started allowing ourselves one created player per team and eventually try to see who could come up with the most offensive name for his player. Big Fucker was a favorite along with Bearded Whitemon. I won with a wonderful name that still to this day offends the uninitiated.

Recently I have been playing the most recent Tiger Woods game. Two problems with it have killed the career mode for me. First is the hole placements. For some reason the hole on some greens will be on the severe slope of a green. So, if you lag the ball up and it stops rolling a few inches from the hole, which is what you are trying to do most of the time on a longer putt, the ball then rolls back down to your feet or goes on past the hole and rolls off the green. I true difficult pin placement will put the hole right next to a ridge that will punish a bad putt. You are not supposed to punish a good putt. I have seen this problem addressed on the Game FAQs message board so I know it's not just me.

I am not sure if the hole placement is the game bullshitting or a glitch. What is bullshit is the scoring on Sunday by AI opponents. Recently while leading going into Sunday I have watched my lead evaporate to an AI player who is having his best day of the tournament on Sunday. I'm not saying this never happens but it should not be the norm. You can see what I am talking about when you look at the leaderboard of the Players Championship from May. No one had a real big day on Sunday. So, what happens in the Tiger Woods game is that with the most difficult pin placement of the tournament where I am having to really play well to just score and maintain my lead a couple of players shoot a Thursday type score and I end up in the top five. It's frustrating because in a real golf match when you go into Sunday with a lead you are generally playing to maintain your already established lead. But in Tiger Woods you're forced into taking chances and playing aggressive golf because you have to score just to catch back up. What happens when you take chances with difficult Sunday pin placements? That's right, you play bogey golf. It's bullshit.

So, pretty much all this Tiger Woods is good for is head to head play with friends. I do that like once a every few months.