The macosxhints Rating:
[Score: 8 out of 10]
When I play with a golf simulation, I look for those nice touches that make the game feel more realistic, though nothing has managed to simulate my vicious slice very well as of yet :-). TW2003 has them in abundance, from the grass clippings flying up on a shot from the rough, to the divots you create with your irons from the fairway. The game also features a "fly the ball" perspective that's quite visually interesting. When you hit the ball, the camera takes off just behind your ball, and follows it in real time through the air. Nearly as soon as the ball has come to rest, your player is on screen and ready to play the next shot. You can choose from a number of different shot types, including punches, lobs, and bump and runs. There's also a "high spin" shot, though I wasn't ever able to get really impressive backspin on any of the irons that I tried. One minor cool trick -- hit Command-R in the demo to bring up information on frame rate and some other technical data.
The game's not perfect (mastering the swing is quite tricky; Tiger never grabs his ball from the cup after putting out!), but for golf on OS X, it's one of only two serious contenders. If I had a demo version of Links Championship Edition, I'd put them head to head for a comparison, but since I don't, TW2003 gets this week's nod as the Pick of the Week.
As an aside, I'd also like to thank Aspyr for bringing a large number of quality titles to the OS X platform. A quick scan of their product page shows an impressive array of shipping and soon-to-ship games, including 007, Elite Force II, Tony Hawk 4, Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer, Nascar 2003, SimCity 4, Medal of Honor Spearhead, etc. Without Aspyr (and MacPlay, too!), the gaming picture on OS X would be much bleaker -- so thanks for the excellent work!
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030728025335452