As you'd expect from the latest installment of EA's venerable Tiger Woods franchise, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 features some new courses to play on, some new golfers to play them and more people in the gallery to watch those new players play on those new courses. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same old same old, which, fortunately, still makes for same old addictive golf greatness.

The game does feature new game face animations and other such dynamic minutiae, subtle but striking improvements, especially manifest in the "create-a-player" mode, where attention-to-detail really shines.

Otherwise, graphically, it’s as lush and serene as ever, though the Xbox 360 version of the game doesn't seem quite as pretty as it could be - if you use EA Sports' Madden 07 visuals as a benchmark, anyway. The PS2 version isn't exactly pretty and the Xbox version has "good enough" written all over it. Regardless, all versions still convey a nice walk in manicured woods quite nicely.

And though Tiger 07 only offers modest tweaks to both game mechanics and controller options, the essence of it all is still more golf than you'll know what to do with. You can adjust almost every aspect of game difficulty, for starters, adding, removing or tweaking in-game prompts, guides, auto-swing features and so on. Plus, there are innumerable play modes both online and off, from a full PGA season simulator to the gloriously goofy "Battlegolf"; quick fix/self-improvement mini games like T-I-G-E-R (h.o.r.s.e. for golfers) and KP contests, and a whole swack of courses to play on, some real, some fictitious. Notable new courses include Scotland's mighty St. Andrews and Canada’s Glen Abbey on top of mainstays like Pinehurst and the notorious Pebble Beach.

New PGA pros include Michael Campbell and Steve Elkington as well as LPGA dominator, Annika Sorenstam. Add those to the returnees such as Tiger (obviously), Mike Weir, John Daly, John Furyk and Colin Montgomery, plus a batch of totally fictitious pros and a self create duffer or two and you have a huge stable of players to choose from, each with a strength and weakness or three. Mind you, notably missing are Phil "Lefty" Mickleson and the Big Easy, Ernie Els. Hold-outs, maybe?

Anyway, it must be said, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 is otherwise not radically different nor much better than Tiger 06 or even Tiger 05. In fact, it's basically and amalgam of both (with sugar on top), each totally respectable and long-term playable in their own right, so picking up 07 is somewhat redundant. Mind you, if you don't own any other Tiger game - or if you're just a golf nut - then Tiger 07 is everything you could hope for in a golf game, from a deep rich simulator to a light-hearted whack n' duff delight - and with a huge virtual community of likeminded players always waiting for you online.