Here's a perfect example of what I was talking about with Tiger Woods. Yesterday, I decided that it would be fun to use Ken McHale's rendition of Augusta and play the Masters on the computer. No problem, right? It's just a tournament.
Right. But this is EA.
There is no mode in Tiger Woods '06 to play a single tournament. Incredible. You have to create a custom season, which is not included with the original game--it's a download from EA's site, and the custom season creator comes with six pages of documentation.
Oh, and before you can use a custom season, you have to create a new golfer. What the $*#&?
And before you do any of that, you have to install Augusta, obviously. EA makes installing custom courses like a wisdom tooth extraction. Oh, and you'll also have to install the Course Architect, because it has some very basic libraries and you'll need them.
So, to sum up, here's what you have to do to play ONE friggin' tournament in Tiger Woods '06 with a custom course.
1. Download course.
2. Download and install course architect (not always needed, but likely).
3. Install course. You'll need to use the course utility for this, which is a separate program from the main .exe.
4. Download and install the custom season creation utility.
5. Create your custom season. Just create the one tournament.
6. Start the game.
7. Create a new golfer.
8. When you're done with the creation process, it will ask you if you want to use the custom season that's been detected. Choose "yes."
9. Start PGA Tour mode or whatever it's called. You can then go to the calendar and your custom tournament will be there.
Damn! Could I just submit to a body cavity search or act as a mule for heroin or something LESS FREAKING COMPLICATED?
So when I say that Gary Gorski has a great idea, I mean it. I am so tired of this EA bullcrap. All the EA franchises now have ten layers of design from different years and they're ALL still missing some very basic functionality.
Here's EA Sports's real slogan: If we want you do do it that way, it's in the game.
So if Gary can create a game that actually lets us play the way we want to, I am all over the bandwagon on this one.