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Golf games are among the most popular and impressive titles for personal computers, but it seemed that no developer could either perform a solid import of a PC title to the PlayStation or design a console golf game from the ground up. But Hot Shots Golf, published by Sony Computer Entertainment of America in May 1998, changed everything. The game was a serious golf simulation with a cartoonish, arcade veneer, providing a perfect mix of accuracy and fun.

Hot Shots Golf truly was an original and became a hit. Its dominance in the golf genre went unchallenged in the last 18 months as EA Sports released the dreadful Tiger Woods 99 and Psygnosis swung and missed with the flawed Pro 18 World Tour Golf, both failed attempts at pure, serious simulations.

But now Hot Shots Golf is finally facing competition from Electronic Arts' new release, CyberTiger. EA is trying to combine the immense popularity of Tiger Woods and a fun, arcade-style golf game like Hot Shots Golf. This deep title features a variety of interesting game modes and wrinkles unique to the golf genre, but a couple of serious gameplay flaws and muddy graphics keep it from becoming another hot shot in the PlayStation golf world. Instead, CyberTiger is a lukewarm shot. Read on to find out why. Gameplay:

CyberTiger plays a fun, arcade-style game of golf from tee to green. But once the ball reaches the green, this game misses the cut by many shots. The putting interface is really, really bad. In fact, only the putting interface in Pro 18 World Tour Golf, in which reading greens resembles reading Egyptian hieroglyphics, is worse.

On the tee or the fairway, this is a pretty easy game to pick up and play, which is fitting since it's an arcade game. The computer picks what it thinks is the proper club and swing style for your upcoming shot and selects a target for that shot. The CPU also places a line on the swing meter - if playing in digital swing mode - where your back swing should end and down swing should start.

Golfers also can shape shots in the air by imparting side, front or back spin. The spin isn't overdone, and it doesn't create a completely unfair advantage since players can't see the shadow of the ball on the ground during its descent to the ground. This adds some mystery to the effectiveness of any spin efforts and prevents players from making shots with smart-bomb precision every time. The subtle spin does allow golfers to overcome the wind effects, making them almost negligible. Plus the wind speed gusts way too much - varying as much as 10 mph every second - to be even remotely realistic.

All of this assistance is good for golf novices and young gamers, but it almost makes this game idiot-proof, especially on the easier courses. Par-or-better scores should be achievable after a few rounds of practice. Combine all of the swing assistance with the relatively easy Cyber Spyglass course, and players should tear up the track in no time. This game is too easy, especially in the digital swing mode, which limits longevity and challenge. Thank goodness for the varied modes of play, or this game would collect dust in a hurry. The beauty of Hot Shots Golf was that it was a stiff challenge despite its arcade trappings. It didn't suffer fools gladly. I'm a fool on the cyber or real links, yet CyberTiger made me look like a PGA Tour pro after just a couple of rounds.

Another problem with this game is its reward system. Hot Shots Golf rewarded golfers with points for new, improved players and tougher courses for strong play on the course, such as below-par rounds, birdies and eagles or chipping in from the fairway. The major reward feature of CyberTiger - Power-Up Balls - are only available for hitting special targets on the driving range in the Career Mode. Rewards should come from skill in actual gameplay, not on the driving range, whether it's a sim or arcade game. Tiger Woods doesn't earn millions for sinking putts on the practice green. He earns the dough for pressure shots during tournaments. That same reward system should be implemented in this game.

And the absolute Achilles' heel of CyberTiger is the putting interface. It's very, very hard to read greens properly. In Hot Shots Golf, vertical lines superimposed over the green measured green contour. The longer the line, the steeper the slope. That interface was elegant, simple and effective.

CyberTiger's contour interface is the exact opposite. Very little contour is evident in the green when the player first addresses the putt. Pressing the triangle button activates the contour-measurement system. The various rises, falls and breaks of the green are exaggerated in grotesque fashion. A regular break looks like a drop off a cliff. A rapidly climbing putt looks like it needs enough of a tap to reach the top of Mount Everest. Even worse, the player and the ball disappear from the green when activating the contour-measurement system, forcing you to line up your putt almost blind. That may sound like a nitpick, but any golfer knows that driving is for show and putting for dough, in an arcade or sim golf game. Even the slightest miscalculation can result in a missed putt. It's pretty hard to calculate a putt without your ball or a ball marker on the green. In a nutshell, this system leads to nothing but frustration, especially in the digital putting mode. Exaggerated views of the green lead golfers to make exaggerated putting decisions. It's a stupid system that must be fixed for any and all sequels to this game.

It's starting to sound like an endless tape loop in my reviews, but Electronic Arts and EA Sports continue to release deep, deep games. CyberTiger is no exception. This game features more playing modes than nearly any PlayStation golf sim and more modes than Hot Shots Golf.

There are eight styles of play in Single Player mode: Stroke, Tournament, Practice, Range, Foursomes, Four-Ball, Shootout and Skins. Stroke play is simply that - counting all strokes over 18 holes. A tournament puts the human player in either an 18-, 36- or 72-hole tournament. Practice allows a player to test their skill on any hole on any unlocked course. The range is the spot to hone driving, chipping and putting skills. Foursomes and four-ball are team competitions with varying rules. The Shootout is a fun, three-hole showdown among a combination of four human and computer players. The player with the high score on each hole is eliminated until just two players remain on the third hole. Two to four players - either computer or human - compete in the Skins mode for money on each hole. The low scorer on each hole gets the "skin," or money bonus. If there's a tie, that skin carries over to the next hole. The Shootout and Skins modes are the most fun in Single Player, while the Foursomes and Four-Ball modes can be extremely long and tedious to play. Still, CyberTiger offers plenty of choices, which is a good thing.

In the career mode, human players can compete as either fictitious, Hot Shots Golf-style characters Chip, Inga or Mia, or as a young Tiger Woods. Each character has different ratings for power, spin, control and putting. Those players compete in a tournament on the only available course at the start, Cyber Sawgrass. Other courses, including Cyber Sawgrass, Cyber Summerlin, Cyber Canyons and Cyber Badlands, are unlocked after success in Career mode tournaments. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than Hot Shots Golf should be flattered. It used the same system 18 months ago.

The Range section of the career mode becomes one of the most important areas of the game. While practicing shots, players also can take aim at various targets in the air and on the course, earning Power-Up Balls as a reward. Each of the Power-Up Balls has a special characteristic such as extra bounce, straight flight, extra distance, extra spin and no bounce. Golfers also can earn special skills as a reward for hitting targets on the Range. It's a unique feature, but it's a shame that Power-Up Balls aren't available for other modes of the game. Power-Up Balls are the distinctive feature of this title, an overt arcade touch that could have separated this game from the pack. EA should have exploited this advantage but didn't.

The basic digital control interface of CyberTiger is quite simple, making this an easy game to pick up and play. But the game also features the unique analog swing that was featured in Tiger Woods 99. The analog swing is quite challenging and probably doesn't belong in an arcade game.

But first the basic control setup. It's intuitive and easy. The L1 and L2 shoulder buttons allow players to select all the standard clubs in their bags, from a driver to a putter with everything in between. The R1 and R2 shoulder buttons adjust the camera angle from the default behind view to an overhead view. All the angles are functional, but I liked the default view best. The circle button gives an overhead view of your projected target for the shot, and the target distance can be moved in any direction with the D-buttons. The square button adjusts the swing to full, pitch or chip styles with each club. That's a very nice touch of realism, especially for an arcade game.

The digital swing meter is identical to that used in Tiger Woods 99. It's a three-click system with a circular meter. The player clicks once to start the back swing, once to stop the back swing and start the down swing, and a final time to strike the ball. A dotted white line is placed across the meter where the computer suggests your back swing should stop for the desired distance, and a small yellow zone is the sweet spot for clicking on contact with the ball. Hooked or sliced balls will result from clicks outside the sweet spot. On a standard shot, the swing meter moves with an even, steady rhythm that's easy to follow. But it's still quick enough to allow for the occasional blunder. Players also can overswing into the "red" zone in an attempt for extra distance, but an overswing causes the swing meter to fall back toward the sweet spot more quickly than a conventional swing. So there's greater risk and reward for an overswing. That's a neat feature.

The analog swing meter also is borrowed from Tiger Woods 99. On the surface, the analog swing looks simple: Pull back on the stick to start the back swing, and a numerical meter will appear on the screen to indicate the strength of the shot, ranging from 0 to 109 percent. When a player reaches the desired level, they simply snap the stick forward to start the down swing. Looks easy. Looks can be deceiving. On the down swing, even the slightest snap of the stick that isn't perfectly straight up will result in an errant shot. This is tough to manage, especially with worn-out Dual Shock controllers like mine. The analog swing was realistic in the sense that errant down swings in real golf cause bad shots. But since this is an arcade golf game, the constant challenge and steep learning curve of the analog swing felt somewhat out of place. I just couldn't see a youth - one of the target audiences for this game - sticking with the analog swing for very long. It's just too finicky and not a pick-up-and-play feature. But there is a positive aspect to the analog swing: Putting is easier because a yellow line is drawn from your club to the hole to indicate the strength of the shot. Simply start the down swing when the line reaches the hole, and your ball should land near the cup.

In either the digital or analog mode, Vibration in a Dual Shock controller is well supported, as the controller tingles with a light dose of energy when the club strikes the ball on each shot.

The navigational and pause menus are a snap to glide through. They're well labeled and easy to understand. Again, EA pretty much has the hang of creating smooth menus.

Computer golf games often are visual masterpieces, almost looking real. That realism never has been carried over to the PlayStation, probably because of the system's graphical limitations. But some golf games, like Hot Shots Golf and Pro 18 World Tour Golf, have rendered courses in fairly vivid, accurate fashion. One would almost expect that CyberTiger would follow suit, as graphics has been a strong point of nearly every recent sports release from EA and EA Sports. Well, those expectations aren't met in CyberTiger. This game is a bogey, graphics-wise.

The golfers in CyberTiger are a hybrid between the cartoonish, anime-style linksters of Hot Shots Golf and the realistic-looking players of golf sims. Most of the players in CyberTiger are teen-agers and are modeled properly for height. But the players appear to be flat dimensionally and washed-out graphically, lacking much definition or vivid color.

Courses and the gallery areas are a mixed bag graphically. The long, vertical mows of the grass in the fairways are well represented, as are the checkerboard mowing patterns on the greens. But the rough looks like a pixelated indoor-outdoor carpet. There's no sensation of taller grass in the roughs - only blotchy, dark green boards of pixels. The backgrounds, such as trees and cart paths, also look fairly one-dimensional. They lack much detail or texture. In another flaw, no divots spring from the ground after swings. That's a realistic touch that should be included in the graphics of any golf game, simulation or arcade. A golf game without divots is like a racing game without skid marks.

But on the bright side, the swing animations are smooth, and the framerate sails along pretty smoothly. The camera angles change in a bit of a choppy fashion when the ball is in flight, but it's not really distracting. Players also have different emotional reactions to missed or made putts, including Tiger's famous pump of his arm after sinking a long putt. A small vapor trail follows each shot hit in the air, lending another arcade touch. This arcade touch is not nearly as annoying as the vapor trail that followed home runs in EA Sports' Triple Play 2000, because CyberTiger depicts itself as an arcade game, plain and simple. EA Sports tried to convince sports gamers that TP 2000 was a simulation when it really was an arcade game. Honesty can make the goofiest gimmicks tolerable, and even fun.

CyberTiger had the potential for greatness in the sound department because its ambient golf sounds far surpassed those of any other golf title on the PlayStation. But a certain fellow named Eldrick Woods prevents this game from reaching sonic perfection. For those who don't know or may have forgotten, Eldrick is more commonly known by his nickname, Tiger.

The ambient golf sounds in this game are amazing and capture the feel of a day on the links perfectly. For example, the ping of a metal driver striking a ball on the tee is perfect. The sound of other clubs also is very accurate. But the level of detail in the sound is what is most striking. For example: You can hear birds and crickets chirp, jets and propeller planes fly overhead periodically, the beep of a golf cart backing up, the distant and near roar and applause of the crowd, dogs barking, a train whistling, a chain saw ripping through a distant tree, a woodpecker jabbering its beak into a nearby tree trunk. On the practice range, the constant, accurate "swoosh" of swings is heard along with the periodic clunks of a bucket of balls being filled at the counter. In the funniest moment of the game by far, a male fan whispered, "Where's the bathroom?" just as Tiger was teeing up in a Skins Game match.

All of these sounds may appear to be overkill, but EA handles them perfectly. The sounds fall into place naturally and are never forced. The ambient sound in this game is an absolute treat. It sounds as if EA simply placed sensitive microphones all over a golf course and driving range for a day and bonded the audio to this game. In fact, the developers probably did just that. The ambient sounds can be turned off for hip-hop music that beats along in the background during play. But anyone who does that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

On each shot, the ball makes a whistling sound as it approaches the ground that sounds like bombs dropping to the ground in a World War II movie. It's a fun addition, especially considering the arcade nature of the game.

But Tiger Woods' commentary during the game is the polar opposite of the ambient sounds: It's brutal. Tiger offers simple comments as "Blocked it," "That'll play," "Tigerrrrr," "Ripped it" or "Nice play" after a variety of shots, and the inane "That's what I'm talking about" after some good shots. This commentary is a repetitive, annoying joke that adds nothing to the game. Mercifully, Tiger's commentary can be turned off. I'm sure that Electronic Arts paid a handsome sum for Tiger's licensing rights, so you'd think the company would get more audio out of him than two- and three-word sentences featuring one-syllable words. Even though this is an arcade game, it would have been nice if Tiger offered players audio advice at the tee of each hole or even at the start of each course.

CyberTiger has some nice things going for it. It's deep, easy to play, and the ambient golf sounds are amazing. The Tiger Woods license also adds a certain cachet that only the disappointing Tiger Woods 99 can match.

This game isn't a realistic simulation of golf, but that can be forgiven. It's not trying to be a sim. It's an arcade game. But even arcade games need decent graphics and, more importantly, strong gameplay. And the gameplay flaws of CyberTiger, especially the putting interface, can't be overlooked. A sequel would have great potential if the graphics were sharpened and the putting interface streamlined and simplified. But those weaknesses and the relative ease of play handicap CyberTiger and reduce its longevity. The thrill evaporates fairly quickly with this game.

CyberTiger also suffers from what I call "The Gran Turismo Factor." In a select few console gaming genres, one title has been released that far surpasses all others for quality and fun. Gran Turismo dominates the PlayStation racing genre in that fashion. Hot Shots Golf has a similar grip over the PlayStation golf world due to its infectious combination of realism and arcade fun. CyberTiger is a decent game, but it doesn't loosen Hot Shots Golf's grip and probably will tumble farther down the leader board with the release of Hot Shots Golf 2 scheduled for next year.