Game’s on, Woody!

Tiger Woods joins a long list of worthies who get mocked at by online gamers through a flash game, with the newly created Tiger Hunting, available for free play on Break.com, reports Gopal Sathe.

Tiger Woods joins a long list of worthies who get mocked at by online gamers through a flash game, with the newly created Tiger Hunting, available for free play on Break.com (http://www.break.com/games/tiger-woods-wife-outrun.html).

HT Image

Flash games are practically the new political cartoon, and usually are a lot funnier than the often-outdated humour that the cartoons carry and certainly tend to be a lot less restrained. Breaking news tends to find an outlet in quick and funny flash games, like the one where you play Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi dodging statuettes, and one where you pilot balloon boy Falcon Heene but it is very rare that any of these games — created in a hurry as they are — are well executed in terms of gameplay.

However, Tiger Hunting, whose no-holds-barred humor that could make anyone snigger, is a lot of fun to play and manages to go one step farther. You are controlling Tiger Woods, sitting in his car with one of his mistresses, driving frantically and trying to escape his wife, who is chasing the car with a golf club in her hands.

Unfortunately for Tiger, the roads aren’t all that good, and there are a lot of obstacles in his path, from trees to potholes to trashcans, and you have to dodge these hurdles while trying to speed across the road by pressing the up or down arrow keys. Each time you hit an obstacle, you slow down slightly, while smooth running speeds up the car and increases the number of obstacles as well. Eventually you’re going to run into enough obstacles to be caught by Tiger’s wife Elin, and when that happens, she runs past the car, turns around, and begins to assault Tiger and smash up the car with the gold club in a scene straight out of Grand Theft Auto.

This game on Break.com was released on December 1, and has been played over 2 million times, because of the timeliness of events and also the smooth and enjoyable gameplay and hilarious cartoon graphics — for instance, when Elin catches up, and starts to beat up Tiger, he says, “This situation is my fault, and it’s obviously embarrassing to my family and me... I will certainly make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Not funny by itself, it certainly becomes hilarious when you see the image of Tiger cowering under the golf club, while the car gets smashed to bits.

Tiger Woods has a long association with gaming even aside from this little outing, in the form of Electronic Arts’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour, which has been one of the most successful golf video games.

While EA declared that they would not be changing their relationship with Woods in the light of the scandal which has occured, industry watchers are now concerned about what will happen to the game series in the wake of his decision to leave the PGA. This could strongly affect the sales of the game, as the American PGA itself is already concerned about how the lack of Woods will affect their viewership.

Sathe is founder of the gaming site split-screen.com