In the land of computer processors, it took a significant charge from AMD for Intel to spring fully into life and shake off the complacency that had left it suddenly having to claw back ground from its once soundly-beaten rival. Since it did that, Intel has continued to innovate and now commands a steady lead over AMD, along with the experience of a lesson learned about resting on your laurels. Closer to home for EA Sports, look at the strides that FIFA has had to make to try to go toe-to-toe with Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer series.

And yet, ever since Microsoft pulled the plug on its Links series, Tiger Woods has had the world of serious golf games all to itself. Every year EA Sports is content to push out a polished, steady re-creation of the sport that perhaps rightly saw off Links all those years ago. It reliably collects its sevens and eights out of ten and then disappears for another year.

You can see where this is going. Tiger Woods 09 is as polished and buffed up a golf game as you could expect, with gleaming, high-definition graphics, top-notch production values and a good number of options and courses to keep you busy. Its improvements, however, aren't particularly notable, with EA opting to enhance the game here and there rather than do anything particularly radical with it.

There are some neat improvements though, to be fair. A new club tuning option allows you to alter attributes for individual clubs, where you can trade off making it easier to hit the ball straighter against a bit of distance, for instance. But more interesting is the coaching and the increased number of little challenges that pop up.

The coaching element means that Tiger's own coach will talk you through the course, and if you're in the main career mode you can earn upgrade points if you replay certain shots well. These stat increases allow you to build up the quality of your player over the course of playing, although if you have a bad run of form that too can be reflected. You can also take on the intriguing GamerNet challenges that pop up, contextually, throughout the game, and make things a little more interesting.

Still, you can't help but feel that the major innovations in the Tiger Woods franchise have been and gone (perhaps outside of the Wii version) and while you feel the benefit of them in the 2009 edition, there's not a compelling reason to upgrade here. Swinging your club still involves you pulling back on the analogue stick and moving up as straight as possible, and you can still play with the head of the club using the right stick. And the mechanics of the game of golf, of course, remain unaltered.

Tiger Woods is, undoubtedly, a tour de force of a golf game and the new version is also better than the last one. But it's not a huge upgrade by any measure, and while it's easily justifiable if you've not dipped your toe into the franchise for a few years, it becomes less so if you have Tiger Woods 08 sitting on your shelf. The game may be the best in its genre, but it's crying out for some half-decent competition.

A very good, mature sporting game that is enjoying the peak of its career without a challenger of note anywhere near it. Could do with a new contender to give it a swift kick up the rear.