Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer
The ‘extreme’ sports genres have been getting a real workout ever since Tony Hawk’s appeared on the PlayStation. It was a brilliant game, nailing the aspirational skateboarder in wannabe skaters like myself. The one sport that has never really worked though has been surfing. One of the main problems is that the environment on every level is pretty much the same - a wave.
Normally a name attached to a game doesn’t mean much, but with recent goings such as Dave Mirra withdrawing his name from the pathetic sounding BMXXX, there does seem to be some street cred on the line from the pros. So when 6 time world champ Kelly Slater attached his name to the latest effort it seemed worth a look.
The first thing to note is the tone the game takes when you load it up - instead of the usual frantic soundtrack and hard core sporting feats, you get a movie of Slater diving in slow-mo into calm coral infested water. It’s a nice change, and sets the tone for the game - it’s more mellow and more ’surfy’ than we’ve come to expect.
The games itself follows the traditional route of slowing opening up new areas to explore, and new and harder goals to achieve to progress. Goals are based around learning new tricks, scoring points, jumping piers, spraying windsurfers, etc. There has been some largely successful effort put into getting around the aforementioned level sameness problem.
As each beach is unlocked, you get a nice voiceover and video from Slater extolling the areas virtues and interests. Some pretty awesome footage of areas like Jaws and Mavericks really gets you looking forward to trying your luck.
And the graphics once you are actually riding the wave are very smooth and nicely done (I played the GameCube version). Some great locations - Hawaii, Indo, Antarctica ! - allow different lighting and moods to be created, and the replays use that to full effect. The occasional glance of a sunswept beach whilst you carve the face is a treat.
It doesn’t take too long to learn the controls, and they seem pretty well layed out. Before long you’ll be snapping cutbacks, slashes and some pretty outrageous air maneuvers with glee. Once you get in the groove, it’s entertaining to spend the 3 minutes you get on a wave just exploring the wave and feeling the speed and power you get from different sections.
Unlike other surfing games I’ve tried, it manages to just keep the animations going believably enough - surfing really needs that feeling of ‘flow’ and smooth transitions from one move to the next. You can forgive the occasional impossible sequence on the face, much more that you can an endless pause or break in animation at the peak of a wave that other games have suffered from.
There are some problems - for example, the waves from beach to beach don’t vary enormously. Though some are certainly bigger or faster than others, it doesn’t quite convey the fear of dropping in at Jaws when compared to the (relatively) more tame Pipeline.
The first 5 or so locations are all ‘natural’ right handers, and the sudden change to a ‘goofy’ lefthander brings the controls to a shuddering halt as you have to make the adaption - another ‘drawback’ of a wave as it only really breaks one direction. And the aforementioned flow can get a bit absurd when button mashing allows you string together 20 or so face moves to light up the special bar.
Probably it’s biggest sin is making getting barreled - or tubed as the game puts it - a bit too tricky. Once inside the barrel, an easy enough task, you have to constantly adjust your balance to stay inside. The problem with this is you don’t get any time to appreciate the ‘green room’, as you’re too busy watching the balance meter.
All in all though it’s a highly entertaining game, perhaps a bit limited in it’s first outing. But it bodes well for the inevitable sequel.
Gamespot has a screenshot gallery.
posted by devo · at 9:44 am · filed under Reviews