Summer is here again. The schools are emptied, bees are buzzing, and movie studios are biding for our hard-earned dollars with new summer blockbusters – and with it the inevitable video game tie-in. Sony has released a new movie from ther newly created animation studio, “Surf’s Up”, about a surfing penguin who has to overcome something and win the heart of someone while learning an important life lesson. Last year Sony released “Open Season” to compete with the other computer-animated children’s movies, which had lackluster success both at the box office and game sales.
Most movie/video game translations don’t do well, in either direction. A video game about a movie (Shrek, Open Season, The Matrix, Spiderman) is usually mediocre at best, and movies based on a video game (think Resident Evil and Doom) are usually horrible. Surf’s Up has a bad legacy to overcome, so let’s take a closer look….
Game premise
You control one of eight surfers, not all of which are penguins (one of them is a burnt-out rooster, and there is one unlockable character from Open Season… yay). The game starts out with standard fare; there are several racing tiers and you must complete a tier before you move onto the next. You start off with only one race available, and must complete that (which includes a training round) before moving onto the main island.
There are 3 objectives within each race, which are apparently optional. You must achieve a minimum amount of points (obtained by doing tricks), go through a minimum number of gates throughout the track, and optionally rank up another level of points for uber-rewards… and of course finish the race first.
The “track” is pretty much a straight shot forward, with a huge surf wave moving you forward and closing off the track as you progress. There are ramps, rails, and obstacles in the way that you must either go through, ride on, avoid or destroy to get extra points. The rails have an interesting game element… once you land on the rail (usually a palm tree bent into the ocean) you must use the left thumbstick to maintain your balance, or you’ll fall off. You can even jump between rails, which is necessary to reach some of the point multipliers.
You perform tricks first by getting some airtime. You can vault your surfer self up with the big wave, or get up from a ramp or high-climbing rail. The trick is then performed pretty much by button mashing, and your character will pull off a certain special move. If you don’t finish the trick by the time you land, then you simply lose the points you would have earned (in other “trick based” games you crash horribly). Not only do you get the points, but your “stoke” meter goes up, and when it’s full then you can press the “Y” button to go into “stoke mode”, which allows you to pull off long trick combinations, which usually translates into extra points.
The graphics are actually unbelievably good, and uses the new Unreal Engine, if you can believe that. The water is very realistic, from the wake your surfboard trails behind it to the splashes of the wave. Character models are also very good, considering their simplicity. All other game elements aren’t very impressive, however, leaving the wave as the star of the show.
I absolutely cannot understand the criteria for winning a race. You really don’t know if you’ve won until you finish and either hear the triumph music or 60s era “suck” theme. There is no race progress meter, so not only do you rarely see your fine-feathered opponents, but you have no idea where you rank in the race. I’ve progressed to other races when I haven’t completed any of the objectives but seemed to finish first. I’ve also won the race when someone obviously finished before me. I even looked in the manual, and there is no mention on what it takes to win a race.
The music is also unbelievably bad… except for one song which is rather catchy (“Something’s Going On”). All of the songs appear to be by the same band, which sound an awful lot like Blink 182, but like all the stuff that didn’t make the cut on a 182 album. Some of the music even sounds like 60s-era surfer rock.
The game tries to have a story, where a walrus correspondent for “SPEN” tries to insert meaning behind the race, and pretty much is a waste of time.
Pretty much all of the unlockables are pointless. You can unlock extra characters, surfboards, and music tracks (yay, more 60s surfer music). Although each character and surfboard have different attributes (like turning, stoke, speed, etc), there really is no distinguishable difference. A different character will pull off different moves, but that’s about it. You can unlock scenes from the movie, but so what?
There is no diversity in this game. You surf, and that’s it. The game developers try to mix it up by making the big wave originate from the RIGHT instead of the left, and surfing at night. Even though there are 10 or so races, the locales change are Arctic and Tropical. That’s it.
Voice acting is pretty good, considering. I really don’t know if the original movie actors reprise their roles in the video game, and I don’t care, because there are no big names in the movie.
Your 8-year-old will probably love it (especially if they have ADD), who also have an affinity to try and sing the horrible punk-surf soundtrack (oh, the horror). The premise is somewhat original in that it takes trick elements from popular skater games and racing, but is dumbed down for the younger crowd.
If you’ve played the demo, then you pretty much have the best of the game (including the only good song in the soundtrack lineup). You can crank through this entire game in about 2 hours, so it is an easy 1000 points, but I’d rent it instead of buying it. Oh, wait, there’s an ad below me… I’d definately buy it, from the link below!
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