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.
