Kelly Slater
Does Kelly Slater hang ten or wipeout? Read the totally gnarly review, dude
Tags: Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer Categories: Game Cube Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Aug 6th, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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“Xtreme sports” are one by one all getting big headliner titles. The Tony Hawk series is obviously the staple amongst skateboarding games, the SSX series is widely seen as the pinnacle of snowboarding games, and even relatively more obscure extreme sports like inline skating have games like Aggressive Inline that are able to transcend their genre in a way that even those who aren’t fans of the sport can still appreciate them.
Yet one of the most widely recognized extreme sports, surfing, has yet to receive a game that represents the sport on this same level of excellence. The selection of surfing games has been for the most part atrocious, and although the Xbox and PS2 received a fantastic surfing game in Transworld Surf, it was just short of the wide range of playability required for true classic status, due to its somewhat steep learning curve.
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Many had feared that Kelly Slater would suffer the same fate that has befallen the vast majority of Activision’s extreme sports games. Specifically, that it would end up as a low-quality carbon copy of Tony Hawk. However, Activision and Treyarch have done a respectable job of crafting a game with enough similarities to Tony Hawk to keep that series’ strong backbone, while at the same time making this game different enough to deem it a unique experience in its own right. That said, please forgive me for using Tony Hawk as a method for comparison from this point on, as it’s the best way to begin to describe Kelly Slater.
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Similar to Tony Hawk, players choose one of nine surfers and play through a career mode where players complete goal-based challenges across 15 different locations (With more goodies tucked away as unlockable secrets, of course). Goals range from beating scores to executing a series of specific tricks to tasks like leaping over a pier or posing for a camera. The more goals you complete, the more areas you open up, and the more your surfer’s skills grow.
Unlike the overall game structure, the gameplay is really quite different. Rather than moving across a large level, an entire run in Kelly Slater takes place on one wave. Assuming you don’t bail (In which case your position resets and you start a new wave), you will finish a level on the same wave you started on.
To keep things fresh, the wave itself is constantly changing shape, form and behavior, and each area features waves that act in a unique manner as well. In Jaws, the wave height is gigantic, and the Japanese Wave Pool features waves that are uncommonly stable. In addition, every now and then, goal-related objects float by on the water to mix things up a bit so the game doesn’t get too repetitive.
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Most waves have three distinct parts, the face (i.e. the surface), the lip (The top), and the barrel (Where the wave curls down). Different tricks are performed on these different parts. Riding in the barrel pulls up a balance meter like Tony Hawk’s grinds, leaping off the lip to perform air tricks is just as in Tony Hawk, and performing tricks on the face is comparable to a switch trick in Tony Hawk.
Linking these tricks together is a combo system unique to Kelly Slater, where you can chain together a limited number of one of these three types of tricks just by doing them in succession, but chaining together different varieties of tricks requires the special meter to be maxed. Like in Tony Hawk, this is also the only way to do special tricks, but the meter lasts a much shorter amount of time, and will dissipate if you so much as land an air trick sloppily (Something often difficult to prevent in Kelly Slater).
Unfortunately, this otherwise solid premise runs into a few problems along the way. While air tricks are a bit difficult to pull off with precision, and the barrel requiring a little time to get out of to move to the next trick, face tricks are remarkably simple and painless. There’s no balance to worry about, and the only way you can truly bail doing face tricks is if you stray too close to the barrel or if you surf backwards for a few seconds too long, both which are easy to avoid. Many area goals require you to pull off air tricks and barrel tricks, and good combos encourage you to mix things up a bit, the balance still feels largely swayed in the direction of face tricks. This often makes the game feel a bit shallow, pardon the pun.
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Also, despite the waves’ changing nature, most areas don’t have them changing particularly frequently, leading to the feeling that they’re somewhat lacking in variety. And any location-based level goals in the area that seem intended to add this variety can’t be returned to, so if you just missed smashing through that third iceberg, you’ll have to start the level over again because it’s just not coming back. Finally, the game controls with a much greater amount of precision with the D-Pad than with the control stick, but we all know this is one of the failings of the GameCube controller and in all likelihood the game plays more fluidly on the Playstation 2, if for only this reason.
The graphics are at times outstanding and at times underwhelming. The overall look of the waves and the lighting effects that play across them can be stunning and beautiful, but aren’t perfect. The surfers themselves aren’t particularly impressive and are missing a few details like the ankle strap (Though the ankle band itself is there). The spray is outright ugly up-close as it’s just a simple 2D sprite rather than an actual particle effect. The game also suffers slowdown at times. Overall though the most important element, the waves, looks fantastic and that’s what counts.
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The sound is also a bit of a mixed bag. Maybe I’m dating myself here, but I’m a bit disappointed there isn’t a single Beach Boys song on the soundtrack. Regardless of that, the soundtrack still leaves a lot to be desired. It’s mostly very quiet and low-key, and because of this the sounds of the waves often draw more attention which is probably a good thing because the game’s sound effects are by and large very good.
Overall, Kelly Slater accomplishes being a very good surfing game that’s distinct enough to stand on its own, but doesn’t reach the same level of brilliance that games like Tony Hawk and SSX had. It has potential though, and if the game’s problems are fixed when the inevitable sequel is released, we may very well see the world’s first AAA surfing title.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
-Very good-looking waves -Initially fun gameplay |
7.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
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-Gameplay is unbalanced, and often shallow -GameCube controller once again woefully inadequate for this type of game |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| There may be similarities, but Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer is not the Tony Hawk clone many thought it would be. Unfortunately, it’s not the well rounded and complete package Tony Hawk was either. | |
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Tags: Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer
Posted by Jake McNeill on Aug 6th, 2003 and is filed under Game Cube Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
