And somewhere along the line Activision's extreme game designers decided to try different things, to appeal more toward the sport they were going after, a very good thing indeed. Presentation Kelly Slater nails the sport of surfing on the head, from the presentation to gameplay to the waves themselves.
#Pro surfers pro#
If ever there was a surfing game to recommend, Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer takes the prize, hands down. The wave engine generates waves that never appear to break the same way twice, the surfing is fun and difficult but ultimately rewarding, the goals are well balanced, and Activision has kept the stupidity of jumping ocean creatures to a minimum. There's little doubt in this surfer's mind that Activision's attempt at tackling the once obscure surfing genre is a respectable, all-around triumph. Now Activision, which takes its extreme sports very seriously - as seen by its huge '02 lineup covering everything from skateboarding to wakeboading - has entered into the fray with its own take on the genre with Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer. But with the mainstream culture's steady acceptance of extreme sports, thanks to the X-Games and movies such as Z-Boys and Dogtown, developers like Krome Studios ( Sunny Garcia Surfing) and Angel Studios ( TransWorld Surfing) have tried their hands at making good surfing games.īoth teams persevered with interesting new designs that pushed the tiny little pocket of surfing games to entirely new levels - Krome by simply doing it early, and Angel by developing striking technology and using intriguing design. There simply wasn't a surfing experience more fun to play than California Games on the Atari Lynx. No less than two years ago, surfing games were a joke.