They’ve taken on BMX, skateboarding and
surfing, and now Activision’s extreme sports division is tackling a much lesser
known niche sport, wakeboarding (or mock surfing as some call it). Wakeboarding
Unleashed featuring Shaun Murray sets out to do the same thing for wakeboarding
as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater did for skateboarding, and for the most part succeeds
in being fun and addicting. Although the PC version does fall prey to some minor
issues such as gamepad incompatibility and murky textures, it remains
essentially the same great game the console incarnations were.
For those not in the know, wakeboarding works
on many of the same principles as water skiing, only with a board and not skis.
You accomplish tricks by launching yourself into the air off of the wake of the
boat to which your tether is connected or by grinding on poles or boats. You
also have the ability to let go of the tether in order to launch yourself to
higher areas and perform bigger and better tricks, hence the “Unleashed” in the
game’s title (clever).
Wakeboarding Unleashed gives you control of
one of seven professional wakeboarders as you progress through missions in 11
different stages. The missions are standard Tony Hawk fare, requiring you to
earn a high score, interact with x number of people or objects, get a huge
combo, collect letters to spell a certain word, and so on. What’s different is
the addition of the driving missions, which have you racing a boat through a
course. These missions are an interesting change of pace for the career mode,
but goofy controls make the boat stages feel kind of hastily thrown together.
There is also a Video Shoot mode in which you must perform tricks from the angle
of a television camera, so it looks like you’re performing tricks on TV. This
mode is very frustrating, because the camera angle is far from ideal, and isn’t
nearly as fun as the rest of the game.
The game’s single-player mode may be a bit
derivative, but the multiplayer aspects are pretty cool. There’s the stock Trick
Attack and Horse, which are nothing new, but there’s also The Tug-O-War mode
(which has you facing off against a friend and shortening their rope with
successive tricks until they no longer have one) and the excellent co-op mode.
The co-op mode has one player controlling the boat and the other player
performing tricks, which is great fun and allows two players to explore the
levels and rack up high scores together, a first in the extreme sports genre.
Aside from the slightly derivative career
mode, the game does have a few more problems. The game suffers from some weird
collision detection problems, as your wakeboarder will go through certain walls
and boats like paper, but will biff it when coming in contact with a small rock
or patch of reeds. Also, it’s not uncommon to get completely stuck inside a
mountain or boat until the game frees you. Another problem in the PC version is
incompatibility with some gamepads. While Aspyr claims that the game is
compatible with most gamepads, it isn’t compatible with Logitech’s Dual Action
Pad (which is the one that I happen to own) and a few others. This is a pretty
big problem, since this is definitely the type of game that you’d want to play
with a good gamepad and Aspyr hasn’t announced a patch as of this review.
The graphics are a bit of a mixed bag. The
water effects are great, which dynamic reflections and nice animation. However,
the environmental textures are slightly drab and the characters, while well
animated, suffer from murky textures and don’t look quite as good as they do on
the console systems.
The sounds are a nice change for the extreme
sports genre. Instead of hashing a bunch of punk and nu-metal, Wakeboarding
Unleashed’s soundtrack is composed mainly of classic rock from artists like Van
Halen, Mountain, J. Giles Band and The Stooges. This soundtrack is certainly a
breath of fresh air, getting away from the cookie-cutter music of most other
extreme sports games. The sound effects are also pretty good. The engine sounds
are realistic and the sound of the boat wake is clear and sounds great.
While the PC version sports weaker textures
and graphics than the console versions (as well as some gamepad issues),
Wakeboarding Unleashed still is a pretty good translation of a great extreme
sports game. Anyone looking for something new and different from skateboarding
should give wakeboarding a try.
Gameplay: 8.5
Wakeboarding is a completely different sport with a completely different dynamic
from skateboarding, and Wakeboarding Unleashed does a great job of representing
this. The controls as pretty tight, and the variety of moves you can do are
great. The single-player missions are a bit derivative, however, pretty much
rehashing the types of things you’d do in a Tony Hawk game. There are a few new
mission types, like the boat racing and Video Shoot modes, but these feel sloppy
and ill conceived.
Graphics: 8.0
Wakeboarding Unleashed features some great-looking water effects, which some
cool reflections and animation. However, the environments are pretty drab, and
the character models are composed of some pretty murky textures.
Sound: 9.0
The game’s soundtrack is a great breath of fresh air from most titles in the
genre, composed primarily of classic rock hits by bands like Van Halen, the
Flaming Lips and the Pixies. The sound effects are also accurate, crisp and
clear.
Difficulty: Medium
Concept: 8.5
The mission structure is pretty derivative of Tony Hawk, but the gameplay is
very different from the standard formula of extreme sports games. Wakeboarding
is not really the type of sport that could easily be ported into a video game,
but the development team did a fine job.
Multiplayer: 8.5
The game features some of the typical multiplayer modes that you’d find in other
games, like Trick Attack or Horse. However, the coolest part of the multiplayer
aspects is the co-op mode, which allows one player to wakeboard and the other to
drive the boat.
Overall: 8.5
While the PC version is a bit weaker compared to its console counterparts,
Wakeboarding Unleashed is still a fun game based on a lesser-known extreme
sport.
