Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer

"Wait a second..."

I'll admit it right away. I despise almost all video games that have to do with playing sports or riding a bike, etc. So when I received this game for my birthday, I didn't expect much. And the first time i played it, it seemed pretty boring, and i put it down and never bothered with it. I recently started playing the game again and started to appreciate it more. This is actually worth playing.

Gameplay: 7/10
What can I say, you've seen one wave, you've seen them all (almost). The waves differ from each other, in such aspects as lenght, height, color(?!!), etc. This part gets pretty monotonous. But there's more to the game than that. You can also collect new boards and unlock new beaches. Mind you, I've only unlocked 2 out of 13 (i think) boards and eight of the many beaches. As you progress in the game, the competition gets harder, and if you wipe out, you can kiss first place goodbye.

Sound: 5/10
Not much to say about this. You have some sound effects (waves, splashing, wipeout, ect.) and some music in the intro screen. If it weren't for the annoying voice always commenting on your skills, I'd give this a three. (How something that annoys me makes me give this a higher rating fails to make sense.) Anyway, you can turn the voice off.

Control:5/10
The controls are decent. There are probably around one hundred tricks that you can do on the wave. You could select training or whatever, and practice each move as directed. Or, you could just select championship and just press some buttons while surfing. Its your call.

Difficulty: 8/10
Pretty easy at first, but much harder later.

Replay Value: 9/10
There's actually no point in restarting a championship, but hey, why not. You can save one file with each character in the game. You could restart a championship, but you'd just be deleting your unlocked boards and beaches.

Graphics: 11/10
You'd have to see this to believe it. For a GBA game, wow. I wouldn't be surprised if someone bought the game just for the graphics. Of course, I wouldn't recommend this. The graphics don't make the game that much better.

Rent or Buy-
Depends if you're a sports/surfing kind of person. If you're into these games, then buy it. If you're more into RPG's and stuff, then don't look into the game at all. Or download it if you want to see how it is.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/28/03