Taking your pick from a lot of thirteen surfers and ten exotic locales spread across the globe, each playable either at daytime or nighttime, you surf against a wealth of obstacles: competing surfers, unfriendly aquatic life, flotsam, and, of course, the vigorous strength of the ocean. All the waves are randomly generated and you can either swim to them by yourself or call a reef girl to pull you over to one on her jet ski.

Once you get the basics of the game, most of the tricks are easily executed and highly intuitive and there’s a wealth of things that can be done, such as a floater, where one tersely toes the surfboard at the top of a wave while trying to keep balance. There’s also carving where you do a sharp turn at the top of a wave, or propelling your surfer high into the air while performing a string of grabs and fancy moves to net you big points. And there’s that ever-important aspect of surfing through the barrel of a wave, easily the most exciting part of the game.

There’s the usual collection of modes such as the free play (Free Surf), individual level (Single Session), and career (Career Mode, naturally) types. In Free Surf, you’re allowed to pick any of the levels and surf for a few minutes without repercussion, to just try out and practice some moves. Unfortunately, though, it’s here where it becomes rather apparent that there’s very little to distinguish the levels from one another (after all, it’s just water we’re dealing with).

Single Session is similar to Free Surf, but this time you’ll also be judged on how well you can keep up your Karma level. Karma is Transworld’s way to make sure you’re surfing in a decorous manner, where bumping into anything out there or stealing another surfers wave is frowned upon and drops your Karma level. Of course, “Karma” suggests some sort of ironic justice, so let it drop too far and you’ll be treated for a ride through a shark’s intestine.

Now while Single Session and Free Surf were small game, career mode is the big kahuna of Surf. Here, you’ll have to work hard to progress and establish yourself as a force to reckon with - and with the right moves and a good bit of luck, you might catch a photographer’s eye and land yourself a cover story, which will unlock even more of the game.

Except for similar looking levels and some slightly sluggish controls, Transworld Surf tries its dandiest to translate surfing into a video game, but even then, it might not be enough. While all the set and props are in order, there’s still a detached feeling like you’re too aware that this is only a game, and the sense of urgency is definitely missing. Surfing has flaky pacing, where the time you spend paddling to a wave feels incredibly long and the time you’re actually pulling moves is far too short-lived. While you can stay on a board for a longer amount of time with a lot of practice, the instant-gratification these kinds of sports game is known for is gone, and very noticeably so.

The graphics are okay enough to look at, but the subject matter doesn’t help much since there isn’t much you can do to make water look interesting after an hour of play-time. There are some pretty square attempts at humor in the cheesy comments the reef girls make and the music sounds like the kind of stuff Tony Hawk didn’t bother to include, so that also gets grating after a while.

Simply stated, surfing seems like a fun thing to partake in but it really doesn’t fare too well as a video game. And that’s pretty unfortunate because Angel Studios probably really did try with this one. I can’t say if this is the best surfing game out there as I have no point of reference, but surfers might enjoy this on days when no real surfing can be done. Everyone else should steer clear.

. . . Sqoon