Game: Sky Surfer
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: TOKA
Release Date: 6th July 2001
Having found this title for 15p in my local CEX store, I was unsurprised to find that Midas Interactive Entertainment had published it; after all games even mentioned by Midas seem to lose all value immediately. The general idea of the game is that players partake in an extreme form of skydiving which begins with a freefall in which tricks can be performed, followed by a Pilotwings-esque stage with gates to parachute through. Besides the game's main mode (Dive to Air), there's only a balloon popping minigame and a multiplayer mode; a shortage of things to do is a staple feature of Midas games.
In Dive to Air mode, players can pick from one of the four characters (America, France, Germany and Japan), one of four boards with varied stats, and one of three locations to 'sky surf' in. The first is Easy, allowing players to play in a tutorial mode (which explains very little of how to actually play), or to play without the worry of failing by losing control of their descent. Medium and Hard modes both quit the game the moment players lose control.
To keep control of your surfer's balance whilst descending, the left analog stick is used to keep the red cross in the centre circle in the bottom left of the screen. Unfortunately not only is this incredibly difficult to do, the controls are also inverted and extremely unresponsive. In Medium and Hard modes I wasn't able to play for longer than 20 seconds due to losing control. Once players have control of the surfer, tricks can be performed by pressing certain combinations of buttons. After the trick has been done, players are also invited to rotate, but there's no clear indication of how to do so, and after at least 8 attempts, I gave up trying to crack the code.
Once players have descended for 1 minute 30 seconds, they're told to open their parachute. With no indication of how to do so, I had to turn to an online FAQ to find out that I was required to press R1, R2, L1 and L2 simultaneously. The parachuting section of the game is also pretty bland, as well as being equally difficult to control. Once again the controls are inverted, but much of the time player input is ignored and the on-screen character will steer themselves in any direction they want. This is as frustrating as it sounds and spoils the small amount of fun the game might have held.
Graphically the game is very poor, especially in the main game mode, where the ground is a foggy pixellated mess. It's no excuse that you're freefalling from an incredible height as there's no change once you get closer in the parachute section either. The locations are bland and uninspired, and the most fun to be found in the entire game is the balloon popping minigame, which is bearable if a little poorly designed. Musically players are treated to jazz piano behind their extreme sports which makes for an interesting contrast, as well as an announcer who'll only exclaim "My God!" every time you finish a trick badly.
Overall Sky Surfer is the definition of a budget game, with poor controls and gameplay, a complete lack of content, options and game mode, outdated graphics even for the era, unfitting music and terrible voice acting. Even for 15p this game wasn't particularly good value as it holds no real enjoyment at all. As I've said time and time again; Stay away from Midas published video games!
Rating: 4/100
Grade: F
No comments:
Post a Comment