But some sports games these days really beg the question: Why? Case in point: "Mike Stewart's Pro Bodyboarding" by Pacific Interactive Entertainment. I downloaded a preview copy of this game just out of pure curiosity: I've been bodyboarding once or twice -- it was fun, but I spent most of my time trying to swerve around little kids playing in the surf. I figured, hey, maybe this game can accurately re-create that experience!
Unfortunately, when I started this game up, I was blown away: Bodyboarding is actually a real-life sport! That's right! Apparently, the idea is to catch a wave, then do lots of tricks and stuff in the wave before it runs out. This "Mike Stewart" is, I'm assuming, a top athlete in his field (no word whether he is related to Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart of "Ironman's Stewart's Super Off Racing" (1989)). You can choose to play as Mr. Stewart, or choose from a buffy young polygonally lady, Carmen Fuentes (no word whether she is related to MTV Dee-Jay Daisy Fuentes) -- the full version of the game promises 8 different characters (plus secret bouns characters!).
In any event, there's really not much to say about the game: It plays like a bad 3D recreation of the Surfing part of "California Games", a title released in the early 80's by Epix. After choosing a player, you're placed in a pretty poor-looking wave (3D acceleration is required), and use the arrow keys and shift and alt to move your bodyboarder around and attempt (usually unsuccessfully) to do tricks. You have a certain time limit -- when the time limit runs out, the wave stops and "End of wave" is displayed on the screen. Strange, I didn't think waves worked that way.
My first beef with the game is the graphics: I'm sure it's a daunting task to create a wave in a game, but I figured they could do better than this. The wave looks like a circle with some white foam coming out the ends.
Gameplay is equally bad. Most tricks are difficult to perform -- I found myself doing various tricks randomly as I frantically pushed buttons. You fall down a lot, but that's ok, as you instantly return to your board, losing only a few seconds. I would have loved to steer my board into a swimmer playing in the surf, but unfortunatly, none were around.
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