Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer has two main modes of game play, they are career mode where you complete challenges and multiplayer mode which includes Push™ where you compete against your friend and the more tricks you do, the smaller your opponents screen becomes. When time runs out or you completely push your player off the screen, you win. There is also Head-to-Head where you compete for the highest points and Time attack where you try and get the highest score in a certain amount of time. The game is fun because of all the challenges that have you wanting to play more. The game doesn’t seem to go on forever as the challenges aren’t repetitive and harder ones are used as you proceed. The player feels very responsive as you are constantly spinning and turning the surfer with ease, with very realistic physics which have no alien or foreign objects making it otherwise.
The graphics of the game are clear, bright and easy to see (fig 4) and they are lifelike which enhances your gaming experience because it makes you believe you are watching and even engaging in real life surfing. The game incorporates a photorealistic quality of graphics as they resemble real life. As a result of all these factors the game is very visually appealing.
The game has a musical background that is very appealing because unlike other games it incorporates real life popular songs by popular artists, including Ben Harper, Jack Johnson and Pearl Jam. This enhances your gaming experience because as well as good visuals you have background music from well-known artists to back that up which makes the music recognizable and more enjoyable for the player. There are sound effects that are also included such as waves breaking, players landing on the wave and players moving around on the wave. This also enhances your gaming experience because you are simulated to believe you are in a real life situation. No voiceovers are used to prevent sound pollution during the game which might irritate the player.
Like in all games you can only play them to a certain extent, but Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer will keep you coming back longer than any other game. The player can finish their challenges and still compete against their opponents and still surf at the location of completed beaches. Other than that, there is no point to go back and try to complete more challenges because once they’re done, they're done.
There are not a lot of movie sequences during the game because it is not based on a movie or any other media body. But small inclusions of the boat that you travel on to your beach locations is included when you first turn the game on and when you are travelling to the beach. This tells you how you are getting to your location and by what means. They are not necessary but add a nice touch of scenery and gives your player a more professional meaning. If they bore the player, the player can always skip through them by pressing the ‘a’ button.
The instructions on the controls are basic and easy to follow and enhance the gaming experience because you can quickly pick up how to control the game and you don’t have to spend half an hour trying to work it out before you start playing.
Throughout the game there are many representations put in place to make the user understand the culture of the surfers, for example, what they are wearing such as board shorts, their sun-blonde hair, tanned skin and toned body (Fig 6). Along with this, eight of the nine surfers that the player can choose are male as there is a stereotypical view that mainly males are surfers. This will possibly impact the target audience as mostly males will play the game and they would not favour a game if there were only female surfers to choose. The close-ups of the players getting into the barrel represent the wave closing over and almost engulfing them. The women are also portrayed as the usual surfing stereotype of an attractive tanned girl in a bikini and surf top (Fig 6). Lastly, the beaches that the player competes at are representations of real life beaches with scenery specific for the location, fro example mountainous backdrop for the Hawaiian location and frozen icebergs in Antarctica.
The target audience for Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer are predominantly males aged between 10 and 25. This is because the males at this age are most likely to want to purchase this game because of the trends in surfing that occur around this age. The front cover of the game also targets them because it has a picture of a surfer pulling off a hard trick in the air (fig 5), which is very appealing to any audience as it grabs your attention making the player want to purchase the game and play it. In spite of this, the game can still be appealing to females aged 10 to 25 because of how good the game itself is and some females are interested in surfing.
Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer is an excellent surfing game that would appeal to any type of person, but predominantly males aged between 10 and 25 as it offers excellent gameplay, graphics, audio, in-game movie sequences, real life representations and easy to follow manuals. The brilliant combination of all these will have the player glued to their seat in the wait of new challenges to come. This game is definitely worth purchasing as it will bring hours of entertainment for the player.
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