Surf's Up [360]

Instead of most movie-licensed games, where players generally complete objectives to follow the established plot, Ubisoft decided on a different take here and made a surfing game that reflects the movie's action without retreading the story. The action takes place at various locations around Pen Gu Island, and features several of the movie's characters to choose from.

After a quick tutorial to show you the moves, it's time to move on to the single-player Championship mode. The main gameplay is similar to the popular Tony Hawk and SSX games, and you can perform tricks of various difficulty, including spins, grabs and grinding rails found on icebergs. You'll earn points that count toward a goal amount, and increase your energy bar as well. When the bar is full, you'll be able to enter Stoke Mode, and perform crazier tricks for bigger points. It's fairly easy to control your motion and put combos together, but will still take some time to get the timing right, making for a fair challenge. The obstacles in your path can become frustating though, as you head toward a large rock or chunk of ice and know you can't get out of the way fast enough.

The graphics look good, but there aren't many detailed backgrounds or objects except for the waves, which are well-animated and dominate the screen. The character animations are also a highlight beyond the fact that it's a penguin on a surfboard, since the tricks can get quite complicated. If there's a fault here though, it's that there just doesn't seem to be enough to it for the price. There is a multiplayer split-screen mode and an unlockable Leaf Sliding game, where your penguin slides along a type of luge or toboggan run collecting items in a race against time. The main game will likely wear thin far sooner than it should though, unless you happen to be a rather big fan of penguins.

6/10