After reading the manual to Transworld Surf it leaves you with the feeling that because there are only 4 main controls required, it must be easy to get into and start pulling off some wicked moves..

Other sporting games such as Tony Hawk and Matt Hoffman BMX are great games that are easy to get into because they both have a natural intuitive 'feel' to them that at the start, is sadly lacking with Transworld Surf.

Persevere for an hour or so and you'll start to get the hang of throwing your board up into the air, pulling off quick turns and shooting out of mammoth barrels. Transworld Surf is not a boring game, dont get me wrong, its just that its not as exciting to play and there isn't as much to do in it as the Tony Hawk and Matt Hoffman games..

Transworld Surf has all the standard game modes one would expect to see, the Pro Tour mode, Free Surf and also multiplayer. Competing in the Pro Tour mode firstly forces you to complete a number of tasks per level. In the first level, Kirra Point, you have to accumulate 10,000 points, free 8 dolphins from tuna nets (!) and cut 3 cutbacks on one wave. I found these mini tasks quite annoying but I guess this is just a way for the developers to lengthen the life span of the game. It's a shame as I just wanted to create a surfer (which you can't do, you can only select from the pros included with the game), compete, win and unlock all the levels, but after a couple of hours after completing these tasks in the first level and finally getting to compete against 3 pros (only the top 2 advance to the next round), I found I could not beat them and found myself repeating the Kirra Point competition over and over and over again. This was even after getting 10,000 points on each of the 3 waves that you get in the competition mode.. somehow the A.I players would always beat me. There is no difficulty setting either.

Now it may be that I just suck at Transworld Surf but another mate of mine with an Xbox had the same issues and he is a Tony Hawk and an Amped Snowboarding TopGun. He had the same issues that I had and just didnt find the tricks easy to perform and land or to have that 'natural' feel through the control stick that other great sport games give you.

The graphics in Transworld Surf are pretty good, the waves look ok but I'm sure that we'll see better from surfing games on the Xbox in the future. One thing about the effects that annoyed me were the splash effects, when your surfer is paddling to a wave, his hands as they paddle create NO splash effects, also the spray effects from the wave and your board are just a plain foamy looking texture with no actual particle effects to help push the illusion that its real water. The water that splashes up on the screen looks nice, but isn't as well done as in Moto GP.

One thing that did look great were the levels. From the majority of angles that you see them from they look pretty cool. You can hit the Y button to call the 'wave girl' to tow you out to the waves to save your arms, and from the aerial positions the levels look great. Also swimming about with you are turtles, seals and other aquatic beasties.. some with big pointy teeth!