Wake’s Up!

Here’s a recipe for an Xbox® sports game that shows off the system’s superior graphics, sound, and gameplay like nothing you’ve ever seen. Add seven innovative and unique athletes, nearly a dozen fully-loaded exotic levels, a bottle of super-tangy challenge juice, two cups of extra-spicy multiplayer sauce (with co-operative and competitive levels of heat), set the whole thing on "puree" in a gigantic metaphysical blender, and stand back.

Your results may vary, but when Activision did all that, they ended up with Wakeboarding Unleashed™ featuring Shaun Murray, the latest stunner from the Tony Hawk publisher and development house Shaba Studios.

Sick trick, dude!

Rope Tricks

The single-player game revolves around objective-based gameplay, interspersed with secret off-the-track challenges you can reach by taking advantage of the game’s "rope mechanics" engine (release the rope, go to a secret area, grab the rope again, and continue). These rope mechanics truly separate Wakeboarding Unleashed from the rest of the extreme trick-sports genre, giving you intense speed combined with a marvelous physics model that plays and looks superb on Xbox.

The rope might fly from your hands at just the wrong moment, or you might let go on purpose to find a secret area. Release and re-grab the rope when you pull off long (and risky) grinds on piers, rock formations, and even a roller coaster. As if that weren’t enough, for some challenges, you get to drive the speedboat!

It’s no exaggeration to say that Wakeboarding Unleashed boasts the finest water graphics yet seen on Xbox, a system already well-known for amazing water animation. Mother Nature herself would have trouble getting particle effects to look this stunning—everything from the glassy horizon in the distance to the eye-poppingly authentic wake you ride looks wet enough to drink.

Seriously, if Wakeboarding Unleashed were nothing more than an ocean simulator, it would be utterly mesmerizing. Xbox handles the water effortlessly, not skimping on the graphics in the rest of the game. There’s nary a jagged edge or frame rate issue in the entire game.

Flying high in the “streets” of Venice.

Water Water Everywhere

Wakeboarding Unleashed takes you all over the world in pursuit of the perfect wake. Scenic Lake Powell is a mountain-ringed blue expanse littered with vacationers and grindable surfaces. The Bayou is tight, full of smooth water, and packed with unusual challenges (and most of ‘em have big, sharp teeth). Hong Kong is packed with boats, bridges, floating restaurants, and people of every kind, 24/7.

The Boneyard is a spooky, dangerous course filled with shipwrecks and sharp, rusty stuff that can really ruin your day. The town of Springfield is in the midst of a hurricane, letting you put your wakeboarding skills to good use as a rescue ranger.

Other areas include an “Ocean World” sea park, the city of Venice, idyllic Timber Lake, sunny Belize, the Delta (not far from the Bayou, one would assume), and Florida, where the Pro Wakeboarding Tour wants to test your skills.

The nine expansive areas come packed with fully interactable objects, from birds to spectators to banjo players. Missions are diverse: Ferry animals around a flooded town one minute and battle other wakeboarders with water balloons the next.

Multiplayer games let two players take on the game’s photo-realistic areas. Co-op mode lets one player drive the boat, while the other grabs the rope—it’s not altogether unlike teaming on a Warthog in Halo®: Combat Evolved. In competitive “Tug-of-War” mode, ’boarders compete for the most rope.

Gorgeous water effects.

Now Boarding …

Wakeboarding Unleashed puts you astride the boards of seven playable pro wakeboarders, each with a unique style and set of moves. Cover ’boarder Shaun Murray is a laid-back wakeboarding ambassador who’s been in it since the start, a two-time world champ whose masterful tricks have earned him the nickname "House of Style."

Fearless Parks Bonifay boasts wicked slider abilities. Heartbreaker Dallas Friday has become a wakeboarding champion in world cup gravity games and pro competition—her gymnastic training gives her the ability to pull off some outlandish tricks. Cobe Mikacich, a.k.a. “the Mikker,” is a solid all-around ’boarder for any player (in real life, he runs a tour that lets amateurs wakeboard with the pros), while Colin Wright never follows conventional trick methods, unlike veteran Darin Shapiro.

My personal favorite was the determined, maneuverable, and not-uneasy-on-the-eyes Tara Hamilton. Tara’s another experienced wakeboarder, a one-time champ looking to make a big comeback after a bum heel sidetracked her career. And, er, she’s real purty and wears a bikini.

Hey, no one accused Ma Barker of raising any deep thinkers. But, whoever and however you choose to play, Wakeboarding Unleashed is as hard to put down as a towrope.

By Ben Barker