Billabong Surf Trip

Before you can catch air and pull tricks, you have to be able to stand on a surfboard. It's a critical part of surfing - if you can't stand on your board, you really can't do much else.

Like a new surfer having difficulty learning the basics, Billabong Surf Trip never stands on its own two feet. This isn't a wipe out, but a failure to even get going in the first place.

It fails to master the essentials - controls, graphics, and gameplay structure - and so it's incapable of delivering anything but a flawed attempt at the sport. It has style, but Billabong Surf Trip is missing the gameplay to back it up.

Bored short

Creating a personalised surfer in the main Surf Trip mode starts things off nicely, and the promise of new swim gear and boards purchased with 'mondo points' earned in successful runs hints at the game's depth. Unfortunately, acquiring these points is nowhere near as fun as spending them.

Unintuitive controls and a lack of instructions make it extremely difficult to play. Surf Trip starts in Huntington Beach, California, where you're given the briefest introduction to the basics: paddling out to the surf and pulling an aerial trick.

As soon as you complete this short tutorial, you're scooted to the next surf spot where you're told to pull off more tricks and cast out into the water. What's odd is that there are no additional tutorials on how to execute other tricks or high level explanation of how the trick stick functions.

Teach yourself surfing

A thorough discussion of the water and waves prefaces each location, but you're left high and dry when it comes to knowing how to pull off the tricks demanded of you. A list of manoeuvres is accessible from the main Surf Trip menu, though it does little good when you're unable to refer to it from within a level.

Even when you're able to decipher what needs to be done, other obstacles impede progress. Absurd time limits ask too much of you in too little time. Tasking you with three explained tricks in the span of a minute is ridiculous, particularly when the mere act of paddling out to catch a wave costs you a good 6-7 seconds.

Thankfully, you can skirt this by tapping an arrow at the top of the screen to deposit you in front of a wave.

Undertow

An unpredictable camera also complicates matters. Wipe outs regularly send the camera reeling underwater or get it caught against your surfboard.

During aerial tricks, it's common for the view to be obscured by the underside of your board or get tweaked at an odd angle. Since the controls are relative to the perspective, it's easy to understand how such an erratic camera poses a serious problem.

It doesn't help that the visuals are below average. While the style is right thanks to use of the Billabong brand, the graphical quality is lacking. Surfers look blocky and the beaches surprisingly pixelated.

The technical performance is questionable too, with the game occasionally choppy on iPhone 3GS. It's not exactly silky smooth on iPad, either.

Billabong Surf Trip can't stand under the weight of its shortcomings, whether it be the unintuitive controls, lack of straightforward instructions, or unpredictable camera. By failing to master these fundamentals, it never comes close to delivering the sort of sick surfing gameplay it promises.