What do you get if you put a penguin on a surfboard? A penguin falling off a surfboard, of course. Although if you work in the movies, you get rafts of the diminutive black and white birds zipping through huge tube waves in an animated feature film extravaganza; not to mention the obligatory offshoots like a video game. But is this Ubisoft licence one to p-p-p-pick up, or is it one to f-f-f-forget about?

First impressions are reasonably favourable. Surf's Up is clearly an arcade style game with the emphasis on fun, as the player is able to pull off impressive looking surfing tricks without vast reserves of manual dexterity on the old gamepad (or keyboard if you prefer - the keyboard controls are actually remarkably serviceable).

The idea is to ride up on a wave, then take off and catch air while hitting buttons to perform basic or advanced tricks. Combos are worth more points, but you've got to make sure the moves are fully finished before you land, otherwise the manoeuvre will end in a wipe-out that scores a big fat zero.

Points can be racked up by riding the crest of a wave and grinding on rails and logs, skateboarder-style (while keeping a balance meter centred with the left and right keys to avoid falling off). There's also a freestyle trick mode whereby the player manually controls the exact moves the surfer makes, but it only seems possible to pull off basic and lacklustre spins which aren't very exciting.

More violent beach-bums can use the turbo boost feature to smash objects (or fellow surfers) to score less stylish points, although it's best to let your boost bar fill up completely so you can activate stoke mode. Stoking switches time into slow motion, allowing you to perform more tricks in the air, and moreover fancy stoke tricks which are worth an absolute shed load of points. A watershed load of points, in fact (sorry).

All this is great fun initially, and the visuals generate a good sense of the large wave swells and huge flying leaps you make, coming down to land on a pipe and grind in some sort of “gnarly” combo (dude). The presentation is well worth a mention, as the video clips shown between levels are genuinely amusing in many cases (the actual characters from the film are used here).

But - and there had to be a but - the game is rather short-lived. It doesn't take long to work out the most successful point scoring tactics - the stoke tricks certainly seem overpowered when you hit a score multiplier - and then it's just a matter of rinsing and repeating these. In total, it only took us around two hours to win the surfing championship.

Although technically that's the end of the game, there are still objects scattered throughout the levels which, when collected, unlock new content, such as surf boards, custom paint jobs and the scarily titled “legendary wave” level. However, this wasn't nearly enough to keep our interest, and we felt no real drive to continue playing once the main meat of the game was conquered.

Surf's Up also boasts a simple mini-game, which is basically tobogganing downhill on your board in a straightforward race against time, and a split-screen multiplayer option. These add a touch more longevity to the game, although even when surfing head-to-head against a friend, you're still performing the same basic moves over and over again.

Perhaps if the freestyle trick mode had been given some greater depth and variety, that would have added a little more substance, but we guess the developer didn't want to overcomplicate the control scheme and risk frustrating younger kids.

As long as you're not expecting much in the way of staying power, Surf's Up is a pleasant enough arcade blast with some amusing cut-scenes featuring the movie's characters.