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Do you remember the Gamecube’s launch title Wave Race: Blue Storm? It was the one that wasn’t Luigi’s Mansion or Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rebel Leader, had something to do with racing jet skis and the really pretty water. If that’s all you remember about it, that’s okay; you’re not missing out on much. I remember playing it, saying, “Wow, this has got to be as good as video game water graphics will ever get,” and then promptly put Rebel Leader back in because it was a lot more fun. This brings me to this week’s PSN freebie demo: Wakeboarding HD. Déjà vu, friends, déjà vu.

The game should feel pretty familiar to anyone who has played an objective-based, extreme sports game before (SSX, Tony Hawk, heck, even Crazy Taxi). Your character is equipped with several different wakeboarding tricks, each assigned to a different button, or combination of buttons. Do these tricks successfully and you get points. And as we all know, points are good things in most video games.

Wakeboarding HD lets you choose your racetrack, each with a set of objectives to meet. These objectives start out easy enough: do five tricks, for example. They quickly ramp up the difficulty, requiring you to do something ridiculous like attain 5x score multiplier by doing successive, successful tricks, collecting stars and smiley faces (really, there are floating smiley faces that give you bonus points, but back to the ridiculous objectives), break 6 billboards, land 4 ramp jumps, keep a trick combo chain going the entire course, all the while avoiding the sharks that try to eat you.

Wakeboarding HD isn’t in the running for “Creative Title of the Year”, or “Best Extreme Sports Hybrid Game of the Month”, or “Best Way to spend 35 Minutes on a Rainy Day”, but hey, at least the water is pretty.