You know what’s missing when you go to the local game store? Diving games!
Actually, it’s safe to call Endless Ocean an exploration simulator. Although the geography isn’t realistic (i.e. you can’t decide to dive off Hawaii) there are multiple locations to dive from—and all the action starts off on a boat. The boat serves as your hub for the game where you’ll choose where to dive, read exciting emails such as “give so and so a dive tour,” check out your encyclopedia of fish and steer the boat – and by steer the boat, you simply mouse over a new dive location, not actually steer the boat. Sorry.
Some of the options start off as locked and become available as you progress through the game. No license is necessary to begin diving, which seems odd; one would think maybe a tutorial might be in store in order to start diving, but instead the tutorial puts you right in the water and shows you how to play the game. The controls are what you would expect on the Wii: using the Wii mote (no nunchuck is used) you’ll point to where you want to swim. This point and click method can be frustrating because sometimes you’ll want to dive down but instead you’ll just move forward. You can “autoswim” by using the “-“ key, or you can swim on your own by pressing the B button – auto swimming is the way to go as hitting the B button sometimes works and other times it doesn’t. Yes, it’s frustrating.
Moving to the gameplay – as mentioned before, sometimes you can dive whenever you want and do whatever you like underwater. Other times you will have missions to complete, such as do a dive as a guide with another diver who’s looking to see a specific fish. You will never die; you can run out of air and be magically returned to the boat.
The underwater gameplay is very pretty – although one could imagine this game looking even better on a different next generation console. The basic idea when doing a dive is to collect information on fish. How do you do this? You do it by….uhh… tapping them with your finger…or petting them. Yeah, this is a Japanese game, can you think of any other game where fish petting would magically give you information about fish? The process is bizarre but if you can get over it, it will actually give you a good education on various species of fish.
The game’s soundtrack is very Enya-esque, and although it might put you to sleep it actually works in a game like this – it goes well with the diving. Those of you still waiting to put that SD memory card you’ve bought to good use will be happy to know this game allows you to play MP3’s which you’ve put on the memory card. It’s a nice bonus, especially considering the included songs get repetitive very fast. The ocean sound effects are very good – little touches like the air bubbles coming from the air mask are done nicely. On the other hand, the above boat sounds are non-existent. After every fish they remark about this life changing experience. Then they’ll see another fish and wow, this is why he is alive. Yeah, it’s very Japanese, but don’t let that stop you.
As you progress through the game, you’ll get extra items, such as an underwater pen, which is like a telestrator from football games. You can also feed fish with food, take pictures and use a whistle to call your dolphin partner or other fish. You can actually train your dolphin to do tricks by waving the remote around like a mad man. It’s just like going to the Theater of the Sea in the Florida Keys…we’ll not really, but it is fun.
