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amethyst73When I was a teenager, I really thought for a while that I wanted to be a marine biologist. I spent hours and hours at the New England Aquarium as a kid, staring into the various tanks watching the inhabitants. From the ponderous, blind-looking giant groupers to the starfish and sea urchins that you could reach into the tidal pool tanks and hold, they were all wonderfully mysterious and totally awesome. I wanted to hang out with them and get to know them better.
...Well, most of them. The moray eel always made me a little nervous - it always seemed to be looking straight at me when it gaped that wide, dangerous-looking grin. And watching one too many National Geographic shows about sharks convinced me that it really would be just as well to pursue my fishy interests on land from behind a nice thick sheet of glass.
Enter Endless Ocean, a scuba-diving sim which has quite successfully fulfilled these requirements. The fictitious Manoa Lai Sea appears to be truly vast when you're under the water exploring all the nooks and crannies of coral reefs, sheer cliffs, and sandy shallows, pretty much all of which you can zoom in on for gorgeous photographic-quality detail. The cave-like areas that you are led to discover add even more real estate to explore. Each cave set requires a bit of loading time, but it's well worth it for the stunning new environments that will have you picking your jaw up off the floor again and again. The underwater creatures (fish, mammals, diving birds, and motile invertebrates) are all beautifully patterned and animated, as is your diving avatar.
Most of the underwater animals enjoy being petted or given food, and will identify themselves to you if make them happy. Fortunately, there are no silly "Hi, my name is Sailfin Tang!" dialogue bubbles; instead, when you first lock on to a fish you haven't identified, there's a "???" button at the bottom of the screen. Once you've made the fish happy, that button fills in with the fish's common name. Pressing the button will bring up a text box with a bit of information about that fish. As you interact more with any given creature, the amount of information will increase. (Yes, it's supposed to be educational. Sorry about that.) Some fish such as the aforementioned sailfin tang adore being petted so much that, if petted momentarily, they will follow you around rather like cats, begging for more.
There's stuff to do up above the waves, too. You can train the dolphin companions you acquire over the course of the game. You can rest on the deck chair and gaze out at the ocean, watching the clouds drift by or the stars come out. A variety of animals will appear on the foredeck of your boat from time to time. We've seen boobies, cormorants, pelicans, penguins, seals/sea lions, and - once - a polar bear. In addition to the sparkles that all happy creatures give off, these animals will variously flap their wings, move their heads about, and run around in circles to indicate their pleasure. You don't get any rumble feedback at any point in the game that we've noticed, but this is nonetheless the most tactile Wii game I've played.
The main unstated goals of the game are to catalog every one of the organisms outlined in the encyclopedia found in your cabin, to find all the artifacts scattered about the sea bed, and to completely fill in your underwater map. There are also optional missions you can choose to take on. These range from your boatmate or boss telling you that such-and-such a spot would be an interesting place to check out, requests to be a diving guide in such-and-such an area, or requests for a photo of a particular fish for a journal article. It's more than worth it to check out the spots that your boatmate or boss indicates: these areas will generally introduce you to basic aspects of the game, unlock new abilities, and get you into some of the most impressive environments we've seen. As a side note, often when you enter a new area for the first time such as the Mermaid Tunnel and the bottom of the Deep Abyss, a never-before-heard piece of music will play. The pieces are usually new arrangements of familiar tunes such as Shenandoah and The Water Is Wide, but occasionally include newer pieces such as the Benedictus from Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man. All of the pieces are serene, grand, or both. Once unlocked, they can be chosen as background music for future dives.
So are there aspects of the game that are anything less than fantastic?
Sure there are, but fortunately they're relatively few. First, up on the boat the humans are obviously a pair of low-quality Poser figures. Beautifully as your avatar can swim, s/he makes up for it by walking in a mechanical and wooden fashion similar to, but much less endearing than, a penguin's on-land waddle. Second, as in other full 3D environment games, there's always a risk of motion sickness. The problem here can be aggravated if you lock on to a rapidly-swimming fish in order to interact with it - your viewpoint will then be forced to follow it, which can be quite disconcerting. But the problem we'd most like to see fixed is an unfortunate omission: you cannot export the gorgeous photos you take with the in-game camera. There's no way I'll be able to turn my photo of a pair of juvenile bicolor parrotfish against a backdrop of round white pebbles into a desktop, short of taking a photo of the TV screen with a real-world camera. There's no easy way to show the neat pattern I saw on the back of a monkfish to anyone unless they're in my living room. Furthermore, your in-game photo album has a measly 40 spaces in it, which I'm guessing will fill rapidly. At some point I'll probably have to discard my frogfish photo to make room for a picture of something even weirder, or exchange the manatee photo for one of a humpback whale. Those will be sad moments indeed.
This game is unique in that nothing can hurt you. The sharks are completely uninterested in you as possible prey, and if you decide you're well and truly lost in a cave system you can always return to your boat at the press of a button. If you run out of air, you're automatically returned to your boat. It is, unsurprisingly, essentially nothing like how it was portrayed by Penny Arcade. But with such a huge number of games that serve largely to increase your adrenalin level, it's a lovely change to have one where the exact opposite occurs. It's the most out-and-out relaxing game I've ever seen. Simply exploring beautiful environments and petting neat fish is a lot more fun that one might at first imagine.
Oh, by the way: Don't ask me what a polar bear is doing in a tropical sea. Our best guess is that the Manoa Lai Sea surrounds the island settled by the Swiss Family Robinson.
...Well, most of them. The moray eel always made me a little nervous - it always seemed to be looking straight at me when it gaped that wide, dangerous-looking grin. And watching one too many National Geographic shows about sharks convinced me that it really would be just as well to pursue my fishy interests on land from behind a nice thick sheet of glass.
Enter Endless Ocean, a scuba-diving sim which has quite successfully fulfilled these requirements. The fictitious Manoa Lai Sea appears to be truly vast when you're under the water exploring all the nooks and crannies of coral reefs, sheer cliffs, and sandy shallows, pretty much all of which you can zoom in on for gorgeous photographic-quality detail. The cave-like areas that you are led to discover add even more real estate to explore. Each cave set requires a bit of loading time, but it's well worth it for the stunning new environments that will have you picking your jaw up off the floor again and again. The underwater creatures (fish, mammals, diving birds, and motile invertebrates) are all beautifully patterned and animated, as is your diving avatar.
Most of the underwater animals enjoy being petted or given food, and will identify themselves to you if make them happy. Fortunately, there are no silly "Hi, my name is Sailfin Tang!" dialogue bubbles; instead, when you first lock on to a fish you haven't identified, there's a "???" button at the bottom of the screen. Once you've made the fish happy, that button fills in with the fish's common name. Pressing the button will bring up a text box with a bit of information about that fish. As you interact more with any given creature, the amount of information will increase. (Yes, it's supposed to be educational. Sorry about that.) Some fish such as the aforementioned sailfin tang adore being petted so much that, if petted momentarily, they will follow you around rather like cats, begging for more.
There's stuff to do up above the waves, too. You can train the dolphin companions you acquire over the course of the game. You can rest on the deck chair and gaze out at the ocean, watching the clouds drift by or the stars come out. A variety of animals will appear on the foredeck of your boat from time to time. We've seen boobies, cormorants, pelicans, penguins, seals/sea lions, and - once - a polar bear. In addition to the sparkles that all happy creatures give off, these animals will variously flap their wings, move their heads about, and run around in circles to indicate their pleasure. You don't get any rumble feedback at any point in the game that we've noticed, but this is nonetheless the most tactile Wii game I've played.
The main unstated goals of the game are to catalog every one of the organisms outlined in the encyclopedia found in your cabin, to find all the artifacts scattered about the sea bed, and to completely fill in your underwater map. There are also optional missions you can choose to take on. These range from your boatmate or boss telling you that such-and-such a spot would be an interesting place to check out, requests to be a diving guide in such-and-such an area, or requests for a photo of a particular fish for a journal article. It's more than worth it to check out the spots that your boatmate or boss indicates: these areas will generally introduce you to basic aspects of the game, unlock new abilities, and get you into some of the most impressive environments we've seen. As a side note, often when you enter a new area for the first time such as the Mermaid Tunnel and the bottom of the Deep Abyss, a never-before-heard piece of music will play. The pieces are usually new arrangements of familiar tunes such as Shenandoah and The Water Is Wide, but occasionally include newer pieces such as the Benedictus from Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man. All of the pieces are serene, grand, or both. Once unlocked, they can be chosen as background music for future dives.
So are there aspects of the game that are anything less than fantastic?
Sure there are, but fortunately they're relatively few. First, up on the boat the humans are obviously a pair of low-quality Poser figures. Beautifully as your avatar can swim, s/he makes up for it by walking in a mechanical and wooden fashion similar to, but much less endearing than, a penguin's on-land waddle. Second, as in other full 3D environment games, there's always a risk of motion sickness. The problem here can be aggravated if you lock on to a rapidly-swimming fish in order to interact with it - your viewpoint will then be forced to follow it, which can be quite disconcerting. But the problem we'd most like to see fixed is an unfortunate omission: you cannot export the gorgeous photos you take with the in-game camera. There's no way I'll be able to turn my photo of a pair of juvenile bicolor parrotfish against a backdrop of round white pebbles into a desktop, short of taking a photo of the TV screen with a real-world camera. There's no easy way to show the neat pattern I saw on the back of a monkfish to anyone unless they're in my living room. Furthermore, your in-game photo album has a measly 40 spaces in it, which I'm guessing will fill rapidly. At some point I'll probably have to discard my frogfish photo to make room for a picture of something even weirder, or exchange the manatee photo for one of a humpback whale. Those will be sad moments indeed.
This game is unique in that nothing can hurt you. The sharks are completely uninterested in you as possible prey, and if you decide you're well and truly lost in a cave system you can always return to your boat at the press of a button. If you run out of air, you're automatically returned to your boat. It is, unsurprisingly, essentially nothing like how it was portrayed by Penny Arcade. But with such a huge number of games that serve largely to increase your adrenalin level, it's a lovely change to have one where the exact opposite occurs. It's the most out-and-out relaxing game I've ever seen. Simply exploring beautiful environments and petting neat fish is a lot more fun that one might at first imagine.
Oh, by the way: Don't ask me what a polar bear is doing in a tropical sea. Our best guess is that the Manoa Lai Sea surrounds the island settled by the Swiss Family Robinson.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 04:27 pm (UTC)Seriously. One of the recurring mysteries/plot points on Lost is that polar bears keep turning up in unexpected places, like on a tropical island :)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 08:11 pm (UTC)And if you've never seen Lost, I highly recommend it. The first polar-bear reference comes in the pilot, so if you just want to see that, you can find it pretty quickly. The appearance of the polar bear is the first indication the castaways have that something Weird is happening on the island.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 08:26 pm (UTC)