Endless Ocean. Format: Wii. Price: £19.99. WiFi: Yes.
“Explore the wonders of the ocean with unprecedented freedom in Endless Ocean. Swim through the beautiful water and get to know the inhabitants of the sea… Relax, and enter a world where you can forget about the hectic routine of your everyday life.”
The above words are from the introduction of the manual – and by god, they speak the truth!
The minute you boot up the game to the serenading voice that is Hayley Westenra’s, you know you’re in for a different type of game. This is an experience and that is a key aspect to how you view it.
After an annoying tutorial which makes the game seem very restricted, you are given free control. And it really is free control! Anywhere in the ocean you can go, straight away – no restrictions. You don’t have to worry about getting lost because after a few strokes of the D-Pad you are back on the boat from your diving exploits. And this isn’t a boring ocean either. Everywhere you go you can see different species including huge whales, sea lions and the tiniest schools of fish. And you can stroke them! But that comes later.
The controls are another gorgeous thing about this ultra relaxing game: just point the Wii Remote where you want to go and hold down B and you’re away diving happily! Some motion sensors are also used when you, err, stroke fish. This is the slightly weird part of the game, really… You stroke fish to “get to know” them and then you can read information about them. This means that 100% completion is harder to acquire than first thought, since there are 3 stages of unlocking info to do – that’s one hell of a lot of shaking that Wii Remote. There’s also a handy usage of the Minus button to “auto-swim” that is quite nice and you can just drift along nicely. However, auto-swim can be a bit annoying since if you just want to look at your map quickly (by pressing 1) this stops the auto-swim feature, but really it’s a tiny criticism in the face of brilliant controls.
Moving on, the graphics! Ooh, they’re nice. However, there is one particular bad point to the game graphics – wise and I’ll get that out of the way first – the boat (the “hub” of the game). The pre – rendered effect is pretty bad and since this is the first thing you see in the game, this has quite a bad effect on the graphical look. Also, the character edges are pretty dodgy. Once you get underwater, though, it’s gorgeous and beautiful! The fish look realistic, the water effects work and even the coral sweeps in the water realistically.
However, anything above water is pretty grotty and not too nice – but since this game is designed for diving, the drab graphics above water are just about ok. Ish.
The game play is lovely though. The freedom of the ocean is just like real life, anything you want you can do. You can spend hours just milling around underwater caves and crevices, or just the ocean itself, taking pictures and randomly doodling with the underwater pen. If you do get bored, there’s an email system on the boat that gives you quests such as: “explore the limestone cave” or “take a picture of a sea lion”. These aren’t plain either. Some of the quests can be fiendish to complete and they are enriched by a deep Japanese – like plot.
Then there’s the main selling point of the game for me – WiFi play. And I can say it’s my favourite online Wii game yet – not much competition I know!
After swapping Friend Codes with someone it’s simple as stroking a fish. You open up the gate to your drab graphical boat and wait for someone to enter (you can go diving and continue with the main quest while waiting if you want) or go diving yourself to someone else’s gate.
Once all this is done (not many errors at all), you can see your opponent (unlike Pokemon Diamond/Pearl) move in real time on the boat. You can also use a simple chat feature by pressing up on the d-pad that gives a variety of options such as “go here” or “ok” and strangely the lack of the word “yes”…
Once underwater, it’s pretty much do what you want with no goals at all – its just a relaxing two player experience. You can draw with the fantastically funny underwater pen – it only allows enough ink to draw a few letters, so you have to try and piece strands of conversation together – which is hilarious!
The WiFi is awesome and although there is a lack of chat, this is a Nintendo game so it is to be expected – it’s like saying Mario Galaxy is bad because of no voice actors – a travesty! Variety magazine, I’m looking at you!
The Hayley Westenra tunes are just about bearable but it doesn’t matter since your own music can be uploaded quickly and conveniently due to SD Card functionality and I hear (since I don’t have an SD Card) that it works well. (I apologize that this is not a primary source).
Really, this is the most relaxing game around and can help you “escape from your hectic life”. Well done Endless Ocean, now for the round up!
GRAPHICS: 8.5/10
The underwater graphics (compared to other Wii games) are beautiful but the above water pre-rendered horrors put me off of a 9 or a 10.
AUDIO: 8/10
Ok-ish tunes but the ability to put on own music pushes the score up to a 8.
GAMEPLAY: 9/10
Relaxing and generally open – ended it gets a definite 9.
INNOVATION: 7/10
Good Wii Remote controls and fantastic online play but it only gets a 7 since there are more innovative games out there. Also auto- swimming is such a good idea but is let down…
SCORE: 89%
An astonishing game which gets a great 89%. Great everything really apart from a few factors that slightly let this great game down which is why it just misses out on a 90.
Oblivion252
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ENDLESS OCEAN - The Ultimate Review
This game has to be one of the best 'budget' titles ever released! I have no doubts a sequel will appear and I can only encourage people to buy this game!
Linear Mode
