Endless Ocean

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

This game… isn’t really a game. It’s a… I don’t know what it is. But what it is, is, is neat. Sure I probably won’t buy Endless Ocean (known as "Forever Blue" in Japan which is a much better title so why didn’t they use it here?) right away, but I did rent it to see what it was all about. I do like swimming, and I love the sea, though I’ve never been scuba diving for inherent fear of the bends. Endless Ocean will at least give you a pretty good idea of the experience.

Basically that’s all you do, swim around learning educational facts about fish by poking them and feeding them food. You can get friendly with some dolphins if you want, and different fish are around depending on the season and the time of day. There’s also quite a large area to explore, and bits of the map peel away as you go diving. Every time you discover a new, beautiul key area you get a sort of little cutscene surveying it.

This is Kat, the cute nerd your character
works and lives on a boat with

The Wii controls for Endless Ocean are, actually, quite good, one of the best third party control schemes for the Wii I’ve yet encountered, which is a little sad. You only use the Wiimote itself, pointing in the direction you wish to go and pressing B to kick your legs and swim. You can even choose to do this from a first person or third person perspective, and I personally rather like the first person as its a much more immersive experience. My cat, who was sitting on my lap as I played, seemed quite intrigued by it as well.

After you choose your character (you can be male or female) the game explains to you the basic controls right off the bat but it wasn’t until I was wandering around the boat and noticed a note posted by "Kat", your marine biologist co-hort who, funnily enough, can’t swim, that gives you "tips". I found out from the tips that poking the fish by pressing A at them wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing at all, I was supposed to hold A and move the Wii controller to pet them. This is a slight drawback but then again I didn’t bother to read the instruction booklet and see what it said. You still have to complete some little mission type things to get to this point anyway.

And you do get some variety of "missions" from time to time, from taking photos, to surveying certain areas, recovering artifacts from the sea floor, and other things, but you can always do them at your leisure or choose not to do them at all. However completing these missions can get you new items, as well as new gear, plus it just keeps things interesting. You can also just find artifacts on your own, and you can befriend dolphins which you can later name and call with a whistle, teach it tricks and if you dive along with it it helps you find small animals and items. Your character can also run out of air, but in that instance it seems Kat will just pull you back up to the boat. There’s no death, no violence, not even any shark attacks (you can just prod the sharks and whales as you please), this game is so rated E there aren’t even any descriptors on the back of the package.  Another unexpected feature of the game is that you can play your own music in it by having an SD card of MP3s inserted into your Wii. Not that you’d need to, the music in the game is quite lovely. Even the opening screen greets you with the singing of the incomparable Hayley Westenra.

With it’s beautiful graphics and serene atmosphere Endless Ocean could be fun to plenty of people. Personally I do love exploring in video games, so it’s appealing to me, but I might wait for a cheap-bin purchase in a year or so (Although on second thought the game is already the reasonable price of $30.) However it might be a good one for kids, I think. Well more intuitive, curious kids who don’t mind slow-paced, sleepy games.