As I'm typing this, the sun is setting over the warm tropical seas around Manaurai Island, and I'm lounging on the deck of my private boat. I'd love to say that it's been a hard day, and I deserve these moments of rest, but it really hasn't. I started the day with a dive through an awe inspiring natural limestone cave, and as I emerged into open water, I was surrounded by Cormorants diving for their breakfast. On returning to my boat, I dedicated my next few hours to playing with my Dolphin companion, and practising his series of acrobatic exercises. Of course, there was work to be done as well, a client requested a guided dive amongst the natural beauty of the coral in Manaurai's waters, and I naturally obliged, showing off the many species of small fish that live among the coral, and saving the best, the Bower's Parrotfish my client had wanted to see, until last. My afternoon was taken up by managing contributions to the local aquarium, and checking my emails for new requests for underwater photographs and guided dives.
Now, before you all hunt me down and bump me off to steal my perfect life, I have to admit that all that was simply the experience of the last couple of hours I've spent playing Arika's underwater exploration game Endless Ocean for the Wii. The successor to the Everblue series, Endless Ocean is part of Nintendo's Touch! Generations series of products for a wide range of audiences which offer experiences outside the normal expectations of videogames.
The game itself is an open ended sandbox type affair, and possibly the truest expression of that format, there are absolutely no constraints on the player, you're not forced into any kind of arbitrary activity to drum up money or unlock new areas, you simply create a character, male or female with a few appearance options, and are presented an ocean and a set of scuba gear and let free to explore underwater and play with fish.
Controlling your diver is a simple case of using the Wii remote as a pointer to control an on-screen cursor and holding B to swim towards whatever you are pointing at, or moving the camera by pointing at the edge of the screen. Pointing at a fish and pressing A centres the camera on that fish, allowing you to interact with it, making gestures with the remote to pat or nudge the fish, or in the case of some larger fish to hold on and be taken for a ride, and the D-pad brings up a menu of tools which allows you to feed or take pictures of your piscine pal. Moving close to the seabed or coral and pressing + gives you a close view of the feature you're pointing at, sometimes allowing you to find other fish or trinkets scattered on the ocean floor. The controls are responsive and intuitive, your diver responds quickly and never has trouble going where you want them to go, and make the underwater swimming easily accessible to all.
The pace of the game is best described as leisurely, there is, technically, a time limit on dives imposed by your air supply, but it's around an hour and even if you do run out you just return to your boat. There's no success or failure mechanic at work here, the watchword is relaxation. Early on in the game you also encounter a dolphin partner, who you can dive with and who will point out objects of interest you might have missed on the sea floor or among the coral, and with which you can interact to improve their performance in acrobatics and general showing off. As you explore you can find other partners to train and dive with as well.
Each fish or other animal species in the game, and there are some 300+ of them, has a catalogue entry which expands as you interact with them, giving you some real world information about the things you're encountering, and allowing you to get used to where to find them when taking clients on dives to see them. The structure of the game comes through these client requests, either to be taken diving in a particular location, or to photograph a particular fish species. Once more, there's no real pressure on these missions, you're free to take them or not, as you feel like, and completing them is really just a case of doing what you normally do in the game but looking for particular fish along the way, and the story, such as there is, only really serves as a mechanic to point out the kind of thing the game has to offer, looking at and interacting with fish, finding trinkets underwater, and exploring.
The game is single player on it's own, though it's pace and play style mean that life's back seat gamers will probably get a lot out of it as well, and it can also be played online with a friend, either in tandem dives or competing with their partners, using a unique friend code, and you have a screen writing pen to point things out or communicate in a picto-chat style format.
Visually the game is competent, as a Wii game it's not realistic to expect high definition ultra high detail from it, but the fish are all well modelled and textured, the underwater environments are distinct and attractive, especially in torchlight on night dives, where the colours of the coral and sea life stand out dramatically, and the animations on fish, your diver, and other wildlife are well designed and feel natural. The soundtrack consists of light piano and Celtic singing by Hayley Westenra, which fits the relaxed mood of the game perfectly, but it also allows playback of .mp3 files from an SD card.
It's possible that some might be a little lost in the game's lack of anything as crass as a reward structure, but Endless Ocean exemplifies something that can become a little muddied in the mechanistic world of videogame design sometimes. The experience itself is the reward. Finding some new underwater feature, or seeing a new species of fish for the first time is worth it for it's own sake, we really don't need a pat on the head as well.
Endless Ocean is available now in Europe and PAL territories, and in Japan under the title Forever Blue, and will be available in the US and Canada later this month. It's a great Wii title, and I have no hesitation in recommending that you buy it no matter who you are, especially as it's only £20 new.
Now, before you all hunt me down and bump me off to steal my perfect life, I have to admit that all that was simply the experience of the last couple of hours I've spent playing Arika's underwater exploration game Endless Ocean for the Wii. The successor to the Everblue series, Endless Ocean is part of Nintendo's Touch! Generations series of products for a wide range of audiences which offer experiences outside the normal expectations of videogames.
The game itself is an open ended sandbox type affair, and possibly the truest expression of that format, there are absolutely no constraints on the player, you're not forced into any kind of arbitrary activity to drum up money or unlock new areas, you simply create a character, male or female with a few appearance options, and are presented an ocean and a set of scuba gear and let free to explore underwater and play with fish.
Controlling your diver is a simple case of using the Wii remote as a pointer to control an on-screen cursor and holding B to swim towards whatever you are pointing at, or moving the camera by pointing at the edge of the screen. Pointing at a fish and pressing A centres the camera on that fish, allowing you to interact with it, making gestures with the remote to pat or nudge the fish, or in the case of some larger fish to hold on and be taken for a ride, and the D-pad brings up a menu of tools which allows you to feed or take pictures of your piscine pal. Moving close to the seabed or coral and pressing + gives you a close view of the feature you're pointing at, sometimes allowing you to find other fish or trinkets scattered on the ocean floor. The controls are responsive and intuitive, your diver responds quickly and never has trouble going where you want them to go, and make the underwater swimming easily accessible to all.
The pace of the game is best described as leisurely, there is, technically, a time limit on dives imposed by your air supply, but it's around an hour and even if you do run out you just return to your boat. There's no success or failure mechanic at work here, the watchword is relaxation. Early on in the game you also encounter a dolphin partner, who you can dive with and who will point out objects of interest you might have missed on the sea floor or among the coral, and with which you can interact to improve their performance in acrobatics and general showing off. As you explore you can find other partners to train and dive with as well.
Each fish or other animal species in the game, and there are some 300+ of them, has a catalogue entry which expands as you interact with them, giving you some real world information about the things you're encountering, and allowing you to get used to where to find them when taking clients on dives to see them. The structure of the game comes through these client requests, either to be taken diving in a particular location, or to photograph a particular fish species. Once more, there's no real pressure on these missions, you're free to take them or not, as you feel like, and completing them is really just a case of doing what you normally do in the game but looking for particular fish along the way, and the story, such as there is, only really serves as a mechanic to point out the kind of thing the game has to offer, looking at and interacting with fish, finding trinkets underwater, and exploring.
The game is single player on it's own, though it's pace and play style mean that life's back seat gamers will probably get a lot out of it as well, and it can also be played online with a friend, either in tandem dives or competing with their partners, using a unique friend code, and you have a screen writing pen to point things out or communicate in a picto-chat style format.
Visually the game is competent, as a Wii game it's not realistic to expect high definition ultra high detail from it, but the fish are all well modelled and textured, the underwater environments are distinct and attractive, especially in torchlight on night dives, where the colours of the coral and sea life stand out dramatically, and the animations on fish, your diver, and other wildlife are well designed and feel natural. The soundtrack consists of light piano and Celtic singing by Hayley Westenra, which fits the relaxed mood of the game perfectly, but it also allows playback of .mp3 files from an SD card.
It's possible that some might be a little lost in the game's lack of anything as crass as a reward structure, but Endless Ocean exemplifies something that can become a little muddied in the mechanistic world of videogame design sometimes. The experience itself is the reward. Finding some new underwater feature, or seeing a new species of fish for the first time is worth it for it's own sake, we really don't need a pat on the head as well.
Endless Ocean is available now in Europe and PAL territories, and in Japan under the title Forever Blue, and will be available in the US and Canada later this month. It's a great Wii title, and I have no hesitation in recommending that you buy it no matter who you are, especially as it's only £20 new.
