Endless Ocean (Wii)
Filed Under Reviews
Dive. Discover. Dream.
These three words describe the premise behind Endless Ocean, Nintendo’s entry into the much ignored diving/exploration genre. You’ll spend most of your time swimming through beautiful coral reefs and seeking out lost treasures while interacting with a host of marine life and learning about ancient civilizations. Thankfully, Arika, the developer behind Everblue and Everblue 2 for the Playstation 2, has experience with this type of game and has had the time to work out all of the kinks, delivering a fun, robust experience that is well worth the price of entry.
After selecting and customizing your character, you begin the game on the Gabbiano, a ship manned by a woman named Katherine Sunday; a raven-haired beauty with square glasses who can’t swim worth a lick. You will quickly learn that she’s employed by the Manoa Lai Oceanic Research Society, which wants to study the fictional Manoa Lai Sea you’ll be exploring throughout your adventures. After a brief introduction, you learn some basic controls and you’re off on your first assignment from the Marianas Foundation.
The ocean may not really be endless as the title claims, but it is indeed quite large. Thankfully, the map displays only “surface” area. Endless Ocean has a plethora of underwater caverns, deep crevices, sunken ships, and more. In fact, you’ll spend a great deal of your time uncovering everything the world has to offer. You’ll find all manner of things here, from gorgeous coral reefs with an assortment of marine life and underground columns that look to be millions of years old, to natural rock shelving and whalebone graveyards. This game would give even a well-polished RPG a run for its money in terms of sheer landmass.
There’s no end of things to do, either. You’ll get requests from the Marianas Foundation to catalog sea life, including great white sharks, sperm whales, ancient fossil fish, and dolphins. You’ll also be asked to take pictures for one of Katherine’s friends, who will publish your shots in magazines around the world. If that’s not enough, you’ll also act as a diving guide for clients. You’ll be pretty busy from the word go.
The controls hold up to Nintendo’s level of polish in this game. Moving is as simple as pointing the Wii Remote and pressing B. To do a sharp about face, shake the Wii Remote side to side. To Autoswim hit “-”. Pressing the directional pad brings up your Tool menu, where you can feed fish, whip out your camera, use your underwater pen to write, and go back up to the boat (or dive if you’re already walking the deck). Point your blue reticule at a fish and press A to go into first person mode, where you’ll keep focus on the animal and be able to interact with it by petting, tapping, or feeding it.
Everything executes flawlessly, though petting can take some getting used to, since it requires you to press and shake the Wii Remote simultaneously. Thankfully, pressing “2” lets you zoom in on the animal, which makes the smaller species a lot easier to handle. One thing to note is that at times, when in small tunnels, the camera can get caught on rocks. This can make maneuvering in some of the more claustrophobic areas a bit of a problem.
As you move through the game, you’ll learn more about Katherine, like why Manoa Lai holds such importance and why she can’t swim. As fascinating as that can be, the story is the last thing you’ll be interested in. It’s just a vehicle to open up different kinds of dive gear, abilities, and areas of the game. In fact, you’ll be more interested in the email you receive from the other characters you never meet, the animals that happen to end up on the deck of your ship (like penguins and walrus), the animal partners that you befriend, name, and dive alongside, and unlocking areas of the map.
All of this is done with a graphics engine that can be at once beautiful and appalling. While the deck of your ship and the character models are nothing worth taking note of, the animal models are spot on and beautifully textured. Seeing the sperm whale up close is breathtaking and you’ll find yourself taking out your camera and getting as close as possible to get that perfect shot. Still amazingly, zooming in on textures doesn’t render a pixilated mess.
The marine life animations look great, as does your character’s swimming animations, but the on boat animations are extraordinarily weak. Fortunately, Katherine usually stands in one place and the animal visitors typically animate rather naturally. Lighting is moody, especially when night diving and most especially in the caves and remains of old temples. One of the spookiest areas of the game is the Great Abyss, an area of the ocean where the floor drops down 500 ft to a whalebone graveyard that fossil fish call home. You won’t confuse this game for a high definition equivalent, but you will still be immersed with the visuals.
If anything, this game loses points for its music and sound effects. They’re enjoyable, but unfortunately limited in quantity. While diving, you’ll hear yourself breathing, which adds an element of immersion, but there’s a serious lack of other sounds, though the whales and dolphins are quite vocal. Musically, the game only offers two tracks for you to choose from, a calm sea inspired song reminiscent of Asian Pacific music, and the track “Prayer” composed by Secret Garden and performed by Hayley Westenra.
Other tracks are triggered at various times during your adventures, based on location and situation, and all of them are fantastic. I just wish there was a way to listen to them when you wanted. You’re also able to listen to MP3s from an SD Card. This is a rarely used feature and it’s much appreciated in this game. Unfortunately, despite the fact that this game resides on a DVD, there are no spoken parts. This is a shame, since Katherine likes to yammer about whatever is on her mind and reading through her endless rambling grows tiresome.
The game also offers Nintendo Wifi support, allowing you to get together with your friends and dive together or compete with your partners. Unfortunately, the game uses game-specific Friend Codes, instead of your Wii Friend Code, burdening you with another 12 digit numbers for all of your friends. Once that’s done, you can invite them to your boat or travel to theirs. Once there, you can dive together and use the directional pad to communicate or see who’s dolphin can jump the furthest or handshake the longest.
When it comes down to it, Endless Ocean’s talking points greatly outweigh its negatives. If you’ve played Arika’s other two entries in this genre, you won’t find much new here besides the location, Wii-centric controls, and improvements and additions that didn’t exist on the Playstation 2 games. But if it’s your first time visiting this genre, you’re in for a treat. If you’re scared of the water or have never given scuba diving a try, give this game a spin. It might not be the real experience, but it’s the next best thing. And as this game proves, the ocean doesn’t need to be all that endless. It just needs to be fun.
