Review: Endless Ocean

Endless Ocean is a scuba diving simulation game for the Nintendo Wii. It was developed by the company Arika.

The player observing one of the many fish found in the game.

The player takes control of a scuba diver who has gone to the fictional island of Manoa Lai to assist in the research and cataloguing of the island’s marine life. With the resident oceanographer Catherine, the player searches for marine life and treasure.

The goal of Endless Ocean, though goal would imply some sort of challenge or limit, is to find and catalogue as many species of fish as possible. The player selects a point off the coast of Manoa Lai, and the diver takes to boat out to that point and dives in. Controlling the diver is simply a matter of pointing the controller in the direction that the player wants the diver to move in and pressing the Z-button.

When the player spots a fish, the player can click on it. Then the player can poke the fish, rubs the fish, or gives the fish some food. Doing so reveals some information about the fish, which is catalogued and stored on the boat. The diver has to interact with a fish three times to learn everything about that one type of fish.

The types of fish vary on which part of the ocean the diver is exploring and what time of day it is. The sheer number of fish and other aquatic animals is staggering, from seas slugs to lantern fish to whale sharks. How so many different fish live together in the same ecosystem is never explained and does not really matter.

The diver can participate in some side ventures to upset the monotony of just looking at fish. Sometimes the diver will get emails that ask him or her to take a picture of a specific fish or escort someone on a scuba diving trip. Completing these ventures rewards the diver with alternate scuba outfits that he or she can wear. Also the diver will occasionally find artifacts that can also be traded for clothes.

The biggest selling point of Endless Ocean, besides getting to swim around a giant ocean and look at many different types of aquatic creatures, is the utter lack of negative consequence. The diver can stay in the ocean as long as they want to, there is no time limit to cataloging the fish, there are no consequence for not completing the side ventures, and none of the fish are dangerous at all, not even the sharks.

There is a story that involves Catherine’s history and why she is in Manoa Lai in the first place. Like the rest of the game, getting involved is entirely up to the player’s leisure. It is also rather short.

A lot of time has been put into making the graphics look really good. The ocean and coral all have really vibrant colors that make them really stand out. Every creature looks unique. The couple of human characters that do appear do not look that detailed, but they are not the focus of the game.

The music is unusual. The entire soundtrack was performed by the singer Hayley Westenra. All of the music is atmospheric, with frequent bouts Hayley chanting. It is a bit jarring when, after a song plays once, the music stops completely and the rest of the level is played with only sound.

The only serious complaint that could be leveled at Endless Ocean is that it is extremely monotonous. Most of the game is looking at fish. They are really nice looking fish, and come in a wide variety, and inhabit some rather nice looking areas, but they are still fish just swimming around. All the other activities the player can participate in barely matter to the game. In other words, it has a somewhat limited audience.

The bigger problem is that even for anyone who would actually be interested in looking at fish, finding all the different creatures can get boring. Different kinds of fish appear at different times of the day, and only in certain areas. That, and the size of Manoa Lai means that hunting down every single fish relies on a lot of luck, and a lot of time can be wasted looking for nothing. At first, when there are plenty of fish to look at this is not so bad, but when there only a couple of tiny fish left it can get really annoying.

Endless Ocean is a unique game that, for the right audience, is a relaxing, informative, and entertaining game. For everyone else it will be really boring once the novelty wears off.