GENRE
	Simulation
	DEVELOPER
	Arika
	PUBLISHER
	Nintendo
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1-2
	WI-FI ENHANCED
	Yes
	DS COMPATIBLE
	No
	BUY NOW AT

Japanese developer Arika has a history with scuba diving simulators, having released Everblue and Everblue 2 for PS2. Unfortunately, those simulations, unique as they were, found a negative reception among a gaming press that found them ultimately unsatisfying. Akira has once again returned to the genre with Endless Ocean, although it has done so in a substantially different fashion. The question is, is different better? That answer, perhaps frustratingly, will vary from person to person. Even if Endless Ocean proves a matter of gamer taste, there is little doubt that this is a game that cannot work as well on any console other than Wii.

visuals

It’s not the best-looking game on the console, but Endless Ocean still makes a good enough show of things to not be a distraction. The surface graphics are stiff, but the undersea engine is a fine piece of work, with solid draw distance, a steady framerate and some really nice character and animal models. The various locations on the map all shine with varied detail, from the lush green steps to the foreboding abyss. The game has a nice sense of art style that really rewards the gamer for exploration. That style includes the living creatures of the deep, which look convincingly like their real-life counterparts.

audio

One of the more immersive aspects of the game is its solid repertoire of sound effects. Animals swish, crow and call with believability, while the ocean hums all the while in the background. Don’t expect as much from the music, though. The main soundtracks are okay but get stale after awhile, and the extra songs featuring New Zealand’s Hayley Westerna feel ill-fitting to the gameplay for some reason. The game does allow a player to play mp3 files off of an SD card, although we had some difficulty getting our mp3 files to play properly; on the boat, everything worked fine, but sometimes the music would go dead underwater and stay that way until we resurfaced.

gameplay

Veterans of other sims like Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and The Sims might expect a broadly like-minded simulation such as Endless Ocean to be one of those games that never ends. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Unlike an Animal Crossing that offers literally dozens of hours of unique activities over the course of the year, the main quest in Endless Ocean will occupy little more than 10 hours or so of game time. In fact, the credits come on rather unexpectedly, a symptom of a main storyline that is poorly fleshed out and far too brief in its execution. Of course, the player can continue to explore the depths of the ocean even after the endgame -- and there is, in fact, some motivation to do so -- but that does not absolve Arika of what seems like a poor scenario design.

Despite the lackluster story, however, the game concept is a solid one. You play the role of a scuba diver whose job is simply to explore the ocean. You begin by creating a character (the options are initially few) and then setting off to explore the ocean at your leisure. Along the way, you can take on various tasks including photography gigs and guided scuba tours. You can also advance the storyline by interacting with Kat, your onboard compatriot.

The core gameplay is simple. The player navigates to a location, dives in and swims around. Once submerged, one can interact with the sea life, search for sunken treasure, and recruit dolphins as partners. Players can touch things, poke things, pick up objects, and, in the case of larger animals, even grab on and hitch a ride. The game eliminates any risk of dying to the point where even running out of air, a process that can take well over an hour, results in little more than being pulled back to the boat. The gameplay map isn’t terribly huge, but it is fairly varied. We won’t spoil everything here, but suffice to say that there are quite a few different locales to be found under the ocean, including a few unexpected places.

The controls are equally straightforward. Moving around in the water is as easy as pointing the Wii remote and pressing B. Interacting with living things and objects is as easy as pointing the Wii remote and pressing A. The d-pad opens up the options menu, which includes access to your special equipment (camera, fish food, etc.), while a quick flick of the Wii remote executes a flip turn. Everything is pretty easy to do, enough so that even the most casual of gamers should have little trouble picking up and playing this one.

That is both the virtue and vice of Endless Ocean. In an unmistakeable bit of irony, this game validates Nintendo’s "Blue Ocean" strategy as well as any game out there. Not only does it hold easy pick up and play appeal for Wii’s oft-targeted casual base, but it also is a game that proves a nice diversion for the more serious sim gamer. Gamers who complain about the lack of short-span games won’t be disappointed, as Endless Ocean can be played in short bursts or for long stretches of time.

At the same time, this sim lacks some of the depth of other games in the sim genre. Unlike The Sims or Animal Crossing, there is relatively little that can be done with collected items other than examining a list of them; only a scant selection of customizable scuba gear brings anything varied to the actual in-game experience. Additionally, fans of previous Arika scuba efforts shouldn’t expect to find any RPG elements here, either.

multiplayer

Endless Ocean provides for two-player co-op via online, so this reviewer teamed up with fellow Dojo staffer Evan Campbell to put the game’s multiplayer through the paces. From the start it was a chore, as the game requires exchanging friend codes that are altogether separate from Wii System Codes. From there, one player has to open up a Wi-Fi gate while another travels to the first player’s boat. The whole process is unintuitive and requires outside communication via e-mail, phone or IM just to make everything fall into place. Hardly an auspicious beginning.

The actual gameplay did not prove particularly redemptive. To the game’s credit, there is certain novelty to having a second player along for the ride and the experience is lag-free. On the other hand, there is no real advantage to speak of by going co-op -- no special co-op missions or anything like that. It’s just two players in the ocean, swimming around with each other. The game does map some simple text chats to the d-pad, but they prove inadequate to having any real communication, and several of the word choices (i.e. "Where are you?" "wrong") prove rather useless in actual practice.

We really felt the absence of voice chat, too. On one occasion we got separated in a labyrinthine cave, and despite a useful friend icon on the game’s compass, we could not find each other. The text chats proved useless to help us, and invariably we simply had to give up and surface. Voice chat interface would have been nice to have, but unless you have a nearby laptop or the means to talk via phone (which, depending on your phone, can be quite uncomfortable), you’re out of luck. Overall, then, co-op in Endless Ocean proves to be far less impressive in practice than it is in theory.

overall

Endless Ocean is not a game for everyone. It’s a slow-paced simulation that lives and dies by the sense of wonder it evokes and the collecting and cataloguing it revolves around. It is the sort of game that will polarize gamers, with some finding it oddly enthralling and others finding it a complete bore. Whether one falls into the former or latter category depends in part on their taste for collection-style sims like Animal Crossing or MySims, but even then there are sufficient differences with Endless Ocean that it does not fairly compare to those games. What Arika has instead done is create a game that has no counterpart on Wii, and while the end product is not without some limitations -- a brief storyline and a clunky co-op mode, to name a few -- the game makes no secret of that by virtue of its modest $30 starting price tag.

The question is: to buy or not to buy? It’s not an easy question to answer. (Likewise, this is a quite difficult game to score.) If you’re into adrenaline-pumping thrills and any game slower than F-Zero,, don’t expect to get much, if anything, out of this game. If, however, you enjoy paced simulations and the thought of collecting stuff, you may want to put Endless Ocean on your sonar, at least for a rental.

7.0/10