Endless Ocean | Wii | description

Now that I’m at work, I can settle down a bit from my excitement at playing Endless Ocean and tell you how good it is.

As part of the Touch Generations range, it’s definitely different from the normal definition of ‘game’, and one that I absolutely welcome. I’ve played plenty of first-person shooters, third-person platformers and action games, Role-playing games both western and Japanese, and I’m sure I will play many more to come. Hence when something different comes around, it often provides a unique experience that brings elements of enjoyment that no other traditional game can.

Here is what you do in Endless Ocean;
– Saunter around on the deck of a boat while talking to your fellow NPC and patting the occasional penguin/boat-deck visitor.
– Go scuba-diving in the ocean.
– While swimming, you approach different species of fish, observe, touch and feed them, then learn about them.
– Devlop a bond with a diving partner, the first of which is a dolphin, and teach it tricks.
– Take patrons on diving expeditions and try and find their favourite fish.

…

That’s it.

Well, there are other things that can be done, but mostly it’s an interactive experience based on exploration and discovery. Simplicity and beauty often go well together, and this is certainly the case with Endless Ocean. You simply swim around in a fictional ocean and look at fish, it’s absolutely magnificent.

Another fantastic little feature is that you can play your own music from the SD card while diving, but so far the game already has two magnificent tracks, a wonderful recreation of a traditional Hawaiian song, and the title track which left me awestruck as soon as it started playing on the title-screen. It was so good, I let it play right the way through before actually starting the game, and delighted in the option to dive accompanied by this song.

Many people don’t like games without objectives, or at least without complicated gameplay. Electroplankton on DS is another Touch Generations game which I thoroughly enjoy, and it’s themed around creating unique combinations of sounds accompanied by visuals, purely for aural enjoyment, but many missed the point of it. Eternal Ocean is purely themed around the reason you go diving in real-life – to see and enjoy the wildlife and the sensasion of swimming. Of-course it’s nothing like the real thing, but it’s still visually beautiful and engaging, and the fact that one can do it from the comfort of one’s own armchair speaks highly of it.

Oh yes, I’ve also started Eternal Sonata, which is several shades of awesome. Only 1 hour in and it’s already better than almost every other J-RPG I’ve ever played. Visually beautiful, brilliantly voice-acted (in Japanese of-course), and with compelling characters. It seems like the great gaming drought is finally over.