For the sake of this article, let’s pretend that there are essentially two different types of games published by Nintendo. The first type, the flagship titles, includes games like Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, Zelda, and Pokeman. The second type is a little harder to define, but I would say it includes games like Animal Crossing, Brain Age, Nintendogs and now… Endless Ocean. I’m not really sure if you can score Endless Ocean like a normal game. Sure it has objectives and collectible items, but the absence of any sort of penalty and heavy emphasis on slowly exploring the environments makes it feel more like an immersive experience rather than a traditional game. The thing I noticed from the moment I started entering my name was that Endless Ocean has that unmistakable Nintendo charm. The music, the humorous instructions… it just feels comfortable.

Before I dive into this article (I promise that’s the last swimming euphemism I’ll make during this thing) I’d like to state my usual disclaimer: I am not a professional game reviewer and these are only my early impressions of the game. As of now I have spent roughly two hours getting into the game, hardly enough to make any sort of formal review. If an X out of 10 score is what you’re looking for, you’d do much better to head over to some other site. This is just me, an average gamer, talking about the game so far. I’ll also say this before the jump: Endless Ocean has absolutely no combat, you move very slow and you spend most of the time looking at things. If that didn’t scare you off, hit the jump for more.

Like I stated above, Endless Ocean is all about exploring. You dive down, you swim around and discover new areas while making friends with the fishes. You can feed them, train dolphins to be your pal and grab onto a whale for a ride around the reef. All of these things can be done (or not done) at your leisure. There’s absolutely no pressure involved in these tasks. You’ll get requests via your cell phone to take people on guided tours of the various areas you discover, but even then you’re told to “Do it whenever you want”. It’s all about your time. You can say ’screw it all’, sit in your lounge chair from sun up until sun down and no one will say a word.

I took out my first tour just to get a feel for what goes on. This old guy that looked like Sean Connery showed up on a jet ski and I took him out to see some coral. In the text message I received it said something about a fish he was keen on spotting. So, I saw down to the Coral Forest and he followed me around a bit. He did get lost a couple of times and I swear when I found him he looked dead. That was not the case however, he started following me again and would give me feedback as we explored. At one point he started talking about being bored, which lead me to believe I was doing something wrong. So I tried getting closer to the coral structures and sure enough, he started gushing like a schoolgirl about how he wished he was a diver like me. Once he saw the fish he was looking for, he even did a little fist pump.

I won’t lie, it got a little awkward.

At the end of our little tour I was treated to my first (of presumably many) devices… a ‘water pen’ which was gift from his company. This little device allows you to make notes in the water for your friends. Much to the amusement of my wife, I reverted into a 7-year-old and wrote the word PENIS all over the the place while swimming around. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was how to erase it, so now theres an area of the sea that has been forever tarnished. It seems like every time you discover some new areas you get a new text message requesting your services as a guide. I assume that these tours will continue to net me some kind of rewards for completing them.

From what I gather you can also spend time training a dolphin to do various tricks above and below the water. Apparently theres an off-shore aquarium somewhere nearby that you can swim in too. You’ve also been volunteered by your Aqua-phobic host to help her write her sea life encyclopedia. It automatically records the sea life you encounter and fills it with interesting facts about them. With all the different species of animals and detailed information about them, the game would actually make a really good educational tool for kids.

Speaking of kids, the controls in this game are remarkably easy. This game could be played by a child as young as preschool age (although there is a lot of reading involved). You really don’t have to think about what you’re doing at all, it’s very intuitive. The game only requires the Wii-mote to play, no nunchuck needed. You hold down the B button and point in the direction you want to go. Theres even an auto swim button (-) if you’re going a long distance and don’t feel like holding down B. The A button is your general interact button and depending on how you press it can perform a variety of interactions with sea life and the world around you. Theres the usual map screens, etc… nothing worth mentioning there. It all works really well.

Every now and then the camera can get a little wonky, but that seems to be the case with 95% of the 3D games I play. Fortunately, Endless Ocean moves so slowly that the camera never feels like its jerking around in an erratic way. The bottom line is that the game is easy to play and that’s a good thing. You focus on the exploration rather than “how the hell do I get over there?” and thats what really matters.

I feel like I’ve gone on much longer than I intended to with this whole thing, so I’m going to wrap it up now.

Look, Endless Ocean is $30… That’s less than a Triple-A NDS title. I already feel like it’s been worth it and I haven’t even scratched the surface yet. The custom MP3 thing works great, the game looks pretty nice and you can even hook up with a friend for some online co-op fish hunting. I didn’t get to try the online stuff yet, hopefully Phil will buy this game tomorrow (he will) and we can give it a shot. Anyway, titles like this don’t come around often for a Nintendo system, if you enjoyed Animal Crossing or Nintendogs on any level you won’t be disappointed with Endless Ocean at all. It’s the quirky type of game that I bought the Wii for in the first place. I just stopped playing it a half hour ago and I’m already wanting to put it back on and take another customer out on a tour.

If you own a Wii, you need to check this game out. Someday it will be a thing of legend on internet message boards, so get in on the ground floor. Thanks for reading!

Screenshots taken from: http://wii.nintendo-europe.com/