Endless Ocean 2 IGN UK reviewSnippets
Like a beautiful underwater Animal Crossing, 2007's Endless Ocean was pretty much the complete antithesis of the hectic, violent modern videogame. Gentle, relaxing, open-ended, it was the perfect stress reliever. A gorgeous and hugely atmospheric game that soothed away your cares by sending you out to explore the secrets of the deep blue sea at your leisure.
Two years on, developer Arika has delivered a sequel that not only improves on everything that people loved about the original, but delivers a much more structured and engaging experience right from the beginning. Although many players loved the pressure-free sandbox design of old, others failed to appreciate its charms precisely because of this lack of direction. With that in mind, it's perhaps no great surprise to see that Adventures of the Deep immediately goes a lot further in giving players a greater sense of purpose from the outset.
One element that's definitely not in doubt is the game's technical allure once you're underwater. Despite being saddled with stiffly animated human character models above ground, as soon as you start exploring life below the ocean waves, it's an entirely different matter. Teeming with dozens of beautifully rendered creatures, these lovingly recreated and deftly animated fauna go about their business, generally surrounded by equally delightful flora. All that's missing is David Attenborough's soothing tones. Admittedly, the game's music is destined to get on your nerves after a short while - especially as there's no ability to customise your own soundtrack via the SD card this time.
With a greater emphasis on structured gameplay elements, and the continued freedom to go off and explore to your heart's content, Arika has ensured that Endless Ocean 2 is a much more rounded experience without ever compromising its unique qualities. Throw in a singing dragon, treasure hunting, magic healing guns, plus communicative online play, and it's a title which deserves much more attention the second time around.
Endless Ocean 2 IGN UK reviewhttp://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/106/1065380p1.html
As well as getting up close and personal with everything from tiny shrimps to awesome whales, your adventurous spirit ensures that you'll also be scouring for treasure and poking around grand shipwrecks and submerged buildings - all the while unravelling a deliciously bonkers storyline involving singing sea creatures and an intellectually challenged dude who wants you to call him 'GG'.
Sounds about right.
Huh,
Sound 4.0
Sparse sound effects and a monumentally annoying selection of songs will soon grate on the ears.
So I guess he hated the Westernra from the first game too?
Lasting Appeal
Around eight hours of story quest allied to online play and a near endless amount of exploration, you're looking at weeks rather than days.
Oh yeah 
First of all, I'm not the fastest of gamers (Twilight Princess took about 120 hours) as I do like to wander around and soak up the detail.
First time through EO I ditched the plot as soon as I got the boat keys and went and explored the entire ocean on my own - not very efficiently and - since I had forgotten about bring up the map - I got lost a lot. Then, back on track, worked through to the end exploring extra nooks and crannies and finding things as I went.
At that point, I was still short rather a lot of creatures and treasures, so I went - as one does in these circumstances - to GameFAQs. But there was no FAQ. that's when it all got a bit too much, as I decided I'd write one myself.
That led to:
- 50 straight hours just collecting all the female diving suits and gear
- 17 playthroughs disentangling all the preconditions for triggering events
- total 400+ hours before getting the last treasure
- quite a lot of transcribing game text from the screen
- two nights leaving the game turned on to calibrate the day/night cycle
- lots of tracking creatures to find routes and so on
- multiple experiments in photography/guided dives to work out scoring conditions
- exploring all the loose ends of the in-game mythology
- carefully-scripted online encounters and experiments with the music mechanism
- cross-checking the translations in different languages - which uncovered a few interesting things
... and so on and so on ...
Of course, I couldn't do all that full-time, so for relaxation I'd just swim around my favourite areas of the game.
I'm not obsessed with the game, no - not at all.
Astonishingly, after all this, people still discover things in the game that I didn't know about!
EDIT:
So you kinda like the game, huh? |
You might say that. Indeed, it is probably the obsessive attention to detail in the game itself that attracted me most.
Mind you, I did realise it was getting a teensy-tiny bit out of control when I found myself:
- noticing that the variant translations of the name of the green suit between English and Spanish indicated that parts of the translation had been relayed orally in English by a native Japanese speaker
- tracking down the locations of the in-game songs on collectors editions of New Zealand albums (I'm in the UK)
But GG ain't got nothing on that guy!
Yeah he's crazy.
Monkey what is your GAF username?
it says something about the game that he still feels he hasn't experienced all the possibilities and all there is
___
Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
angrymonkey said:Not on gaf myself. Just lurk there a lot.Not that I want to take advantage of a possible obsessive/compulsive but has he mentioned if he's getting the new one?I want that detailed walkthrough again.
Absolutely. I'll be playing online with him I hope 
Type 'funny surfer dude' into YouTube and you get a cracking, irony-free clip of a chap eloquently expressing the joys of surfing. It's hard to tell whether he's been shot with a shark tranquilliser, hit by a bus or just swallowed too much seawater. Is he for real? Is he having a laugh, sending up surfer culture live on US telly? Who can tell. We're in a similar predicament with this game. What on earth is it? Relaxation aid? Watery adventure? Yo! Sushi video installation?
With Clearly Concussed Surfer Dude, it didn't matter what he was blathering on about, it was just hilarious to watch. And with the first Endless Ocean, there was a curious satisfaction to be had despite not really knowing what you were meant to be doing, if you were doing anything in the first place. You swam about, looked at fish and completed the odd task, all in your own time. It was pleasant, but we hardly felt like we were playing a game. It was like a holiday from gaming, a contradiction in terms that wasn't quite as horrible as it sounds.Recognising that Endless Ocean was perhaps a little too understated, Arika has provided a hefty length of narrative rope for you to hang on to now, and almost immediately you're straight into a story. It's something about a sunken castle, a pendant, an orphaned girl called Oceana and a cryptic message from her dead dad. It's batty, in its own charming way, but hardly enthralling. It's not exactly Indiana Jones And The Ocean Of Doom, but it does at least throw up a series of quests as you sail around the world.
Bale Out
After quickly creating a diver that looks like Christian Bale in American Psycho, you're given your diving gear, a map and then some pointers to what you could do while you're underwater. You select the option to dive, point the Remote in the direction you want to go and squeeze B to flap away.
Everything is slow and deliberate, like you're swimming through treacle. There are no sharp movements (unless you're rolling out of the way of narked whales), and there's a sense of cotton wool calm under the waves. It's even controlled with the Remote and strictly nothing else - the better for keeping a hand free to turn Groove Armada up, or sip a nice lapsang souchong.
As you pass your pointer over fish and items of interest, you're invited to inspect them closer to find out more about them. It's a David Attenborough programme without the baby seal mauling - information for information's sake.
There's a 'gotta catch 'em all' aspect to cataloguing these creatures of the deep, and in the first game it was all rather pointless and anal. Here, as you observe fish you can apply all that knowledge by attempting to populate your own reef, though even this is only a mild diversion.
You're becoming one with nature. That's the point, rather then punching nature in the head. After gentle dives to sea shelves and cavities, waving a virtual hand to 'pet' sea turtles and the like, and occasionally scattering palmfuls of fish food, you'll catch yourself. What the hell are you doing? You've been swimming in a slow circle for the last 20 minutes lifting up random clumps of coral, looking for pretend sea slugs, that's what.
What you could do with, in the absence of any real thrills, or Funny Surfer Dude, is some kind of weapon, like a harpoon or a gun. Like the Pulsar gun! Yes, the game gives you a weapon for self defence, which fires electric pulses that calm creatures, making them forget why they attacked you. Much like the effect Endless Ocean 2 has on seasoned Call Of Duty vets. But even the pulsar comes with a sunny side effect. You can use it to heal sick fish to increase your diver stats.
Sickeningly Sweet
There's a lot of this syrupy wholesomeness. The music sounds like it was created by someone who eats nothing but joss sticks, there's a lot of talking to the animals, you make friends with a dolphin, you reunite whale calves with their mothers and you deny hungry tiger sharks their human dinner. If it were gunning for a higher age rating, you'd be sinking Japanese whaling ships while wearing a tie-dyed bandana too, but alas, no joy on that front.
There's also a lot to do besides diving and exploring. You can walk around new islands, sell and trade treasures found in the deep, teach your dolphin friend new tricks, photograph fish, give diving lessons, and generally admire the fine work that's gone into creating hundreds of species of sea creature.
There's been a real, well meaning shift towards making Endless Ocean 2 a more rewarding game. It has an episodic, globe-trotting feel to it now, which is all well and good, but what would counterbalance the fish-hugging is a healthy sense of threat, from both predators and the unknown parts of the map. There's none of that on offer though so, like most holidays, this is a welcome break for a period, but you'll be aching to get back to real challenge-and-reward gaming soon enough.
That NOM review is dishearteningly like stupid reviews of the first.
Yeah it's sad to see this again. You know I picked the first game up at a bargain price because it launched at that in Europe. I was utterly suprised at how great it was, despite a few reviews like that^
You would think that reviewers would have grown up a bit now that they've sampled the first and got the whole "I can't die!" concept out of their heads.
Reviews like this make the writer(s) sound like children who just want to get into the "action" and shoot something.
The same goes for Zack and Wiki and De Blob. (Though Australian prices had gone drastically down by the time De Blob came out.)
angrymonkey said:Yeah, I tried not reading the comments in the Kotaku article.Well, it is a niche concept. I'm realizing more and more how much I've always loved to explore in videogames. It's a big plus for me.Hey ,to lure in the teens for this game I'd have one of the mission quests to be police body recovery. Try to make them lose their lunch.And I forget, is this game going to have some plant life you can check out as well?
I hear you can build your own coral reef.
Foolz said:I pre-ordered it at full Australian price so suck my niche supporting balls GG! You're nothing but a pretender.
The same goes for Zack and Wiki and De Blob. (Though Australian prices had gone drastically down by the time De Blob came out.)
So did I. In the US, Z&W and Endless Ocean 1 and 2 are budget price.
Not so in Europe.
I gots it today!
And played all of 15 minutes.
It's glorious. Talk about upping the stakes. All the awesome stuff you see in the trailers happens within the first few minutes of the game.
The characters are facing you and talking in a group, there is tons of dialogue which even in the first few minutes brings the characters to life.
Oh the graphics are a definite step up, about 30% more detailed from what I can see. Bloody hell the opening lagoon type section has like 4 times as many fish in that scene than the lagoon in the first game.
The only thing that bugs me is so minor. I'm used to pressing -(minus) to auto swim and here they've switched it to + (plus)
I would be playing the hell out of this game if I could, instead I'm having to deal with post - burglary fallout. 