Hi guys, what's up?

Will we have Sin and Punishment 2 thread, please post pics there.

3 tracks from the game.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ibbstersTHECRAPGAMER#p/u/2/fAUbnkVDF14

Some more pics from todays dive.

It's like 20'000 leagues under the sea

The Grey whale, on the brink of extinction.

The coastal waters of Egypt are very different.

The following pic is too awesome to post and is a spoiler.

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/4708/r4e0537.jpg

gamingeek said:

NGamer review

A relaxing underwater adventure that teaches you about fish and shows you how to battle sharks for their buried treasure. [Feb 2010, p.62]

Cool! Sharks have buried treasure. I knew they were protecting something.

Beat the story mode, the story is about 10 hrs long.

Once that's done you can get down to the real game and play it like EO1.

You unlock the jukebox so you can pick your tune.

There is a f***ton of stuff to do, side quests, treasure to hunt out, an actual incentive to keep gathering, species to find, stories to hear, a coral reef to build, an aquarium to populate. This game has so much stuff.

The last area of the game is aweeeesome. It's almost like a dungeon, it locks you in some rooms with enemies, you have to find some treasure and ways to unlock doors.

It has an Indiana Jones like moment at the end.

The music and end sequence Oh yeah, we are a team damnit!

Now I understand what they mean when they say the game is a completionists dream, everything is logged, there are even achievements if you want to do that.

For those of you who played the first game and think you don't need more, note that this game is very different to the first. It is NOT the same experience.

The subtitle for the first game is Dive, Discover, Dream.

The subtitle for the second is Adventures of the Deep.

The first you dived, discovered new areas, had a dream like atmosphere as you stared in awe at some wonderful sites. The second only kicks into that mode once you've completed the story mode (which is only like a 3rd or even a quarter of the availible gameplay here).

In EO2 you have adventures, its very rare to be without an objective. You have to negotiate light underwater temples, get locked in chambers and fight off sea monsters, you salvage for treasure too which is almost as addictive as the drug dealing mini-game in Chinatown wars.

You are always being pushed on by the story and characters.

But then you can also do all the stuff from the first game at your leisure.

Objectively you can say that in every areas EO2 is improved over the first. The graphics engine is so much better, the on screen character model count has quadrupled for instance. There is far more meat to the game. The limited boat is now an island, you can now sell salvaged items etc.

If I go on emotion and instinct, I couldn't say one is better than the other because they offer different experiences. EO1 doesn't have the distractions, it has better access to music i.e being able to listen to the music you want (when) you want.

It's simplicity is part of its elegance and beauty. In the second game, rather than just floating about in a dreamy state, you are often compelled by addiction to break out the sonar and start digging for treasure.

This game is awesome and will give you not days, but weeks of gameplay. I think I will easily put in more playtime than the first game.

Telegraph review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/7204711/Endless-Ocean-2-Adventures-of-the-Deep-video-game-review.html

Telegraph said:

So glacially paced and compellingly peaceful that a quick five-minute go could easily turn into an hour or two of near-somnambulistic bliss, Endless Ocean was a rare moment of Zen calm amid the carnage of its peers. Its sequel, while similarly slow, has been taking a note or two from its more action-packed rivals – developer Arika has pulled off the rare trick of a follow-up that should appeal to existing fans while simultaneously offering a little more gaming meat to those who felt the first lacked more traditional nourishment.

The first game always had one foot in the fantastical, but the sequel takes that approach a step further, offering underwater castles to explore, a wealth of unusual treasures to salvage, and ensuring you’re never more than five minutes’ swim from a whale of some description. It introduces more ‘legendary’ (read: made up) creatures, and wraps its fish-stroking mechanics around a faintly silly story that’s at once easy to dismiss, yet curiously touching and compelling.

As a rookie diver, you join the fledgling R&R Diving Service as an assistant to old sea dog Jean-Eric and his feisty granddaughter Océane. On your first dive, the latter’s pendant gives off a strange noise, causing an odd reaction from the local marine life, and thus begins your investigation into the mysterious Song of Dragons. This sparks a globetrotting adventure, taking you from the South Pacific through the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans to a section of Amazon river and finally the Red Sea. It's a handy excuse for Arika to provide a greater variety of locales and the sea life that resides therein, and with over three hundred different species to spot, it’ll take quite some time to fill your encyclopedia.

For all that the overly earnest dialogue clunks and your investigations involve little more than heading somewhere and pressing the A button, the addition of a narrative thrust adds some much-needed impetus to keep playing. New characters offer plentiful distractions, too - cocksure salvage expert GG brings requests from those who want specific treasures digging up, while enabling you to fish five more items from the sea per dive. These are then appraised by shopkeeper Nancy, who carries new diving equipment and items to fill your own private reef. Said items will attract fish, with monetary rewards from Japanese aquarium owner Hayako each time you find a new creature to exhibit. Meanwhile, Océane takes requests from novice divers, who usually want to see a specific fish - dive with her, and she’ll help you find more of the smaller creatures, with a glowing yellow highlight offering a zoomed-in view of the coral, as fish flit between the fronds and ferns. An improved camera lets you take some terrific snaps and save them to an SD card, with different aperture settings offering realistic background blur (all screenshots accompanying this review were taken with the in-game camera).

There are more animals to befriend than before, though it’s often trickier than it looks to gain their trust. Those you do manage to pal up with will join you at your island hub, a small base that gradually feels more like home the further you progress and the more items you customise it with. Here, you can train dolphins, porpoise and beluga whales to perform tricks, eventually unlocking the ability to put on a show. The hub offers a pleasing sense of place (particularly with certain objects that have purely decorative rather than utilitarian purpose) but it results in plenty of toing and froing, as you report completed requests to get your reward, or empty your full bag of swag before returning to a salvage hot spot. Though it’s often worth going back to check up on your diver’s titles: Achievement-style rewards for your progress which give the game substantial longevity. After forty hours of play and a completed story mode, we’d amassed just over fifty. There are over three times as many to collect.

While much of this is simply expanding on ideas that were slightly underdeveloped in the original, there’s one new element which may upset those wanting an equally relaxing sequel. The pulsar device is ostensibly used to heal sick marine life, with colour-coded oblong targets painted over the suffering fish showing how ill they are (and thus how many shots are needed). But the pulsar is also used to ward off dangerous creatures, like sharks and crocodiles. Though most of the early encounters simply require you to zap an aggressor once to send it packing, you’ll soon find more resilient beasts who’ll only be temporarily calmed by the pulsar. With a painfully slow turning circle for your diver, and no way of telling the direction from which an attack is coming – an alarm alerts you to the proximity of the thread but nothing more – these encounters sometimes prove irritating rather than exciting. Piranhas and electric eels are handled better: the former require you to either keep your distance or regularly drop fish food as you advance through their waters, and the latter simply must be dodged. If you are hit, you’ll merely be penalised with a slight loss of air, so it’s often tempting to just swim through – though that’s impossible when salvaging, as you’ll have to wait for the ‘danger’ sign to disappear before you can sweep away the sand to unearth your reward.

In truth, these awkward action beats are few and far between, and not nearly enough to spoil a superior sequel. Its good-natured feel and simple controls make it ideal for families, and though some of the wonder of discovering a new species will be lost on those who played the original, there’s plenty of new content to keep everyone occupied.

Dvader said:

I will admit it, this game looks fantastic.

Somebody save this quote.