It's quiet out here; almost too quiet.

It's Better Down Where It's Wetter

Playing Through Endless Ocean 2 was quite an endeavor for me. We’ve had the game in the office since launch, but it was always hard to find time to play a game like this. When was I to find time to play a game that revolved around relaxation and discovery? Ever since my first moment booting up the game, I was mystified. What sort of an experience was this? Several hours of undersea exploration later, and I’m still trying to answer this question. With Endless Ocean 2: Blue World, developer Arika has taken what was essentially a non-game and turned it into a semi-educational title filled to the brim with content. It’s just a little hard to tell for whom this content was intended.

Endless Ocean 2 follows the story of a daring band of underwater adventurers who set out to solve the mystery surrounding the mythical Song of the Dragons. You take the role of a novice diver who happens to be miraculously adept at traversing some fairly dangerous oceanic environments. If you’ve read any of my other reviews, you know that I usually don’t care about a game’s story, and Endless Ocean 2 is surely no exception. The fairly rudimentary narrative that pervades Endless Ocean 2 is as cheesy and outdated as they come, but it does serve to drive the action forward at a steady pace, so it doesn’t seem entirely unnecessary.

As the story progresses, I found myself exploring a wide variety of underwater areas, including the Aegean Sea, the Arctic Circle, The South Pacific, and even some deep water dives to untold locations.  As I made my through these areas, I discovered plenty of drowned catacombs and glacial caverns that were all mine to explore. These stretches of the game were by far my favorite.

The Seaweed Is Always Greener

The environments in the game are well designed and the atmosphere can be top notch at times. The visuals while underwater are fairly beautiful to behold, and really bring the ocean to life. Each marine creature is modeled impeccably, and has a sense of grace that you’d expect from these leviathans of the deep. As I swam through sunken ships and deep trenches, would often stop to marvel at the creatures surrounding me, which was no doubt what Arika had intended.

As I made my way through the game, I actually found myself learning a thing or two about the animals that I encountered. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the game almost crosses into the territory of edutainment. Unfortunately, I actually don’t think it goes far enough in that direction, as a game purely focused on teaching players to understand and respect aquatic life would be something that I’d likely enjoy. I did find that I could learn to pick out different species of fish purely by their shape and markings, which was actually pretty impressive. The design decision of making the player focus on a specific fish to learn about it actually works really well, as would often try my hardest not to waste time focusing on fish I had already encountered.

There is actually a wealth of things to do in this game; apparently a huge step up from the first title, which just had players petting fish for hours on end. You can search the sea for sunken treasure with your multisensor, snap pics of unsuspecting marine life with your camera, train a pet dolphin, upgrade your diving gear, feed fish, collect coins, discover hidden map areas, curate a Japanese aquarium, and plenty more. Unfortunately, though I never found myself lacking in things to do, I often lacked the impetus to push forward through the game. In fact, it almost felt daunting the amount of different systems that the game expected me to micromanage, especially when all I wanted to do was swim around and stare at the cute little fishies.

And Oh That Blowfish Blow!

Developer Arika seemed to pay attention to one of the primary criticisms of the first game. Apparently -- and you can correct me if I’m wrong about this -- most gamers just want something to shoot. In Endless Ocean 2: Blue World, you’re equipped with a sort of laser gun called a phaser, not only can this gun be used to pacify dangerous sharks and manatees (curse you manatees!), but it can also heal injured fish. Though this requires a pretty huge stretch of the imagination, I can understand why Arika included it in this sequel.  Sometimes, you just need a gun to make you feel safe.

Control in the game is handled almost entirely with just the Wii Remote's pointer ability. You’ll use the aiming reticule to steer your diver, focus on fish, select your tools, and search for hidden treasure. It’s all handled pretty simply, and though you do move at a fairly sluggish pace, I never found myself struggling too much with the controls. The game can also be controlled with the Classic Controller, which offers a slightly tighter experience at the expense of having to drag an aiming reticule around with the right stick to interact with the environment.

In the end, I did find some transcendent moments scattered throughout Endless Ocean 2. What I didn’t find, however, was a compelling reason to work my way through the game, and that may just be a failing on my part more than anything else. Though I respect what Arika and Nintendo have put together with this game, I’m not sure that it is something that all gamers must experience. In fact, at this point I’m left feeling like Arika should have gone all out on the title and made it simply an educational experience, with little to no focus on a hackneyed story and plenty of focus on learning about marine life. I loved the moments of wonder that the game had to offer, but these were often fleeting, as my crew would chime in with some new mission directive or somesuch. I thought that I’d get to spend my hours lazily exploring the bottom of the ocean at my own pace, not rushing through a series of mission objectives in order to get back to my boat before my air ran out. If I wanted to worry about dying at the bottom of the ocean, I’d actually go SCUBA diving, and we all know that’s not going to happen.