Endless Ocean Review

Endless Ocean: Dive, Discover, Dream is a unique game, with an emphasis on “unique” and not “game.”

It’s a love it or hate it type experience. If you’re looking for an action game, you’ll hate it. You can’t even die or be harmed, not even by petting the polar bear. If you’re happy swimming around somewhat aimlessly exploring the ocean and beautiful underwater scenery, you just might love it.

In Endless Ocean, you’re a scuba diver off the island of Manoa Lai, exploring reefs off a sailboat while your somewhat ditzy sidekick Kat sits on the boat and writes an encyclopedia based on your findings.

When you encounter one of the hundreds of sea critters, you interact with it, learning about it in the process. After a few days you learn everything about that critter, and it all goes into Kat’s encyclopedia.

As the game progresses (far too slowly for many people), you can pilot the boat, take pictures for magazines, lead other divers, and much more. You also make friends with many of the sea creatures.

The game is very aimless; you do whatever you want. There seem to be endless options, and there are no dangers like running out of air or being eaten by the polar bear.

The underwater scenery and graphics are mostly beautiful. The words hypnotic and mesmerizing come to mind. It’s not so pretty above the water, which is fair enough as it’s an underwater simulation type game.

Pros: Endless Ocean: Dive, Discover, Dream is really neat. We need more unique games instead of more of the same. The underwater scenery is fantastic, and the game is pretty inexpensive.

Cons: It is pointless to some people. There is no danger or score. It’s aimless and you pretty much do whatever you’d like. The control is a little clunky. Multiplayer features are very basic and hard to setup.

Overall: Endless Ocean: Dive, Discover, Dream is a love it or hate it game. Some kids and adults will be mesmerized and happy to play for days and days, while others will get bored in a few minutes and never play it again.
My daughter, can play this game on the Wii nearly endlessly, while my son prefers Wii games with more action.