Reviewed by Chris Manning
From Amazon.com: “Explore an undersea world in Endless Ocean. Swim through coral reefs, explore ancient shipwrecks, meet local wildlife and search for sunken treasure on your own team with no time limits and no pressure.”

It’s safe to say that a decent amount of divers own a Wii video game system. However, how many divers are aware that there is dive-related Wii title, called “Endless Ocean”? The street price is just $29 bucks, so it’s worth a closer look. Endless Ocean was released in January of this year and I gotta tell you, it saw me through the cold weather months, especially since I don’t own a dry suit!

Endless Ocean offers players the chance to experience some of the things us divers know about first hand. You start out on a boat and interact with a crew member, who briefs you on what you need to know about the various facets of the game. There is also a message board with requests to lead dives, information about places to dive, and other useful data. Each player maintains a fish log that displays all the marine life you have interacted with as well as the ones you haven’t. The dive boat also has a boom box which has the option of playing user-provided mp3 files from the Wii’s external memory card!

You have the option of moving the dive boat to different areas with a map displaying the areas you have already explored. Different marine life exist in different areas and you can add a species to your fish log by interacting with them. Interaction is easy, as you point to a species you want to interact with, and the species is revealed along with interesting facts. If you interact with them repeatedly, you may find yourself with a new friend that follows you everywhere.

Features

• Dive in exotic locales: from tide pools to the wrecks of World War II bombers
• No set time limits and no way to fail, you’re free to relax and explore however you see fit
• Find, identify, and catalog hundreds of different types of marine life such as penguins, clownfish, dolphins, sharks and the blue whale
• Go online with Nintendo WFC and meet friends and family for an underwater sightseeing tour. Once you exchange friend codes, you and a friend can dive together on the same screen. While the two of you are exploring the ocean, you can communicate using a series of pre-set messages.
• Exploring is easy just point the Remote in the direction you want to go and hold the B Button and to examine objects, just point at them and press the A Button

Endless Ocean is not a technical diving game where you have to manage ascent rates, depth, or decompression. Rather, it is a nice change of pace and offers gamers the chance to relax, explore, and learn more about marine life. Who knows, it could inspire some people to explore the real sport of diving and we could always recruit more people, right? As a diver, I found that the best part of the game was an educational one: learning to identify different species of marine life. I may not be a better diver for having played Endless Ocean, but I am definitely a more educated one when it comes to fish identification.