Just imagine: an endless ocean, all yours to explore, with all its treasures buried deep inside jungles and with dangerous monsters lurking in the shadows. Just imagine: you’ll go diving, surrounded by cat fish, hungry piranhas, sharks and all sorts of marine monsters. Adrenaline, excitement, uniqueness. Just imagine, because that’s not what Endless Ocean, the latest game from Arika is offering!

However, if you’re up for a colorful, relaxing, family-friendly experience, this cutesy little Wii game might be exactly what you’re looking for. There is no blood, no weapons, no God damned sharks in this game! Just the endless blue, funny little (or bigger) fish you’ll get bored (or not?) petting and basically no real action. So, the idea is: do you hate Halo 3, GTA IV and you’re not Jack Thompson? Try Endless Ocean, then!

You’ll start your experience by meeting Kat on your ship (or hers, it doesn’t really matter) and she will tell you about her inability to swim and your job to help her. She’s basically the tutorial of the game, the breath of fresh air, the girl who will never jump in the water with you, late at night. However, she’s the least frustrating thing in the game since she doesn’t really mess up your plans like girls her age usually do. Also, if you really want to, you can completely ignore her (aka the story) and just jump into the water, explore the open world of the ocean and do whatever the game allows you to. But don’t expect too much!

Because, yes, in Endless Ocean you’ll swim most of the time, you’ll get to meet all sorts of fish along your way and, if you’ll ever feel the urge for some competition, you’ll check your on-board e-mail and accept various missions, from scuba diving instructor to underwater guide or archaeologist. However, no matter what you’ll choose to do, your options once in the water will be limited and eventually everything will become utterly boring and impossible to handle.

One of the most “revolutionary” things Endless Ocean offers you is the possibility to gather all sorts of info on the varied types of fish available in-game. However, in order to gather the info, you’ll have to endlessly pet and feed them – something that becomes really frustrating, in the end, just like any action in the world you keep doing over and over again. However, I do believe that younger kids (and probably supreme fish lovers) will have no problem with that and they’ll just love to play with their little new friends. And having in mind that they could also learn a bit out of that, it might be, just for them, a good implementation.