Endless Ocean: Blue World

I bought this for my wife, and she is totally addicted to it. Excellent game, but dangerous to marriage.

I absolutely LOVE this game. It's better than the original except it has even more things to discover and see with your very own eyes! I could be on this FOREVER! I LOVE IT! I hope that a newer game will come out soon because they just keep getting better and better! You will not regret buying this game! ENJOY VIDEOGAME LOVERS!

Thanks! :)

The first Endless Ocean game was my favorite Wii game, so when I heard there was a sequel I knew I just had to get it. This one is unbelieveable, even 5 months after purchasing it.
Improvements from the first one:
-You dive into real rivers and oceans around the world. In the first one, it always annoyed me that every sea creature could coexist in the same environment on the same map. No more. Now you have to go to the Artic if you want polar bears and to the Pacific if you want coral reefs.
-You can go on land. It always seemed odd to me when penguins just showed up on your boat in the first one, but now if you're close to land in this one you can go up and walk around.
-You can buy things and earn money. I like that in this one you can buy a new bikini or tank instead of waiting around for a reward. You also earn money from taking pictures or finding treasure.
-You can get attacked. Swimming by a great white shark in the first one always seemed a little bland since it didn't attack you or even look at you. Now, if you're in the Artic and a Greenland shark comes your way, you better get out you're pulsar or you're toast.
I could go on and on, but let me just say that if you loved the first one, you HAVE to get this one. Even if you didn't have the first one, buy this one if you love diving, animals, or the ocean.

The idea is that you go around seeing animals in the seas and oceans. There is a paragraph or two available about each one.
A plot is added which is fair enough as far as game plots go.
People reviewing this game as a treasure hunt with areas to explore to look at animals are giving this rave reviews.
There are many problems
1. The photo engine if flawed. Shoot ONE roll of film only on an animal. Put your best photos from that shoot in your album and save. Advance the game 24 hours without saving to see what your grade will be. If its not A then go back to your last save and try others of your photos. If none of this works strongly consider skipping that shoot. Go back to your last save and resumen the game without submitting a photo for that shoot. (See most game sites on the internet re the problem with this game and photos.)
2. The writer caved to mindless persuits. A shooting component is added. These are allegedly healing rays to avoid complaints from animal lovers. Still you are mindlessly shooting light targets on screen. The writer also added a defeat the big boss set of sequences. Swim in an S curve to a boundary. Look just over that boundary into the sharks territory and shoot. Eventually you will heal / pacify them enough to get things done.
3. There is a scavenger hunt component where you search the screen for something shiny. This can be used to illustrate what is tossed into the waters. Ship wrecks could be points to foster discussions of different ships, peoples and time periods. The writer doesnt really go there. The ships are given a name. Little to no further information or discussion is initiated. Books and paintings could be of famous works encouraging curiosity about those works, the writes or painters, and the time period involved. The game doesnt really go there either.
4. Fish in the water are VERY fuzzy at times making it impossible to really tell WHICH fish is there. The encyclopedia has crystal clear pictures and its possible to rotate the fish 360 showing the game does have the data. Seeing a fuzzy blob in the water is not educational even if you can click it and its labeled with a name until you move on.
5. No one arrives at an area and is immediately the expert. Showing tourists around where they rapsodize about being at one with the universe may be useful once or twice. More useful would have been having experts show up on a partictular species or subarea.
6. The program could really teach about photography but failes.
7. The program could really teach about SCUBA but fails to do so.
8. The game could have a link to the internet where approved content is available for new information on animals, plants, rocks, and formations, climate, weather, moon, stars, and tides. The approved content could be add on modules for new scenes in the game. The game doesnt go there.
9. The game has the capability to take as many photos as you wish so that you may keep information about your travels on your computer. You may NOT move photos from your computer back into your game. You may have an ideal photo of cherry grouper for example, but you are very limited in album space. The game could insist on a fresh roll of film to show a photography tutor. Magazine submissions should be from the best photo of that animal to date even if it must be uploaded from computer saved from a prior swim in the game.
10. If you have two tours pending at a foreign location, you must fly home between tours. Even if you could do several tours and do a photo shoot in one day, you may do ONE thing only at a foreign site that is requested then fly home. Then you fly back to the foreign site for the next thing. A flight burns a day each way. The writer seems to want to teach inefficiency.
11.You may only submit ONE photoshoot in 24 hours. You will notice that the writer deliberately does things to be annoying and to slow down progress. This may be understandable in the treasure hunt / plot component. Photo shoots should be there to get familiar with a particular animal. The writer should not block in any way the educational component.
12. The writer wrote a time plenalty for looking in the encyclopedia. Game time travels faster than real time so that you may begin leafing through the encyclopedia in the AM per the game and find its late evening when you close the book. The writer should not stand in the way of learning. Save the game. Look at the encyclopedia and restart. Go back to your last save. Such idiotic work arounds should not be necessary if the writer was reasonable.
13. The writer plays games with photo locations and animals. The writer places other larger or more colorful animals in the immediate environment that will NOT move away for the immediate shoot no matter what you or other divers do. One small animal is immediately adjacent to another. You touch it or toss it food to get it to move. You must CLOSE your camera to do this. It moves a bit away. You reopen your camera and it has gone immediately back. There is no way to net the animal or have other divers bait the animal or move it away. Its again grounds to skip a particular shoot. You observe another animal swimming a pattern for 10 minutes. You get ahead of the animal with the camera aimed across its path. It now changes patterns. I have noted many animals do this in this game. This is one of the few games I have ever seen where I have developed a STRONG dislike for a writer. In the real world with a TEAM of photographers trying to shoot photos of an animal given several days of full time work, they may come up with photos they like. THis...is a game...played by people who are doing this in their spare time that is left after school, work, and other chores are done. Technically GETTING a photo should be a dream on this game. Its for people to enjoy going around taking photos and exploring. Then it should be for people to invite friends over and go do it all again. There are people that want to relax and ENJOY taking photos. I guess there may be others that hope the writer is really a ... and who wants to make that process extremely frustrating. I cant imagine they tested this game prior to market and no one complained about this component when there are complaints all over the net about photography in this game.
14. Information as to problems in the game should be specific. You take a photo of a barracuda speeding past you. The shot fails because "the compositon was rushed". I guess you could go up and SHOOT the barracuda with a double barreled shot gun. Its NOW lying on the sea floor. The composition would at that point NOT be rushed if you THEN went up and took a photo at your leisure of the dead body. The game gives no specifics as how to "unrush" the photo of the LIVE animal. Try various tecnical iterations of on and off auto focus, positions of animal, zoom and f stop to no avail. The game also complains that photos are "technically not correct". There are no specifics. Try various views, zoom settings, f stops and the rating does not change.

Personally I like games where the game is logical and where the writer doent try to cheat on the games behalf by hiding information such as what they REALLY want in a photo of a large animal.

After a few photos and likely failing marks, the game does LATER have a character give some simple rules. IF its a very small animal and you point the camera at it and shoot zoomed all the way in with the animal at a desired point on the photo you can get an A. If its a larger animal you have a very good chance of wasting one or more hours of your life getting failing photos. Even on occasion the very small animal photos fail with no real explanation. "Its technically not correct".

I like the overall idea of exploring and taking photos.
The plot and characters are interesting.

Overall its seriously flawed.
When teaching I dont send a learner out to do something unless or until I truely believe they are ready to go execute it correctly. Judging from the photography issues and the instant tour guide issues apparently the writer disagrees with me philosophically. There are some very nice beautiful components of this game so its worth seeing. Seriuosly expect to find some frustrating components with the camera, and some equipment such a boyancy compensators leading that list. While wearing the "stability" boyancy compensator, I had the tendency to surface. Picture talking to a client IN The water on a tour while gradually rising in the water. When the client would stop in front of me to say something I would go from whatever depth to surface. Know that the writer pulls stunts like this. Dont use equpment on tour without testing first. There is also no provision to discard flawed equipment. Notice that you dive to 100 feet without proper equipment and any back up systems.

I would rate this game a 3 on that basis as I believe the good portions balence out the seriously flawed ones.

I have downgraded the game a bit further to counteract the reviews of folks that opened the box, saw a diving sim and gave it 5 stars.

it is a wonderfull game where you just wander the oceans ,and discover new fish and whales and sharks.