Review of My Aquarium
First things first: is this a game? Home users are blisteringly familiar with this particular debate. The fact that software is played on a gaming console does not, in itself, make a game of it.
Let’s take one step back. How does the publisher define this? When you go to the Hudson website, the issue of game-itude is not addressed, but the genre is listed as “Relaxation”.
I would go one step further: My Aquarium is not just an aid to relaxation. It’s a meditation tool. With trophies.
So how do you play it? You design aquaria — up to six of them. You select a backdrop and a lighting scheme, add rocks and plants, pick a nice music track, and drop in some fish.
At that point, you may declare that you are done and use My Aquarium as a screen-saver — a little something for your PS3 processor to do while you’re not playing real games or hanging out on Home. It beautifies your living room, and it’s less work than a real aquarium. You don’t even have to feed the fish.
Let me repeat that. You don’t have to feed the fish.
That astonished me. I’ve spent entirely too much of my life trying to keep digital creatures happy, and failing miserably. My Dolphy hates me. I don’t dare return to Animal Crossing, because I know it’s full of weeds and roaches. Somewhere on my PS3 is a digital greenhouse with dozens of pots of dead flowers. I fully expected My Aquarium to be another real-time sim, where a week’s vacation would leave my favorite gourami floating belly-up in a foul, algae-infested tank.
But… you don’t have the feed the fish. Or clean the tank, or do any of the things you do for a real-life aquarium. You put fish in, and watch them swim around. That’s it.
And it’s sufficient. They’re really pretty.
However, you can do more, if you wish. If you do feed the fish (and you have three kinds of fish food to choose from), they will grow. And, if you have at least two fish of the same species, and they feel like it, they will have babies.
Baby fish earn you trophies. That’s reason enough to make a pretty aquarium, sprinkle in fish food, pick some nice mood music, and tiptoe away from the console.
So, you get trophies for reproduction. You also earn trophies if your fish eat each other (go figure), or simply for putting fish in aquaria. In fact, these have to be the easiest trophies in the PSN universe. You get a Silver trophy for putting fish and objects in all six tanks. You get another Silver for putting 100 fish in one tank. (Hint: Neon Tetras are your friends!)
You get a Gold for unlocking all the fish. This will take a lot of time if you play it straight, but the game judges time by your console clock. A bit of judicious time-travel, with feeding stops along the way, will score you a Gold in an evening.
You can do other things with My Aquarium. But not many. You can name your fish, which keeps them from being eaten. (Predators prefer anonymous victims.) But be warned: named fish also seem to be immune from deletion! You can take screenshots or videos, and upload the videos to your YouTube account. (They’re a bit clunky, and they are obviously game commercials. But it’s fun.)
You can read about your fish in the database. You can unlock fish by playing, or buy add-on content at $.99 for three species. You can tap on the glass. You can have a light show on your birthday.
That’s pretty much it.
On the whole, I really like My Aquarium. It is what it is. But what it is, is gorgeous. The music tracks are pleasant, and come in classical, New Age and ambient flavors. You can also play music from your HDD, although for copyright reasons you can’t capture videos while doing so.
The fish are nicely rendered, and behave like real fish. They glide and idle, gather to scarf up fish food, and react to taps on the glass.
There are a few odd features that I would urge Hudson to address. The one that bothers me most is that you can put fresh- and salt-water fish in the same tank, and it doesn’t seem to harm them. To a former marine biologist, there is some thing deeply disquieting about a tank full of Jellyfish and Neon Tetras. Or Clownfish and Piranhas. Or Bullhead Sharks and Black Mollies. It’s just… not… right.
Another thing I find annoying is that you can’t assign a music track to a particular aquarium. Whatever track you pick is used for all the tanks, until you select another. I really want to tie Satie’s “Gymnopédies” to my Jellyfish tank. It’s so darned appropriate!
I also think there need to be more options for tank decoration — more floors, backgrounds and lighting schemes. Some seaweed for the salt-water tanks would be nice. And more decorations! What’s a fish tank without a sunken ceramic castle?
Still, all in all, it’s a lovely little game. And there’s a sequel coming. My Aquarium 2 is already available for the Wii (the original platform of My Aquarium.) And it includes open-ocean and deep-sea fishes, and some really cool invertebrates.
I can’t wait!
January 26th, 2011 by SealWyf | 9 comments
SealWyf is a museum database programmer by day, and an officer in the Homeling Collective by night. She has been active in online communities since before the Internet, and in console gaming since the PS1. In games, she prefers the beautiful and quirky, and anything with a strong storyline. She is utterly addicted to PlayStation Home.
I wanted to add that my Moon Jellyfish produced a baby jellyfish a couple nights ago. It’s so darned cute! The ex-marine biologist in me is saying, “Yeah, right. And it wouldn’t look like that anyway. Jellyfish have a complex multi-stage life cycle.” But I just tell her to shut up.
As usual, I am totally confused by technology. I bought the Aquarium at Hudson and I bought the add-ons (decor and fish) but when I tried to place the new aquarium in the Mansion, I could not find it! (I saw the comments about tv screens and I wanted to put it on the big tv screen in the Mansion or the Hollywood Hills place or the yacht) It is not in my furniture inventory or in storage. I am so mechanically challenged that I do not own a cell phone. But this is absurd -- I buy something and cannot ind it anywhere in Home.
This was a really good review.
How good was it?
Despite having never heard of this title (Home has effectively destroyed any video gaming time I used to have, and this is just fine by me), and having barely survived a Portugese man-o’-war wrapped around my neck when I went for a swim at Kailua Beach once, I’m now thoroughly interested in acquiring this game title. It’d be the perfect thing to have playing while I’m working on the magazine.
Awesome review, Seal.
Glorious review.
“use My Aquarium as a screen-saver — a little something for your PS3 processor to do while you’re not playing real games or hanging out on Home.”
Stupid question time,
Don’t suppose My Aquarium can be used while running Folding@Home… can it?
Someone needs to contact Stanford University on this concept. They would probably get more folders if we could swap out the basic globe screensaver for fishies.
BTW, am wanting this… a 72″ high def aquarium sounds like pure glory.
Seventy-two inches!?!?!?
My 60″ Samsung LED suddenly feels horribly inadequate. But, then, the Homelings have motherships and particle beams and muon-catalyzed fusion, whereas I have a cat and a bag of Fritos, so I guess it’s to be expected…
We also have ferrets and mothers-in-law, so we’re not all that different.
Of course… we use no fossil fuels.
This would be even better running on a 50″ or higher screen, I have a small 32″ Sony Bravia (the earlier models) but i would definately be thinking of upgrading just to have the aquarium running on larger screen.
I love anything to do with water (Something in my Pisces nature maybe?) So to be near water and fish, is very relaxing to me.