Nintendo has no problem promoting
a mustachioed plumber, which, if you stop to think about it for more than a moment,
is sort of astounding. The guy's real life doppelganger is Jeff Garlin in a mob
movie.
That Nintendo floundered the promotions of Endless Ocean,
an aesthetic trip offering more fun for the Cheech and Chong set than a lost
weekend at the Cloisters with a tin of caramel corn and a canteen of Soma, thus
is a total shocker. Like I thought Nintendo cornered the mushroom market years
ago.
For Endless Ocean's sequel Endless
Ocean: Blue World, Nintendo would best themselves by accepting a simple fact.
This is not a game for the moms of the world, or the grade school Natural
Science teachers. It's a game for the organically enlightened individual.
And that is why, I boldly state,
Endless Ocean: Blue World is the Puppy Cam of video games. Other internet videos hold your attention
for minutes, but Puppy Cams provide a slow, bordering on static form of
entertainment that can eat up entire evenings. Like our friend Endless Ocean
does. Equal parts charming and exacerbating, awesome and pointless, Endless
Ocean: Blue World voraciously consumes your time -- if you let it.
Okay, what is Endless Ocean? Chances are you skipped the first one of any
number of sh*tty games. Or, less possible, you gave Endless Ocean a few
minutes, but were immediately turned off by a.) the controls b.) the graphics
or c.) the fact that you were playing a Wii game and your grown-ass man (or woman).
Endless Ocean, then, is a scuba
diving simulator exploring the sudsy deep without the nagging fear of the deap sea boiling our blood with enough micro-bubble to make our veins pop. The original Endless Ocean took the title quite
literally and starred a really big ocean. Not endless, but big - you know, for
a Wii game. Wink. Knudge.
Endless Ocean 2: Endless Harder, or whatever silly name I knee-jerk decided they shouldn't have added, has us falling backwards off a pirvate yacht into any number of puddles. Unlike its predecessor, which focused on big boned sea life,
Blue World (there's the name) goes the route of sea sunk architecture: ancient ruins, wrecked ships,
stuff you see in Nic Cage movies.
A majority of playtime is a casual
paddle through the cavernous cave/shipwreck/mudhole the game's dropped you in.
It is casual in the purest sense, as in accessible to everyone.
Which is precisely the way live streams
net of "Shiba nu's in a Cardboard Box"
net 4 million eyeballs a week. Puppies are the most accessible of all internet
videos. That every website's homepage isn't adorable puppies is systemic of the
internet's inability to change with the times and monetize the shit out of cute
things.
Some folks like auto-tuned
newsreels, others like schadenfreude, but everyone likes cuteness, especially
when experienced first-hand or as close to first hand as possible from an office desk. A Puppy Cam feeds this need directly and with
almost zero effort - all you need is the desire for cuteness and the entry level entropy of entering a URL.
Endless Ocean's toughest
requirement, likewise, is steering your diver with the twist of your wrist. And that's only if
you'd rather not just amble forward through schools of fish and colorful
seaweed.
Nintendo has added some sticky,
gaminess to the sequel. There are achievements and you can shoot stuff now,
which according to the sales charts for popular games, are buttresses for success. But the
achievements are, like all achievements, an illusion. And the gun actually
heals fish, which fortunately lathers on yet another trippy layer to your
adventure. "Don't worry, Mr. Limpet, the cure
to a broken dorsal fin is as simple as a zap from my Lazarus gun.
In the scheme of the Endless Ocean, these additions are small and skippable. What's important is the warmth and ease of the experience. Endless Ocean: Blue World isn't the best way to experience nature or the meaning of life, but, like puppies on a live stream, it's probably as close as most of us can get in our busy day to day schedule. And for that reason alone, it's a must have.
Long walk/small cup of salt water argument here, but if it does the littlest to get you wet for Endless Ocean, I'll feel like I've done my job as a champion of the oddball. Puppies, they don't need my help. Endless Ocean, it sort of does - even if the game is unlike anything else and costs less than a dinner and a movie for one. It's worth it, no bones about it.
