Definitely had this game on my radar for the longest time, so I'm glad to finally have gotten around to it. I was curious to see whether or not this was actually going to play like the previous PS1 Aquanauts holiday games or if it was just going to share the name and do its own thing, and I was honestly pleasantly surprised with what they came up with. The original Aquanauts holiday games were vibe games in the most literal sense; there pretty much was no narrative or literally anything with regards to extrinsic player motivation, just one big hand-crafted oceanscape filled with fish that you can explore as much as you want at your own pace. Experimental stuff like that worked in a pretty novel sense back in the blossoming 3D PS1 days, but this is the PS triple we are talking about here, so they actually did a really good job keeping the essence of the PS1 titles while modernizing it to suit the current gamerman trends.
Rather than having one giant oceanscape where it's like "here's the ocean, do whatever idgaf", the ocean in this game is more like a wide linear path that is segmented by different ocean landmark pieces all pieced together through these sonobuoys that extend the range in which you can explore, gradually unlocking each section piece-by-piece alongside a plot that unfolds about finding a researcher that has gone missing. In order to use the range-extending sonobuoys, you have to charge them with batteries that have to be purchased with research funds, and the only way to earn more research funds is by discovering as many landmarks and different species of fish as you can. Basically the game does a good job integrating the exploration of the ocean sea in a way where your reward for exploring is getting more things to explore, making things feel way more guided and nuanced than its predecessors and gamifying the bumbling around that you really are going to be doing anyways with a game like this.
The plot is certainly something, that's for sure. Without going into spoiler territory things definitely go a little into the occultish territory as the game progresses, but not in any like cliche "it was aliens/ghosts/whatever" type of beat. If anything, I think that the way the game sort of doesn't explain what's really going on adds to that mystique about the ocean, how its a part of our earth yet still so undiscovered and full of mystery. There are two assistants from your aqua research team that you can talk to when outside of diving, and they have decent banter. There's a girl assistant that is overly romantic and free-thinking and an old man supervisor that's overly logical and narcissistic. I did enjoy that both of them have several moments where they just ramble on these insanely wordy tangents (that the game auto-skips) when slightly prompted about something, because it just shows that at the heart of it all everyone working at Aqua Heaven is just a doofy passionate ocean nerd. This game never got an official US/EU release, but the Chinese and Korean versions have an English translation, and it's rough. Tons of typos, misspellings, grammar errors, overly literal translations, it really does feel like a very low-budget first draft just to get the game in SOME form of English. I kind of found it a bit charming though in its own right though, but yeah if you are a translation stickler this shit is an F-. It's not like nonsensically bad in the way that putting everything in google translate would likely give out, and I understood what was going on for the most part, but yeah. Also for some godforsaken reason they decided to call the communication between your submarine and your fish "Twitter", and the resources you get from doing so being called "Meme". There are times where the game and its characters will prompt you to twitter with fish to earn meme, with plenty of dialog focused on trying to discover the secrets of fish twitter and their resulting memes. I wish I was joking, but yeah it certainly makes things hard to take seriously, especially combined with the fact that your assistants in-game portraits look like stock photos. Truly a narrative ahead of its time in 2008.
Also can I just say how freakin good this games vibe is? There's definitely points where you are just swimming around and the PS3 shits the bed as it tries to render a whole school of individually-modeled fish but for the most part the game looks and sounds incredible. They really used the power of the PS3 to make the lighting effects of the water look really nice, especially when surfacing from a deep place. Each area in the game feels like the ocean has a slightly different shade of blue to it, and the game has a good sense of scale with regards to the ocean and fish surrounding you. The soundtrack is vibes too, with the actual diving music that changes between the area reminding me the most of Pikmin, of all things. There's also TWO vocal themes in a (to my knowledge) fictional language, fuck yeah! just look at the intro and title screen, and you'll know EXACTLY the kinds of vibes that this game brings to the table. If you have a nice TV and speaker setup, this game is a hella good audiovisual experience.
I think the game is cool and it's a shame it's such an overlooked entry in the PS3 library. I can't really blame it for that though given that I don't think this game had a digital release and the asia english version of the game is incredibly rare, which in todays stupid collector market means this game costs hundreds of dollars to play legit. Let me tell you right now, that english translation ain't even worth 20 bucks, let alone 500. The japanese version is significantly more common and cheap at the cost of only being in Japanese. If you can read it though, that's the way to go. If not, this is a huge killer app for evilnat if you catch my drift. The game only took me like 8 hours to go through the main story, and that was at a pretty leisurely pace, too. If you like the PS3 this is not a title you'd want to pass up through any means.
i miss japan studio and artdink...
Rather than having one giant oceanscape where it's like "here's the ocean, do whatever idgaf", the ocean in this game is more like a wide linear path that is segmented by different ocean landmark pieces all pieced together through these sonobuoys that extend the range in which you can explore, gradually unlocking each section piece-by-piece alongside a plot that unfolds about finding a researcher that has gone missing. In order to use the range-extending sonobuoys, you have to charge them with batteries that have to be purchased with research funds, and the only way to earn more research funds is by discovering as many landmarks and different species of fish as you can. Basically the game does a good job integrating the exploration of the ocean sea in a way where your reward for exploring is getting more things to explore, making things feel way more guided and nuanced than its predecessors and gamifying the bumbling around that you really are going to be doing anyways with a game like this.
The plot is certainly something, that's for sure. Without going into spoiler territory things definitely go a little into the occultish territory as the game progresses, but not in any like cliche "it was aliens/ghosts/whatever" type of beat. If anything, I think that the way the game sort of doesn't explain what's really going on adds to that mystique about the ocean, how its a part of our earth yet still so undiscovered and full of mystery. There are two assistants from your aqua research team that you can talk to when outside of diving, and they have decent banter. There's a girl assistant that is overly romantic and free-thinking and an old man supervisor that's overly logical and narcissistic. I did enjoy that both of them have several moments where they just ramble on these insanely wordy tangents (that the game auto-skips) when slightly prompted about something, because it just shows that at the heart of it all everyone working at Aqua Heaven is just a doofy passionate ocean nerd. This game never got an official US/EU release, but the Chinese and Korean versions have an English translation, and it's rough. Tons of typos, misspellings, grammar errors, overly literal translations, it really does feel like a very low-budget first draft just to get the game in SOME form of English. I kind of found it a bit charming though in its own right though, but yeah if you are a translation stickler this shit is an F-. It's not like nonsensically bad in the way that putting everything in google translate would likely give out, and I understood what was going on for the most part, but yeah. Also for some godforsaken reason they decided to call the communication between your submarine and your fish "Twitter", and the resources you get from doing so being called "Meme". There are times where the game and its characters will prompt you to twitter with fish to earn meme, with plenty of dialog focused on trying to discover the secrets of fish twitter and their resulting memes. I wish I was joking, but yeah it certainly makes things hard to take seriously, especially combined with the fact that your assistants in-game portraits look like stock photos. Truly a narrative ahead of its time in 2008.
Also can I just say how freakin good this games vibe is? There's definitely points where you are just swimming around and the PS3 shits the bed as it tries to render a whole school of individually-modeled fish but for the most part the game looks and sounds incredible. They really used the power of the PS3 to make the lighting effects of the water look really nice, especially when surfacing from a deep place. Each area in the game feels like the ocean has a slightly different shade of blue to it, and the game has a good sense of scale with regards to the ocean and fish surrounding you. The soundtrack is vibes too, with the actual diving music that changes between the area reminding me the most of Pikmin, of all things. There's also TWO vocal themes in a (to my knowledge) fictional language, fuck yeah! just look at the intro and title screen, and you'll know EXACTLY the kinds of vibes that this game brings to the table. If you have a nice TV and speaker setup, this game is a hella good audiovisual experience.
I think the game is cool and it's a shame it's such an overlooked entry in the PS3 library. I can't really blame it for that though given that I don't think this game had a digital release and the asia english version of the game is incredibly rare, which in todays stupid collector market means this game costs hundreds of dollars to play legit. Let me tell you right now, that english translation ain't even worth 20 bucks, let alone 500. The japanese version is significantly more common and cheap at the cost of only being in Japanese. If you can read it though, that's the way to go. If not, this is a huge killer app for evilnat if you catch my drift. The game only took me like 8 hours to go through the main story, and that was at a pretty leisurely pace, too. If you like the PS3 this is not a title you'd want to pass up through any means.
i miss japan studio and artdink...