Endless Ocean: Luminous

[Dcubed]

 

Seems to be focused on online play (though is not online-only), with randomly generated world layouts.

Bit disappointed that it doesn't have a hand-crafted world like the original games, but still! Endless Ocean is back!

Arika is also back as the developer (they developed the original two Endless Ocean games for Wii, as well as its spiritual predecessors Everblue & Everblue 2 for the PS2), as per NOA's website.

Edited February 21 by Dcubed

[Helmsly]

I used to enjoy playing the older games on the Wii. I remember there was a feature on them to play MP3's off of the SD card, so I made a little playlist of water themed music from other video games, like the water music from Donkey Kong Counry and Dire Dire Docks from Mario 64.

It should be interesting to see how online mode works.

[darksnowman]

16 hours ago, Helmsly said:

I used to enjoy playing the older games on the Wii. I remember there was a feature on them to play MP3's off of the SD card, so I made a little playlist of water themed music from other video games, like the water music from Donkey Kong Counry and Dire Dire Docks from Mario 64.

It should be interesting to see how online mode works.

Same. They were quite the gems. Do you remember if they were budget releases? I seem to recall getting the first one for £20 from HMV. Don't think I knew that about the MP3s or I'd have made a playlist with those tracks as well. My Excite Truck had one of the best soundtracks in all of gaming.

[EEVILMURRAY]

Watching the trailer, I was a bit concerned on the roguelike nature of the dives, the footage had some nice looking underwater temple things, you only get one chance to explore it before it disappears forever/whenever it is generated again on rotation, assuming at random?

 

Also, is there some sort of oxygen based timeframe?

[darksnowman]

This is £40 on the eShop and can already be pre-ordered for £33.61 on Amazon.

[Hero-of-Time]

A few details about the game have been released.

 

[Hero-of-Time]

New trailer.

 

[BowserBasher]

This would have been a perfect game to have the VR Labo incorporated into. 

[Helmsly]

 new Overview Trailer:

 

Edited April 18 by Helmsly

[Hero-of-Time]

Reviews have dropped and the write ups don't paint a pretty picture. Progession seems to be locked by a mass amount of repeatative tasks, online not working as well as it should (shock) and the randomly generated world feeling bland/boring in comparison to the previous entries. 

[BowserBasher]

Maybe Nintendo are still holding the fish in tanks at HQ before release date. 
 

Oh dear though. Had high hopes for this. Seemed like this could have been big hitter 

[Ashley]

2 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Reviews have dropped and the write ups don't paint a pretty picture. Progession seems to be locked by a mass amount of repeatative tasks, online not working as well as it should (shock) and the randomly generated world feeling bland/boring in comparison to the previous entries. 

You could say the reviews aren't glowing. 

[Josh64]

Yeah, seems like this has been battered in the reviews. I wonder if the sales will flounder because of that? There I was thinking they had another smash hit in the can. 

[Dcubed]

Reading a few of these reviews… a lot of them don’t seem to get the appeal of the series in general… I’d take some of these opinions with a grain of salt if you’ve enjoyed the previous games, because the lack of overarching story/objective is kind of the point here? It’s supposed to be a bit of a meandering “virtual aquarium” and the people asking for more of a guided “action game esc” experience are kind of missing the point here.

That being said though, the complaints about the grindy progression system being tied to unlocking new areas and the lack of handcrafted level design making areas feel samey and bereft of interesting landmarks seem like valid enough complaints.

[Hero-of-Time]

12 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Reading a few of these reviews… a lot of them don’t seem to get the appeal of the series in general… I’d take some of these opinions with a grain of salt if you’ve enjoyed the previous games, because the lack of overarching story/objective is kind of the point here? It’s supposed to be a bit of a meandering “virtual aquarium” and the people asking for more of a guided “action game esc” experience are kind of missing the point here.

That being said though, the complaints about the grindy progression system being tied to unlocking new areas and the lack of handcrafted level design making areas feel samey and bereft of interesting landmarks seem like valid enough complaints.

Ironically, that's what sounds appealing to me. I love a good checkbox list and so having to tick some boxes whilst swimming around a virtual ocean sounds great.  I'm still pretty tempted to pick it up on Friday.

[darksnowman]

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Ironically, that's what sounds appealing to me. I love a good checkbox list and so having to tick some boxes whilst swimming around a virtual ocean sounds great.  I'm still pretty tempted to pick it up on Friday.

I'm hoping you and others might still get it because I'd like to hear if it's any use when not powered through for review. Maybe normal players will complete these objectives without really going out of their way through natural play over a larger span of time.

[Dcubed]

28 minutes ago, darksnowman said:

I'm hoping you and others might still get it because I'd like to hear if it's any use when not powered through for review. Maybe normal players will complete these objectives without really going out of their way through natural play over a larger span of time.

I’d imagine that’s probably the intention.  You’re likely expected to unlock this stuff over a long period of time as you dip in and out of the game casually; but of course, in such a small crunchy review period, you’re gonna need to binge the game and plough through the grind as fast as possible to see as much of the game as possible in order to get your review out in time.

[Hero-of-Time]

1 hour ago, darksnowman said:

I'm hoping you and others might still get it because I'd like to hear if it's any use when not powered through for review. Maybe normal players will complete these objectives without really going out of their way through natural play over a larger span of time.

How long have you known me now? You know that's how I play games. Clearly I missed my calling as a reviewer.

[darksnowman]

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

How long have you known me now? You know that's how I play games. Clearly I missed my calling as a reviewer.

Let's see if you immerse yourself in this one! Will you have a whale of a time or will you resurface with salty impressions...

[Hero-of-Time]

I spent a bit of time on this over the weekend. I'm just have a session here and there in between other stuff and so far it's been a pretty chilled experience. I've mainly being doing the online dives with random players, most of which seem to be Japanese who are very helpful. What English players I have come across just seem to be all about themselves, whereas the Japanese players tend to mark treasures and creatures that they find on the map for you.

I can see why a lot of outlets were negative against the story mode. My progress in this has been halted a few times due to not meeting the requirements for unlocking the next chapter. It's been a bit of a grind early on so who knows what it's going to take in order to unlock the later chapters. It's a bit weird because the story mode acts as a kind of tutorial and so having this gated off is a bit of a strange decision.

There are also timed events to do, the first of which was this weekend. These are special areas that tend to spawn the more rare creatures at a higher rate. Again, I played this with random players. You have 20 minutes to scan a certain amount of creatures that are on the map. After doing this, a special creature will spawn and you have a limited time to find it and scan it. It's here where helpful players really shine as they will mark the area on the map if they happen to find it. 

It's pretty much an Endless Ocean game that has a large online mode. I still have preferred hand crafted levels rather than the randomly generated ones but this doesn't take anything away from the game. The only way I can see this being an issue is when looking for the last entries in your logbook. There will be no set way to find them and will no doubt be all down to the RNG.