Endless Ocean: Luminous review: chill underwater adventure runs out of air
30.04.2024 - 13:17
/ digitaltrends.com
/ Giovanni Colantonio
/ Nintendo
Endless Ocean: Luminous MSRP $50.00 Score Details Pros
- Chill exploration
- Tons of fish to scan
- Collaborative multiplayer
Cons
- Repetitive gameplay loop
- Poor story missions
- Inconsistent sound and visuals
In Endless Ocean: Luminous, the sea is an ever-changing natural wonder filled with aquatic mysteries. Actually uncovering those secrets, though, isn’t quite as awe-inspiring.
Related
- Everything announced at February’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase
Nintendo is getting creative to fill out what’s likely to be the Switch’s last full-year lineup, and its latest exclusive is a surprise revival of developer Arika’s ocean exploration series from the Wii era. The series contains a laid-back conceit that seems more well suited to a modern generation of gamers who embrace “cozy games.” It’s simply a relaxing diving experience about cataloging thousands of fish and hunting for salvage. It’s an elegant concept, but one that isn’t friendly to a gaming world that measures value by the amount of “content” included in a game. To modernize an old series, Arika would need to keep players coming back — and that’s where this particular dive runs out of air.
Endless Ocean: Luminous’ calming ocean exploration and lovely multiplayer components wear thin due to slow progression hooks that turn every aspect of it into a long chore. With tons of features from previous installments missing, anyone who wants to see its miniscule story to its end will need to tread a lot of water to find the pearls.
The luminous world
Endless Ocean: Luminous is an ocean exploration adventure with the energy of an educational game. It shares some DNA with 1990s school computer staples like Odell Down Under. And while there are some gamey hooks and modern approaches to progression, it’s more about teaching players facts about nearly 600 fish (including a few extinct and invented critters). If you’re not feeling the call to the sea based on that, stay on dry land.
Those who do click with that, though, will find a pleasant exploration hook that can be inviting early on. The bulk of the experience is spent going on “dives” in a handful of randomly shuffled underwater biomes. When I jump into my first dive, I’m tossed into a map with some stone ruins at its center. I explore that over the course of a few dives before generating a new grid, this time an arctic area filled with previously unseen critters like narwhals. It’s a neat trick to freshen up exploration each dive, though I’ve found myself in that same icy area three times already.
The gameplay loop of a dive is sparse, but enjoyably laid-back. As I smoothly swim around, tilting the camera down to dive and pressing the right bumper to rise, I can scan fish by holding the left bumper.