This game feels like a free educational browser game from the 2000s, but it costs almost $80.
Playing Endless Ocean: Luminous is not fun and it is not relaxing. It’s just tedious.
The game is about ocean exploration and discovering marine life-forms. You can take photos and find out more about the fish, sharks and more you discover.
Most of it involves swimming through a fairly empty procedurally generated space and holding down a scan button. Your reward is a fact sheet about whatever marine life-form you’ve scanned.
At first this felt cool, but after my 20th fact sheet I simply had no interest or patience to pay attention to any more.
There are rare "named" creatures to find, like a shark named Thanatos or a sunfish named Apollo, but they’re so frequent they don’t feel special.
The story mode treats you to an "AI" companion, voiced by an actual text to speech programme.
It’s awful to listen to and feels incredibly cheap — frankly insulting — for the price tag on this product.
Why model hundreds of fish, then neglect to hire a voice actor?
What really frustrates me is that the team that modelled the fish seem to have done their job with genuine passion, but nothing else even comes close.
I simply don’t understand who the market audience is.
I could imagine a young fish enthusiast having a little bit of fun with this, but I cannot understand selling it for more that $10.
Unique games offering an alternative to the mainstream need to exist, which makes it such a shame that this feels like a cash grab.
