Beyond Blue

A refreshing, relaxing and educational experience. I’d completed roughly half of the game and got distracted by another game (probably multiple other games, tbh), but decided I wanted to play something really chill and so picked this back up to get the main story content/achievements finished. While I wouldn’t say this game was better than the first Endless Ocean game for Wii (the only Endless Ocean game I’ve played-and it’s been awhile), it’s the closest thing I’ve found to it while having more actual scientific/ocean research information if you care to pay attention to it than the former did (if you’re interested in that sort of thing-I am). There’s also an in-game story that was (IMO) decent, but not anything amazing-but for me, at least, that’s not the main draw of a game like this. The only major downsides being that it’s a much shorter experience than the original Endless Ocean, clocking in at 6.6 hours for me to obtain all of the achievements (I haven’t explored the recent free update content the devs released yet, but plan to at some point. I’ll update this review to give my thoughts on it when I do); and that the soundtrack, while pretty great and relaxing-cannot match the pure magic that was the soundtrack of the very first Endless Ocean game. I got this game on sale for a little under $9 and can definitely say it was worth it to me. I’d genuinely LOVE to see more games like this (peaceful ocean diving simulators)-even Abzû, the closest thing I can think of to both Endless Ocean and Beyond Blue has a section that is (IMO) quite tense and caught me off guard when I initially played it. TL;DR: -The only real “con” of this game is its short length, IMHO. If you’re looking for a relaxing diving sim that also contains (partially optional) educational information, this is a game for you. I also had zero issues running this game on my LCD Steam Deck.