Gamertell

Title: Sea Life Safari
Price: 800 Microsoft Points (US$10)
System(s): Xbox Live
Release Date: June 18, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Sierra Online (Wanako)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone”
Pros: Some very nice graphics. Potentially entertaining for young gamers who like to collect stuff.
Cons: Too short, a bit too easy, promotes throwing stuff at fish and an awkward representation of photo judgment.
Overall Score: One thumb sideways, one thumb down; 69/100; D+; * 1/2 out of five.

Forget the breathing apparatus. Never mind chartering a potentially expensive boat. Don’t even worry about a stinky wetsuit. Sea Life Safari whittles down a tour of the colorful sea floor floor to a few voyeuristic minutes without the expensive hassles. Instead, you float around and simply take pictures of just about everything that moves and the entire game lasts about as long as your average diving cylinder.

Smile, You’re on Underwater Camera

Sea Life Safari is a first-person single-player scuba diving game where you snap photos of aquatic lifeforms to score points. You spend the game drifting through five environments taking pictures of more than 60 creatures and otherwise trying to get them to perform for you.

At the end of your roll of film, all of the images are scored according to semi-professional photographer standards including the crop, the rarity of the creature, the creature’s pose and orientation, centering and overall excitement of the image.

While many of the creatures are good looking on their own, you can also toss metal balls at them to entice them to strike poses you, resulting in even better photos.

The scores are then used for online ranking, the only online feature of the game.

Glub Glub Glub

SLS has some pretty decent graphics of the various sea creatures but other than that it’s a bit lacking. Objects pop into view (likely due to Xbox Live file size limitations) even though the water is always pretty clear. The creatures you do happen by are hardly afraid of you and willing to hang around a few extra seconds.

Since the goal is pretty straightforward, the only real challenge is patience and good aim tossing metal balls at animals. Patience might be a good lesson to learn but tossing anything at an animal to get its attention is not the best lesson to teach younger gamers, who are likely the target audience of this game. Admittedly, some of the reactions are kinda cute and since the orbs are endless and the fish don’t seem to mind, you can toss to your heart’s content.

Even though this is a photography game, it doesn’t offer any real photographers’ tools. There’s no focusing, shutter speed or other technical stuff to worry about. You basically point, zoom in or out and click, which makes it pretty easy for young gamers to play. Any good photographer will tell you that a decent post-snap crop can truly improve an image, not the chance positioning on the lens. You also cannot delete images you don’t like or didn’t mean to take (again, film, not a digital camera). This means you’ll likely be left with a bunch of junky images you would never keep on your digital camera. Fortunately, you can dive to your heart’s content and keep trying to get the best photo of that funny turtle.

Finally, you have to take pictures of individual swimming stuff. It doesn’t really matter if you get a school of fish that looks amazing or a particularly nice piece of crusty wreckage. Instead, a single fish, full body, large in view, facing you and doing some weird move or expression will result in a supposedly better photo and better score. It’s not really teaching proper photo judgment as it is teaching how to judge animation art (which follows the same basic criteria).

Barely Treading Water

This PC game port to Xbox Live offers some decent looking creatures and a couple hours of entertainment for the youngest of gamers.

Otherwise, I cannot recommend this for most gamers, especially at $10. If it gets knocked down to $5, then it might be worth getting for the kids in your house to periodically return to enjoy a few underwater moments searching for mermaids. Otherwise, enjoy the screenshots. The only thing you’ll really be missing are a few sound effects and tossing crap at fish.

Product Page [Sea Life Safari (XBLA)] Read [Wired] Product Page [Sea Life Safari (PC)] Photo Gallery [Gamertell]

Check out the gallery: Sea Life Safari for Xbox Live screen shots