![]() It doesn’t have huge ambitions, but it knows what it wants to do and does it well. These sorts of mini-games are understated because Everblue is an understated sort of game. There are little record books showing the deepest dive, longest travel distance, longest dive, heaviest item found, and most of the sidequests are about making a game of finding specific sorts of items. Everblue understands this and systematizes that bit of it. The games that people make up to break up the monotony are enjoyable purely because they’re not being forced to play them. That might sound bad, but here’s the thing: You’re not forced to do it. It systematizes the sorts of little “games” in life that we make up to break up the monotony. You’ll play the game of “How fast can I run this obstacle course”. You’ll play the game of “how many items can I pick up before I need to run back”. You’ll play the game of “see how deep I can go before I run out of HP and have to ascend”. Everblue 2 is a game for the player to play. For a point of comparison, Subnautica is an example of a game that creates a world for the player to inhabit. This is a bit different from games that try to create “a world” for the player to “inhabit”. Everblue 2 is structured as a game, and is subdivided into smaller games. Namely: games of middling quality lay the process of game-making out more clearly than major releases do. However, the part of this game that interests me the most is the same part that makes me go searching for middling, mostly forgotten games in the first place. It’s very straightforward and quite good if you’re in the mood for a chill game. Alternately: ignore the town, go diving, find treasure, get money. Guess they must really like it.Īnyway, the core gameplay loop of Everblue 2 goes like this: Get quest from people in town, go out exploring in the ocean, find ruins, explore ruins, get treasure, return to town, sell treasure, upgrade gear, repeat. In a curiously ironic twist, everyone in that circle of gamer hell is playing Dante’s Inferno. Thanks guys, I’ll be sure to visit you in the fourth circle of gamer hell, the one where early game reviewers who were unwilling to go outside of their comfort zone end up. The reviewers that I’m seeing on Metacritic range from “it’s middling but really nice” to “oh those wacky Japs” to “I was so fucking bored” to “Ew, helping grandma, gross”. I was going to talk about how critics at the time criticized the game for that, but I think I’m giving the game reviewers of 2003 a bit too much credit. The town is point-and-click, the wrecks are free-roam, and the ocean floor exploration has your character locked to the X-Y plane a few meters above the ocean floor. In Everblue 2, gameplay is divided into three discrete sections: Going around town, looking for things in the open ocean, and exploring old wrecks and ruins. I bring this up mainly because I enjoy saying Tetris The Grand Master 3: Terror Instinct. Diving games aside, Arika’s known for Street Fighter EX, Fighting EX Layer, and Tetris The Grand Master 3: Terror Instinct. Endless Ocean is the spiritual successor to Everblue, both by Arika Corporation Limited. I picked up Everblue 2 because I half-remembered Zorak’s LP of Endless Ocean from back in the day, and him saying those games were pretty good. Previous excursions had led to me finding such classics as: Front Mission 4, Crimson Tears, Mojo, Goblin Commander, and of course, Ford Mustang (it’s genuinely hilarious for exactly five minutes) (“SELECT YOUR MUSTANG!”). I was in the used game shop looking for games that my eye was glossing over near the middle of the shelf. The other week, I picked up a copy of Everblue 2.
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