![]() ![]() ![]() In Aqua the fish ignore you, you’re an invisible voyeur almost, and there are hundreds more creatures to find. It’s laborious, time consuming, often boring and sometimes infuriating when the game arbitrarily gives you a D ranking for a photo – you’re also likely to spook the animals quite easily. ![]() In Afrika you had to camp in an area, wait for animals to get close, photograph them repeatedly, then head back to camp and email in what you hoped was the best photo for them to be registered. What pushes Aqua ahead is how streamlined the gameplay is. The creatures also swim convincingly and, unless you zoom right in using the photolibrary, look nicely realistic. The draw distances are impressive and the texturing very detailed, unless you get stupidly up close to something. Whereas Afrika often features ropy looking environments and badly animated animals, Aqua’s depiction of the deep sea is never short of breathtaking. Having said that, I still think both are essential to own by virtue of how different they are to everything else. Since purchase Afrika has seen a US release, while Aqua has not, which is a shame since it’s the vastly superior title of the two. Over a year after buying them I’ve now finished Aquanaut’s Holiday – 19 hours playtime, 91% of the photolibrary completed. Both dealt with photographing creatures in their natural environment and I wanted to focus on just one at a time. I bought both Aqua and Afrika at the same time, but started Afrika first, vowing to only start Aqua after completion. So I’ve come to realise that I love almost any game set underwater, and Hidden Memories is the most technically advanced that I’ve seen (though gameplay is a little less involved than the above). But I have played and thoroughly enjoyed Treasures of the Deep, Everblue 1 and 2, plus the 3D version of Ecco. Hidden Memories is actually the latest in a series of Aquanaut games which first started on the PS1, none of which I’ve played. (That, and I really didn’t feel like paying Microsoft over a thousand dollars just to have three regions of hardware and free choice when playing – bugger that for a game of soldiers). In short: Aquanaut’s Holiday is one of the reasons I bought the hardware, and it didn’t disappoint. The 360 had a lot of good exclusives I found, but they were strewn between US (English) and Japan exclusives, mostly region locked. Aquanaut’s Holiday, along with Afrika, was on the PS3 – and furthermore, despite them at the time being Asian-only releases, they were in English and region free. When deciding whether to buy a PS3 or a 360, I wrote up a list of interesting system exclusives and the regions they were in, to help me choose. (oh, I also rant against my pet-hate: trophies) Released only in Asian countries, Aquanaut’s Holiday received a rudimentary English translation, but not much Western coverage. ![]()
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