Sea Life Safari is a simple concept; you take pictures of underwater creatures and get marked on the quality of them at the ends of the “safari”, and the on-rails photo game might not be an entirely new idea, but I have to say at the start, I don’t think it’s ever been done better, or put in a more suitable and atmospheric setting...
Set in over 5 diverse levels (Coral Reef, Ship Graveyard, Deep Sea, The Abyss & Volcano) and with over 60 different animated creatures (from crabs to octopus, from angel fish to whale sharks), Sea Life Safari is a deceptively simple game. The idea is to photograph the many diverse underwater sea animals, and build albums to catalogue the creatures, as well as keeping your own personal scrapbook. Reactions can be provoked from the creatures by firing a harmless “gizmo” at them, and amusingly these vary from abject terror to smiles, show-off stunts, mild indifference, right up to snarling retorts from the grumpier creatures!
The game won't win any prizes for graphics but looks really nice, with its Disney/Pixar-esque creatures that are full of character (like smiling sharks and show-off clown fish). Everything scrolled smoothly until the third level when a few hiccups in the frame rate started to appear, but they don’t really spoil the game. Some of the deep sea creatures that fluoresce colours are truly spectacular, and nearly all of them are really well animated – the developers clearly studied the real thing in detail. My favourite level, Volcano, has underwater lava flows and thermal springs, and has some excellent hot water haze effects making it very atmospheric.
At the end of every run each photo you took (you get 24 slots) is rated on its quality (1-3 stars) and you’ll have to ‘3- star’ every single creature in the game and find the 10 hidden seashells on each of the 5 levels to get all 200 achievement points – which is no mean feat.
The on-rails nature of the gameplay won’t appeal to everyone and I initially thought it might have been nice to be able to control the sub free roam a bit, but after playing the game for a while now that would probably have changed the feel entirely, and removed the relaxing ambience that the game provides.
Sea Life Safari’s simple controls (left stick aims the camera lens, right trigger takes a picture, left trigger zooms, and ‘B’ fires your gizmo) mean anyone should be able to play, and it’s perfectly suitable for kiddies, in fact it makes a perfect play-along with-Dad/Mum game whilst still providing enough of a challenge to the more experienced gamer to justify the 800 point price tag, which converts to about £6.50 right now. And before you Hardcore FPS lovers out there turn your noses up, if you’re looking for a fun ‘chill out’ game to play after hectic Call of Duty or Halo sessions you could do a lot worse.
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