Aquanaut's Holiday

"Deplorable anti-game"

”Artdink deserves to have their asses kicked hard for making that ****” - GUTS

It is the job of the critical reviewer to first define what the authors of the subject set out to do, and then make a value call based on how well those intentions were fulfilled. Aquanaut’s Holiday makes this a complicated task, because no rational human being can take its schmaltzy concept seriously to begin with. It wouldn’t matter how well it was pulled off, it is a game that by all rights should have never been made.

It opens with an all too familiar series of introductory screens, which must be patiently endured before play begins. This would be counted a flaw in most games. Here it is preparation.

The premise has you piloting a submarine in the first-person view around a thoroughly open-ended expanse of ocean. So vast is this underwater world that to travel from end of the map to the other, in one straight line, would take upwards of an hour. No goal is included – just get out and go, look but don’t touch, and meditate to ambient music and the hushed roar of the engine. The only thing between you and the infrequent landmark is a variety of fish and other marine life, drowsily floating along with the sole purpose of being examined. With the shoulder buttons, four different pinging echoes can be used to communicate with them.

Folks, there is a reason Aquaman is widely touted the lamest superhero of all time. Nobody wants to talk to fish. What do they know anyway? According to Aquanaut’s Holiday, not much. For each species, there is one ping that will cause it to run away, two that will have no effect, and one that will trigger a rehearsed, unnatural movement. There, in a nutshell, is the extent of your interactivity. At least you can recreate a short part of Pink Floyd’s masterwork Echoes, which is a damn cool accidental effect if I’ve ever seen one.

Even if I pretend this isn’t the stupidest concept I’ve ever heard of, AH still fails on its own merits. Realism is central to the immersive experience Artdink aimed for, and it is in short supply here. Instead of a land rife with coral, anemones, and shifting sands, the ocean floor is one big stretch of lifeless rock. This boring landscape is brought into view by a rolling pop-up effect that will prove nauseating to those who have zoned out to the swirly, plodding experience. Of course there are the occasional curiosities. Pathetic, sprite-based plant life lies scattered in small and isolated clusters. Besides this, there are only the once-in-three-hours-or-so anomalies such as a UFO, a field of pillars, and a miniature Great Wall of China, which are stimulating for all of fifteen seconds. You can mark such findings and return to them later, so that your time spent exploring isn’t completely wasted.

But you can quit doing all that crap and build a reef! Sounds fun, eh? Put down some gravel, maybe a little coral over there, designate a place for the little fishys to use the bathroom here… You can’t do any of that. Remember, this game is not for rational human beings. In fact, it’s not for human beings at all, but I submit that it was produced by some alien race with an entirely different relationship to the physical universe. In the reef building game, you play with blocks. Yep, go nuts and stack them up any way you want. Change their colors even!! Fish move in and inhabit your reef in proportion to how well you build it, and new blocks are given according to how much time you spend exploring. Which colors and patterns are most effective? I don’t know, and we are not told. Just put your blocks down and hope.

Guys, there are bad games, and then there are bad games. But then, on a level beneath even that, exists the games that are so obnoxiously terrible that the people marvel over how such a thing could even be released… could even be considered..

A couple notches below resides Aquanaut’s Holiday. It is the first “game” I have ever experienced that is, literally, painfully bad. The clippy visuals, over a period of hours, made my eyes red and swollen. Oh and it takes 4 memory blocks, and saves little enough information that an NES style password would have sufficed. Do not play this.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 02/26/03, Updated 02/27/03