A great philosopher once said something that's particularly pertinent to Endless Ocean:

"Under the sea, Darling it's better, Down where it's wetter, Take it from me, Up on the shore they work all day, Out in the sun they slave away, While we devotin', Full time to floatin', Under the sea"

Actually, I think it was a talking crab from a Disney film, but the crustacean makes a good point. Many mainstream games at the moment (I choose to believe he was very much a visionary) rely on such a constant influx of excitement and adrenaline that the current crop of chart toppers blend into one. With that in mind, it's a real breath of fresh (sea) air to find a game that's designed to be played in a dreamy state at your own pace, with very little in the way of direction or goals.

You take on the role of a newbie scuba diver, trying to assemble information about a fictional sea somewhere in the South Pacific. This is achieved via very slow exploration of areas of water and examination of the marine life that accompanies each environment. Although the play area is quite expansive, the game also manages to ensure that you don't take in too much too quickly by slowly distributing your equipment - you can't dive beyond fifty metres deep for several days until your oxygen tank is upgraded, for example. There's a very loose storyline that you're gently nudged towards (the game loses its realism a bit here, but somehow still manages to feel natural without giving too much away), but the pressure to move through the story is pretty understated. You could quite happily continue with the 'side missions' of giving guided dives and taking commissioned underwater photography if you'd prefer.

You spend the vast majority of your time slowly swimming through the calm sea depths, stopping to focus on fish and find out more about them. Rather than enrolling for an oceanography degree and studying thanklessly for three to five years, Nintendo have simplified the process of learning about different species of ocean life. You focus on the ocean dweller than interests you and then aim at it with the Wiimote and press A to poke it, or hold A and shake the Wiimote from left to right to give it a sort of smooshy-stroke with your hand. You can also feed the critters with the food you have with you - interact with them enough and the species will be magically revealed to you at the bottom of the screen where you can learn all about it. This works well enough and although it lacks any kind of realism (they don't swim away and smooshing a shark doesn't see your arm getting bitten off), my alternative suggestion of including an in-game marine biology library is considerably less entertaining as a solution. Besides, this gives me an excuse to wander up to strangers, smoosh their face with my hand, feed them some crisps and then say "You're Steve, you're twenty-five years old and you're a fireman at the local station!" which is a perk of the game that should not be underestimated.

Identifying the numerous and impressively varied aquatic life is compulsive in the same way that collecting all the Pokemon is - and it's always genuinely exciting to find a new subject to investigate. The slight downside to this is that the more you play with the fish (the aforementioned smooshing) the more you find out, but after the initial name discovering ritual there's very little incentive to fill out the rest of their educational information blanks. There's no reward (unless you're extremely interested in fish trivia) and the repeated exercises in remote wiggling can last for several dull minutes at a time. Of course, finding the information out is for the most part optional but it should remain an annoyance to completists nonetheless.

Another annoyance is the way the game artificially stops you from exploring too large an area. This might be because it would require huge loading times (each loading section before a dive is pretty long), but the game blocks you from going too far out of your chosen dive site with a message that says "You're leaving the target area, please turn around and go back". This is mostly no more than a mild frustration, but because you can actually see out of the fenced area it was particularly frustrating one time to see an enormous blue whale going past only to discover that I couldn't get close enough to identify it! Thrill seekers may also be disappointed to learn that the game simulates none of the dangers of real diving - the oxygen tank is extremely generous and even the most dangerous of underwater predators seem perfectly unperturbed by your remote-waggling stroking, petting and fondling antics.

I should point out that at this stage that Endless Ocean is a master class in how to implement the Wii's unique control system without resorting to gimmicks or the kind of complex combinations that the controller was designed to eliminate. You aim where you want your diver to go and either hold down the B trigger or set your diver on auto swim to make them move. This works wonderfully because you swim so slowly that controlling your diver is instantly intuitive. With the remote feeling like an extension of your body, it's hard to imagine the game feeling quite as comfortably relaxed or natural with a conventional gamepad.

However, one area where it could have benefited from the other consoles' key selling points are (predictably) in the looks department. It feels a little harsh to compare the Wii to its rivals on graphics considering how comparatively underpowered Nintendo's little white box of tricks is, but Endless Ocean's visuals are very much a mixed bag. On the one flipper, the fish and sea life look fantastic - each fish looks unique and the way they move is very natural and believable; anyone who has spent any time in an aquarium will delight in the familiar flopping of the rays and the sleek, graceful glide of the sharks. On the other flipper however, the environments are slightly less impressive and a little grainy - especially in the darker underwater environments. The worst graphical offenders are aboard the boat however, where the human models and movement look like only a slight improvement on the stifled stylised movements of N64 characters. Fortunately these above-water sections merely serve to save your progress and to help you catch up on the story, so it's no big deal - but the idea of playing this with the Wii's controls in 1080p on a forty inch high definition television should excite anyone with an interest in The Blue Planet or similar underwater documentaries, and sadly the Wii's hardware isn't built for this.

Likewise, the sound is lacking inspiration, but this is instantly more forgivable on account of this being part of the game's realism and dreamy charms. The sounds that do exist in the game are underwater bubbling and a kind of ear plugging realism, accompanied by an easy listening pop soundtrack and the rhythmic Vader-style underwater breathing apparatus. Whilst it isn't exactly memorable, you'd be hard pressed to think of a more suitable audio element. If the accompanying easy listening, operatic pop becomes too much for you (this is a game that you can easily spend hours upon without noticing) then the developers have allowed you to include your own music by putting files onto an SD card. It's a nice touch, although it's only when you try putting your own music to the game that you realise how well the developers have done, because unless your music is as calm as the game it will seem very out of place.

Nintendo have also given you amateur divers the chance to enjoy some rudimentary online multiplayer, where you dive together and explore the ocean as a team. Like Animal Crossing's wi-fi play, it's a nice theory but in practice sees you doing the same stuff you could do on your own but with another person hanging around, and there's nothing really to be gained from the experience, especially as there are no Xbox Live style voice communications. Nintendo do have some sort of communication method where you can use 'underwater pens' to annotate your ocean paradise, but if my experiences of Mario Kart DS's custom decals is anything to go by then your friends will turn your glorious coral reef into some kind of shrine to phallic iconography before you can say coelacanth.

The fact that Endless Ocean is at a budget price (most online stores are selling it for under £20) is very much the cherry on the parfait. It may not have the splendid story of BioShock or the incredible environmental detail of BioShock, or indeed the cool name of BioShock, but it's a real breath of fresh air in a gaming environment that has become stale with relentless shooting and violence. Whether or not you'll find the game charmingly addictive or simple to the point of tedium depends on what kind of gamer you are, but if you want a break from the guns and the gore often synonymous with gaming then Endless Ocean is definitely worth a look, a little fish that's dived into the sink-or-swim environment of pre-Christmas entertainment and stayed afloat just fine.

Reviewed by Alan Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).