Nintendo Wii

Endless Ocean for the Nintendo Wii is an underwater diving game.  In the game you get to swim around an Manaurai (Manoa Lai) sea, which is a fictional sea.  It does have real life animals, though.  The fictional part is made more as a smaller scale area that combines species that do not normally coexist so close together that effectively makes it more interesting.  Because these are real animals and the game gives information on them as you interact with them more, this game can be somewhat educational.

You swim using just the Wii remote, which is an issue I have with the game.  I really wish you used the nunchuck to control how you move around, but instead you just point at the screen in the direction you want to move, which is not too hard to get used to, however it would be way better with nunchuck controls.  You swim around just by holding the B button and you press A to interact with the fish.  Overall the controls end up being pretty simple, which works good for making this a kid friendly game.

The game has a pretty free form plot with you being able to go on certain missions or just dive and discover at your own pace and switch between the two ways as you please.  This allows for the game to be appealing to a larger audience including those that want a more relaxing paced game and kids that may not usually be able to do missions in games (by the way the missions are usually easy enough they can do them, too).   It does not, however, have any major action aspects to make it interesting for those that want a fast paced action game.

Overall, though, I love this as a good relaxing simulation like game.  I kind of think of it as an underwater Animal Crossing like game because my favorite parts of Animal Crossing are fishing and getting insects.  Thus the aspect of discovering new fish in this game is similar to that.   Of course, this is also a much more simplistic game with not as much other activities, but it suits the game well.  I hear you can add your own favorite music to swim around to by putting MP3 files on  an SD card, but I have not personally tried that.  Sounds like it adds some interesting depth to the relaxation aspect of this game.