Sea Monsters - A Prehistoric Adventure (Wii) - Review by peterf

Introduction

Sea Monsters, a prehistoric adventure, is a game created by DSI games in conjunction with National Geographic. This is the story verbatum from the manual: In the oceans of the earth millions of years ago, danger was never far away and monsters lurked in every shadow. Experience this astounding world by playing as six different prehistoric marine reptiles, each with special skills-from extreme speed to thick armor and powerful crunching jaws. Start you adventure in area of insland sea that will only get more dangerous as time passes. Take on foes, hunt for prey and unlock hidden challenges. Your goal is to find a way to truly escape these waters. How to accomplish your escape is something you'll have to figure out on your journey. Now take control of your first Sea Monster and begin your adventure!

Gameplay

The goal of this game is to collect the fossils. Collecting fossils unlocks new sea monsters to play as and new challenges to try your luck at. As a reminder, fossils show up purple on you map in the lower-right corner. Some are easy to grab by just swimming into them. Others can be be more difficult. They can be buried under the ground, on dry land, floating in the air, or in deep water. The main area where you start the game is called the hub. It is a very large sea with shallows, deep areas, underwater caves, etc. This is where most of the fossils you will find in the game will be. Scattered about the hub are challenge portals. Swim into a challenge portal and a list of challenges will appear at the bottom of the screen. The number of challenges varies by the portal. Some challenges will be greyed out. You cannot attempt these challenges until you have the correct monster. Place your cursor on a icon to read the goals of the mission.

Mission objectives vary greatly, specifically by the kind of monster required to attempt the mission. (i.e. if you're a little turtle, swimming fast. If you're a big monster, usually you will be fighting.) First, whether it's a mission where you picked what monster you wanted to use, or you were required to use a certain one, you cannot change monsters at will during a mission like you can in the hub.

The only way to change monsters inside a mission is to find a change icon. These look very similar to challenge portals only much smaller and they have a picture of a monster floating in the center. Whatever the monster in the picture is, that is the monster you will become when you touch it. EVEN IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THAT MONSTER YET. Careful changing though as you may not be able to change back into what you were before without leaving the mission. Note: when you leave a mission, you return to what you were when you entered the mission. - Second, some missions have timers. The purpose of these is obvious. Some missions have tally counters. These too are obvious. Some missions have nothing on the screen. Pay attention to the description of the mission before you enter it to know your goals. Like I said earlier, most missions are related to the type of monster required to enter them. - Finally, the fossils you get from completing challenges are specific. Many of them are the skulls which allow you to use new monsters. Thus, really the challenges are the "story line" of the game.

Controls

In order to control this game, you can either use just the wiimote or you can use a wiimote in combination with a nunchuck. Move the Wiimote and point it where you want to point your monster. Pressing and holding the A button will make you swim forward. Move the wiimote sharply left, right, up, or down will preform a dodge in that direction. Making a sharp movement towards yourself, (i.e. away from the screen) makes your monster do a 180 degree turn. Press the B button to attack.

Special Moves for each of the monsters can be activated by double-pressing either the A or B button depending on the ability and the monster. Special moves include stealth mode, digging, smashing rocks, and boost jumping. Pressing the - button takes you to the fossil screen Pressing the + button takes you to the monster select screen Pressing the 1 button pauses the game allowing you to exit a mission to the hub or return to the title screen. Pressing down on the d-pad deselects a target (Very important to remember this).

Graphics

The graphics for this game are right on track for a Wii game. They are not amazing but not bad. The game play is smooth and never becomes too choppy.

Sound

The music that is there is good, however, there's not much there and you will hear the same stings over and over. This could have been sorted out easily during testing. Shame really.

Final comments

There isn't really that much to do in this game. The pluses are that changing monsters dramatically effects game play, which is cool. Unfortunately, that the only major change. The game is swim, swim, eat, fight, eat, swim. I enjoyed this game style, but I doubt most people will. There are a few surface impact glitches here and there but they do not affect game play. At least this game appears to be pretty glitch less and solid. So I did enjoy it and I would say to try this game if you want a different, fun experience that's not too difficult or frustrating. The length of the game is appropriate and can be finished in 4 to 5 hours. Worth the money, but this game has a different feel than most.

Pro: Good game play, ok graphics and a unique game.
Con: Can get boring because there is not a load of exciting game play in the game.
Final score: 5.5

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