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By Michael Robinson on December 18th, 2001
Introduction Is it a fish? No, its a man! Wait, no, its Seaman (stop giggling). Seaman is basically your virtual pet with so much ’tude he has it coming out of the gills. Sounds like Sonic the Tomogachi under water, don’t it? Well it isn’t, it may have attitude, but he’s a smart little merman as well, and you have to take care of him and help him evolve, and discover the secrets of his life, and maybe some secrets about yourself as well. Read on...Presentation Not much of a presentation here. There are two different screens when you start out, the Food Storage Matrix and the aquarium your Seamen will inhabit, and going through them is a breeze. There are also gauges that control the temperature, oxygen level, and lighting of the tank, all managed with the D-pad. Controlling the temperature can get a bit annoying, but that is the only problem there, so unless your missing a couple of fingers and the entire left-lobe of your brain ,you should be able to handle this easily.Graphics & Sound I’ma tell you right now, Seaman is nothing spectacular to look at. Everything is nicely colored and detailed, but there isn’t too much to be nicely colored or detailed. For the most part, you got the Seamen, the sand in the tank, a couple of plants, bugs, and rocks to look at. Nothing that will at all blow your mind, but not at all ugly, mind you.The sound fits the game well. Everything is the standard aquarium sounds, but nothing spectacular to hear overall. Just don’t expect too much eye or ear candy from this game, unless you like Seaman’s part-Barry White-part-Al Gore voice. Gameplay You know, I had to wake up a little earlier every morning before school to feed my Seamen and make sure their habitat is comfortable, then come home and go back to the game in the evening to check on him again. I didn’t mind it one bit. If you like niche games, this is definately for you.You can even talk to your Seaman using the microphone that comes free with the game, but talking to your Seamen isn’t always a joy though, since sometimes you’ll say one word and he’ll thinkg you had said something else, like for whatever reason, if I say "Sega" he’ll think I said "Seaman", but this problem doesn’t pop-up often enough to extract even a fraction of fun from this game. Seaman will want to know all about you, if you are a boy or a girl, how old you are, where he and you are, what are your interests, what do you like about yourself, what do you hate about yourself, and so on and so on, and I never once heard him repeat a question, and he’ll always have some kind of response to about anything you say. This game revlolves completly around how you take care of and how you talk to your Seamen, you can even kill them if you don’t do a good job. Lasting Appeal When the game is over, its over. I had no urge to go through the whole ordeal again, but it was a fun ride, without cheating, took about a month or so, and I still did the little there was to do after the game was done for about a week or so more before putting the game to restBut If you are one of those freaks who looooooved Tomogachi, Furby, and every other virtual-pet or electronic-pet toy to be released, or if you just like "weird" or "niche" games, Seaman will definatly grab you by the short-and-curlies. If you aren’t interested in niche games, stay away from this one, it’ll bore the seamen out of you (you should have seen that one cu-, er, coming...). Conclusion This game will provide a unique expirience to any gamer that plays it, well, except maybe those fine folks at Area 51 that are used to raising fish-men, anyways, this is a strange game from Vivarium that deserves to be in any DC-gamer’s library. |
