Aquanaut's Holiday (PS1) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
0A playthrough of Sony Computer Entertainment's 1996 simulation game for the Sony PlayStation, Aquanaut's Holiday.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
I imagine everyone will be in a near comatose state after over-stuffing themselves, so I thought that something super chill and low key would fit the bill today, and man. Games don't get more chill or low key than Aquanaut's Holiday.
It was created by Artdink, a Japanese studio that tended to lean toward the esoteric in their game designs. They were best known for the A-Train games, but they also created a number of hyper-niche products including Tail of the Sun, No One Can Stop Mr. Domino!, and Carnage Hearts.
The premise of Aquanaut's Holiday is that you're an overworked oceanographer that decides to get away from the pressures of real life by exploring an uncharted part of the ocean, and in-game, that's exactly what you do. You explore the ocean.
You leave your base, pick a direction, and go. You can search for lost treasures and sunken landmarks, swim and interact (through sonar pings) with the fish, or just meander about aimlessly while filling in your map one small square at a time.
The only true goal is to build a reef that is attractive to the local fish. As you explore the map you'll be given blocks to build a reef, and once the man-made reef has grown to support a large enough fish population, the credits roll. I hit this point at 5:08:48. You can continue exploring afterward, though, in case you really want to see every square inch of the massive map.
Once you've finished the reef you get access to a neat bonus mode that lets you freely swim around as any creature in the game. You can be a dolphin, a toadfish, a hammerhead shark, a humpback whale, an octopus, a seahorse, an alien spaceship... everything you imagine when you think of sea life. I demo this mode from 5:11:42, showing all of the game's creature models.
And that's about all there is to Aquanaut's Holiday. It's simple and unassuming, making it a great choice if you want to relax with a game that doesn't adhere to the typical kill-or-be-killed video game mindset. The graphics are super rough and the pop-in is way too obvious, but the short draw distance does make for a crude-but-effective way of implying the limited visibility of the murky depths, and the character models are surprisingly detailed for such an old game. The ambient music is nice, and the sound that the fish make when you hit them is always good for a laugh (or a heart attack if you aren't expecting it).
If you're able to appreciate the ambitious design and brutally dated presentation, Aquanaut's Holiday provides a pretty nifty way to get your zen on with the PlayStation.
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