Maybe dry land really doesn't exist.There are many people that I have encountered in my travels that consider the movie Waterworld, which was released in 1995, to be a terrible attempt at post-apocalyptic science fiction. However, I remember seeing the movie in '95 and thought it was entertaining. Maybe my taste in movies is corrupted or possibly other people bow too easily to the opinions of critics. Whichever statement is true, apparently I have now become a critic which strikes me as very ironic. Waterworld the game was released on Super Nintendo, Game Boy, PC and the Virtual Boy. Apparently, there was also a version released on the Sega Channel but never physically released on the Sega Genesis. Even still, there was a totally unreleased rendering for the Sega Saturn. I have never played any of these other versions but I seriously hope that they were more appealing than the Virtual Boy release that I am about to attempt to be impartial to.
Because this game is an adaptation of a movie, I feel that breaking format to address the story is actually mandatory. In the movie, sometime in the very distant future, the polar ice caps have completely melted and almost all of the land on earth has been completely covered by water. Survival in this Waterworld by us bipeds, is eked out aboard sailing vessels and small floating cities called atolls. In this world of water there is also a group of bad guys called Smokers. These Smokers burn cigarettes and fuel for their jet skies and motor boats. Smokers seem to only care about one thing, finding a mythical place called dry land and pillaging it's resources. The main characters in the movie are a little girl named Enola who has a mysterious tattoo on her back that might indicate where dry land is, a mysterious loner who is half man half fish and has a tricked out sail boat, and the ruthless leader of the Smokers. Unfortunately, none of that information can really be calculated into the score of the game story because none of it was retold for the player. I guess the story for this game would have to be that 2 to 10 atollers are floating helplessly in the water in the midst of atoll debris and cannot be allowed to die from attacks by either Smokers on jet skis or sharks. The player saves them by sailing a tricked out sail boat around the atoll debris and shooting a boat mounted gun at the attackers that was not present in the film. When all of the jet skis are destroyed and irregardless of any remaining sharks the round is over. At this point, the living atollers are given a point value and other various multipliers. Also at this time, the whereabouts of Enola are confirmed. Did she get saved or captured? If she was saved a multiplier is awarded and if she was captured the face of the Smokers leader is displayed shaking his head.
When I consider scoring Waterworld, I'm tempted to omit the story score completely because the game is a shoot 'em up and just appears to be round after round of saving atollers. However, this game is based on a movie so I cannot in good conscience eliminate this score. Having said that, I liked the plot of the movie so I will start the scoring at 10. I'm removing half of those points because of the designers failure to remind me of that plot and make me care about the characters. At the end of each round I was told that either Enola was saved or that she was captured. I'm removing a point because that is redundant and doesn't appear to effect anything other than the scoring multiplier. I'll take away another point because of the seemingly endless saving of atollers with no progression towards an ending referred to in the movie. All of these deductions leave the final score for this games story at 3.
My belief is that when evaluating a VB game it's important to remember that the desired result the designers were trying to achieve was a 3D effect in the brain. This was new technology in it's infancy and that means that the virtual boy was to 3D gaming what Atari was to gaming consoles, a pioneer. Because there are so few games to compare it with and I'm not able to actually see it in 3D like it was meant to be seen, I feel that I must be gentle with the scoring in this area. Waterworld loses 1 point because the chunks of atoll in the game look indescribably generic and another point because I could not figure out which of the people floating in the ocean was supposed to be Enola. 8 is my score for the graphics.
Honestly, I believe the sound is the best part of this creation. It implies loneliness and of being on an endless ocean at the end of time. It was exactly what I expected from a game called Waterworld and I'm giving it a 10.
Perhaps this game is the wrong genre for me but the initial challenge faded very quickly. I found myself wondering what the possible outcome of round after round of saving atollers and maybe Enola could be. Why did Enola have to be saved every round anyway? Maybe I'll try one of the other incarnations of Waterworld that I mentioned earlier but I have no desire to ever play this game ever again. As a matter of fact, I remember feeling that after about 10 minutes of game time. I have to rate this at the bottom. My addiction to this game is a 1.
There didn't seem like there was much variation to the gameplay. The number of jet skis increased and sharks and motor boats were added to the attackers but I guess I need more variation than that. Perhaps an attack on the Exxon Valdez oil tanker that the Smokers used as there home in the movie would have helped keep my attention. The starting point for the depth is on the low end. Waterworld gets a point for introducing other enemy types but that is the only point that I feel that I can give. A rating of 2 is what I'm choosing to give to this game in the depth category.
The controls for this console can be somewhat irritating. After my trigger finger had been significantly exercised I decided it might be a good idea to move either the left-back or right-back button to the B button and all irritation subsided. Waterworld for Virtual Boy is somewhat difficult to play because the tricked out sail boat that the player controls behaves like a boat. If A is pushed to accelerate in a particular direction and then the boat is turned to another direction the boat keeps accelerating in the original direction for a while. This makes navigation around the atoll debris tricky and can put the boat in some tight spots. There wasn't really anything about the difficulty that killed my interest in this game and I don't consider it overly easy or difficult. I'm choosing to go middle of the road in this category and am issuing the score of 5 for difficulty.
"Nothings free in Waterworld" and this review took a heavy toll on me. I really wanted this game to be awesome because, in my opinion, the movie is awesome. ?After reviewing my overall score of 4.8, I must conclude that this game is not sunk but will never reach dry land either. It merely exists, floating in a vast ocean of games and forgotten in time.
Graphics
8 Sound
10 Addictive
1 Depth
2 Story
3 Difficulty
5
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