Sea Life Safari First Look

Sierra shows us its fishy new Xbox Live Arcade game.

Sea Life Safari is the upcoming underwater exploration game from Sierra for Xbox Live Arcade. The game is in the same vein as the Nintendo 64 oddity Pokemon Snap and has you going through the ocean on rails, taking pictures of the aquatic denizens in their native environment. We had a quick overview of the Sea Life, which is clearly skewed at the young set, to get an idea of what to expect.

Sea Life's premise is simple: You're working in the service of a genial professor who tasks you with exploring the ocean and photographing fish. He loads you up with a camera and a device designed to get the attention of your assorted subjects. Your goal is to snap shots of the various fish you encounter. You'll need to be a little discriminating because you'll be limited to 24 shots per dive, so you'll have to pace yourself. At the end of a run, your pics are rated from one to three stars according to various criteria. Your best shots are saved in your photo log, which automatically updates and replaces older pics with newer, better shots. Besides the draw of improving your pic rating, Sea Life's rail-oriented gameplay will offer some alternate paths in each area based on your performance and cough up some hidden items that will appear as you replay levels, as well as feature collectible gold shells for you to discover.

The visuals in the game are simple and cartoony with a slightly goofy style. The above water "graphics" are basically still images of the prof and buildings. Things are considerably livelier underwater where you'll have a fully 3D underwater environment to tour. The stars of the game are the fish, which are rendered in a cartoony style that fits the game's light tone. The underwater settings offer a bit of variety, but overall, they're on the modest end.

Based on what we saw, Sea Life Safari is most definitely a game aimed at younger players and their parents. There's a decent amount of variety, thanks to the alternate routes you can take and the variety of fish that will appear based on the time of day on your Xbox. The gameplay is pretty shallow but has the potential to become addictive for obsessive-compulsive gamers who feel they have to get perfect pictures of everything they encounter. Anyone looking to offer younger gamers in the house a little something to play around with might want to keep an eye out for the game when it hits this summer.

17 Comments

  • Larzarus1

    Posted May 22, 2008 3:26 pm PT

    Didn't they release a full game similar to this for the wii?

  • WitteKraai

    Posted May 2, 2008 6:07 am PT

    This looks cute, my daughter might like it.

  • CptObvious1031

    Posted May 2, 2008 5:52 am PT

    Weeee let's pay to take virtual pictures of virtual creatures. While this may be all well and good for those people who are absolutely confined to their homes and have no access to any sort of camera where they could go out and take REAL pictures of REAL things, I think I'll pass on this one. The only game that involved taking pictures that was ever worth while was Fatal Frame...all those other "Snap" games are L-A-M-E....LAME

  • CodingGenius Site moderator

    Posted May 1, 2008 5:43 pm PT

    It really depends on the variety of sea life and the cost. It could be a lot of fun, or it could be terrible...

  • xIronMaydenx

    Posted May 1, 2008 1:42 pm PT

    maybe if it was free roaming exploration then it might be cool, but having to follow a track? lame.

  • Scienceray

    Posted May 1, 2008 6:07 am PT

    i think i'll definitely get this.

  • BigDaddy973

    Posted Apr 30, 2008 9:52 pm PT

    Looks cool, i like games like this!

  • Lord_Daemon

    Posted Apr 30, 2008 8:46 pm PT

    I'll probably pick it up as I'm such a nerd for deep sea fish.

  • SandMonkey

    Posted Apr 30, 2008 4:22 pm PT

    Looks like a mix between the aforementioned "Pokemon Snap" and "Everblue"... I may have to pick this one up! Looks fun =D

  • kingpong11

    Posted Apr 30, 2008 2:22 am PT

    oh hells yeah, immabuyinmahmicrosoftpoints!

  • siskokidd

    Posted Apr 29, 2008 5:21 pm PT

    I loved Pokemon Snap when I was 7! Now that I'm 15, of course I will get it. lol

  • majidok

    Posted Apr 29, 2008 3:53 pm PT

    Good graphics . Funny fish , lol

  • BontraXenderKyl

    Posted Apr 29, 2008 2:35 pm PT

    put my money on this???.......nahh!!! I don't think so.....

  • Kratos-

    Posted Apr 29, 2008 1:39 pm PT

    Desnt look like i'll be playing this any time soon.

  • NemaLive

    Posted Apr 29, 2008 5:25 am PT

    yeah im gonna get it for my 6 year old

  • Antaeus1991

    Posted Apr 29, 2008 1:15 am PT

    This game looks fun. Definitely for the younger player but if the visuals are good then I might buy it.

  • Wik_Wanderlust

    Posted Apr 28, 2008 7:30 pm PT

    Doesn't seem too fun to me.

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