When the first Endless Ocean came out for the Wii, I thought I was going to worship it. I mean, you can swim with dolphins, for crying out loud. Surprisingly, when I reviewed it, I only gave it a 5.5 — it just felt a tiny above average to me. It wasn’t horrible by any means, I just felt there was easily room for a few points of improvement!

My biggest issue with the game was how restrictive it felt when swimming through the open sea. You could only dive a certain distance away from your awaiting boat, which made the “endless” part of the title seem a tiny deceiving. I wanted to be able to explore a vast ocean with nothing stopping me except the limits of my imagination. Sadly, that wasn’t how I felt when I played the game.

When I heard the game’s sequel, Endless Ocean 2, was playable on the show at this year’s E3, I was excited to give it a shot and see if it improved on my issues with the original.

Also, I really wanted to swim with dolphins again.

Hit the jump for my hands-on impression of Endless Ocean 2.

The first thing I noticed about Endless Ocean 2 is, instead of navigating through one, big, fictional ocean, your character (a generic scuba diver guy or girl) explores a wide variety of real-life bodies of water. And I say “bodies of water” because you can swim around more than just an ocean. There are rivers and massive lakes also available for underwater exploration.

Another massive change to the game is that the aquatic creatures will actually attack you this go ’round. It was shocking, to say the least, when I slowly swam into a hamza of sharks and they starting biting my diver instead of just circling me like in the first game. The same thing happened when I was swimming through the Amazon river: piranha are not your friend in this game!

Like in the first game, you can’t technically die in this game. If you’re attacked too much by a creature or you run out of air, you kind of just magically appear back in your boat, with one of your scuba diving friends telling you they saved you at the last minute. That’s a little annoying, but it is so hard to “die” in the game anyway that it isn’t much of a deal breaker.

Other than these two changes, not much if different from the first Endless Ocean. In a way, it is not like a game at all. There is an objective — figure out something about some kind of mystical underwater relic, or … something – but basically the game boils down to just swimming around, looking at all the gorgeous scenery, and interacting with the underwater flora and fauna.

There are a few tools you can use, such as food to feed the fish with, a camera to take photos, and, my pesonal favorite, a gun that injects happiness into the creatures you encounter. Yes, it is as odd as it sounds. Some of the fish in the water are sick and it is your job to inject them with happiness to make them feel better again. The whole thing looks like what would happen if a Care Bear stare came out