Aquarium - Electronic Arts

                      Reviewed by Sue

If I was to try to sum up Aquarium briefly and honestly, I could
best do it by saying that this is the saddest piece of software
that I've had the misfortune to play for many years. I had to
force myself to play it long enough to write this review,
because I was tempted after the first five minutes to write my
verdict as 'crap' and go back to Pharaoh.

But then I thought, maybe that would be unfair ... some poor
person might have spent years programming this game and here's
me dismissing it after a fraction of that time. To be honest, it
DOES look as though the game was programmed several years ago,
it looks THAT primitive.

Having spent œ20 bar a penny on this pile of .... I might as
well bore you about it for 5 minutes. If nothing else, I
might save you from wasting a similar amount on it. Even if you
see it for a fiver, run away and buy five lottery tickets
instead.

To go back to the beginning of this sad tale, when I saw
Aquarium in PC World at (what I thought was) such a reasonable
price (ah, the benefit of hindsight), I was thrilled. I love
strategy games and having run pizza empires, cities, planets and
other empires, I was dead chuffed to see the opportunity to run
an aquarium INCLUDING shows at a dolphinarium. I bought it
pronto and headed home to load it up.  The people in the
introductory movie looked very Japanese in style, with the large
round eyes of Anime characters. The woman who is your guide is
in the same style. Quick check of the credits in the manual ...
yes, Takasi Tajimi and Tomohiro Shibuya are just two of the
Japanese names listed. The movie is quite good as two children
watch awe-struck as a basic aquarium becomes more spectacular
and entertaining.

You can play the game in two basic modes - standard mode where
you select a country in which to run your aquarium, or story
mode where you play through five increasingly more complicated
scenarios. Story mode is divided into five sections - Management
Heaven, Final Exam, Conspiracy Season, Days of Extinction and
Final Battle. Some of these are further subdivided - Management
Heaven consists of Building Maniac, Buying Maniac and Breeding
Maniac. I thought it was a bit harsh that I wasn't allowed to
choose between these - you HAVE to start with Building Maniac
and complete this before you can try one of the others - if they
are effectively training scenarios, I feel you should be able to
try them any time and in any order.

After a little while, I got fed up with Building Maniac - all
that happens is that you're told to build certain tanks and
stock them, or add plants to the building to enhance the
visitors' enjoyment of the experience.  So I tried the Standard
mode. This was a bit better - but not much.  You can try
everything - building, management, sailing out to try to find
new fish rather than buying them, and training dolphins to
entertain the punters.

There are lots of different tanks to choose between, some for fresh
water fish, others for salt water. You can place them in their
default orientation, or rotate them. Fish can be bought from traders
or fishermen. According to how frequently you deal with them, the
relationship will change and they will offer you a different
selection of fish - a better range as the relationship improves. Or
you can set sail and try fishing! This could be good fun ... but it
isn't because it's a very brief interlude once every month in the
middle of the tedium of building and managing the tanks. The same
goes for dolphin training.  You can only train them once a month,
and then it's back to the grind.

The controls are clumsy. You have to double left click to bring up
the control menu, then right click several times to get back out of
any sub menu you enter. I once got into a loop with the dolphin
training where all the options brought me back to the same screen.
In the end I just had to exit out of this section with my dolphin
untrained because I just couldn't work out how to continue. And,
yes, I DID look at the manual and that was no darn help either.

Another thing - the program may try to teach you a bit about
different fish habitats and which fish can safely be put into tanks
together, but every so often I got a message saying that some fish
had been released. I wasn't sure why - was it some sort of breeding
program to restock the natural population? Back to the manual to 
find - no! Fish that are about to die are released back into seas 
and rivers. I would say that is a very ecologically-unsound policy 
and I doubt any aquariums do that!  About the only excitement, and 
I use the word loosely, is restocking the tanks or they will 
gradually empty as the fish are released.

I won't bore you any more by moaning about this program despite the
fact that I haven't talked about the financial side, hiring and
training staff or the fishery equipment. If it had been released 5
years ago, it would have looked slightly better but not much. It
still would have been boring because it just has so little going for
it. Avoid, even if you see it selling for a fiver.


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