Games based on movies are feared among gamers, because most of the time, developers just bet on the attractive license and throw the crappiest software onto the market, thinking "The right name sells everything"...
But what if the movie was everything else than good, does the game have to be even worse then? "No problem for us!", the guys from Ocean of America must have thought, there is no other possible explanation for the scaringly bad quality of Waterworld...

But let's start from the beginning, the story is as follows: Some time in the future, a shift of the earth's polar axis has resulted in a world of endless water. Those who survived are now on the search for dry land. As the Mariner alias Kevin Kostner, the player has to rescue Atollers from the water and prevent the Smokers, bad guys on Jet-Skis, from enslaving them. The smokers most prized target is a little girl named Enola, who has a way to dry land tattooed on her back.
Now, besides the Enola thing, there are dozens of other reasons to use the word "bullshit" to describe the story, but after all, this review is not about the movie...

The game starts directly after the titlescreen, no story, no options. So, further players have to be added in the game, by pressing A when the game is paused. Theoretically, the game can be played with 9 players alternating, but honestly I can't imagine that someone would want to play this with a friend, not to mention doing this to 8 friends, unless he's a sadist... The game itself is seperated into rounds and the more you progress the more and harder enemies you will have to deal with. After every round you get points for every saved Atoller, additional bonus points can be achieved if Enola is one of the rescued persons. So you shoot all the enemies approaching you from all directions, until none of them is left, and that was it in terms of game play! So it's not a miracle that the fun adjusts itself at 0 and less at the speed of light...

Graphics are incredibly poor, the ocean you are swimming on is completely black, only the horizon, thinly indicated by a red line and a sun going down can be seen in the background. The enemies don't look that bad when you're close, but if several of them are on the screen, there are slow-downs. Plus you have complete freedom of movement, but the controls are pretty slowly-acting and fishy and the the graphics are slow despite the missing background; no fluid scrolling at all.

Also the sound is nothing better than the graphics and comes along pretty poor and hardly existant... There is only one dark, psychedelic melody, which plays over and over through the whole game and is just annoying after a while.

There the question comes up why the game comes on a 16 MBit cartridge? Seems like Ocean wanted to make more out of it, but as it seems, they were too lazy...

Result:
Absolutely horrible and boring game with poor techniques. Besides Virtual Lab by far the worst Virtual Boy game...

Author: KR155E

Rating:

Visuals:	Audio:	Gameplay:
3-D Effect:	Controls:	Lasting Appeal:
Overall (Not an Average):

DrAetzn