It’s hard to even describe a game like Aquanaut’s Holiday. Some would say it was a brave, early experiment in what 3D gaming could offer the player. Others might say it was revolutionary for what it tried to do. IE: Offering a game that had no enemies, or really any clear goal to what you were doing. Those are certainly valid arguments. The truth is though, as much as it was a split from the norm, Aquanaut’s Holiday was also pure fucking horse shit. Horse shit that was put in a submersible sub, and sent to the bottom of the ocean where it was allowed to implode into some sort of horse shit black hole. Then it had the audacity to make you PLAY it.

Welcome to Aquanaut’s Holiday.

To be fair, Aquanaut’s Holiday was at one point an amazing idea. The game basically revolved around you piloting a submersible submarine around a large body of water, exploring…and exploring…and exploring some more. You started the game in your little sub thing, which was nothing more than a camera angle (No on board controls or anything to let you know you were in a sub. You could have been looking through the eyes of the world’s first deep diving cow for all you could tell). You then just sorta explored the ocean around you, looking at random fish, bumping into rocks, and then slowly realizing this is all you could do in the game you just spent fifty bucks on. Though I suppose if you were the kind of person who just spent fifty bucks on a game called Aquanaut’s Holiday, then you can only really blame yourself.

This is Aquanaut's Holiday. No I am not kidding.

I am not kidding when I say that the pinnacle of fun in Aquanauts Holiday is to push the throttle to your cow sub, get up to a blistering 3.5 MPH, and slam that fucker broadside right into a helpless fish. This accomplished two things:

1. It sort of makes you feel like you are punishing the game for being so full of nothing.
2. Hitting anything in the game produces the single loudest bass sample in the history of anything. The first time I played this game and had my speakers up, I hit the side of a goldfish and nearly leveled my house. I found my cat hours later hiding inside a wall from fear.

It was all for nothing though, as the fish never seem to care that you are trying to have the sea-equivalent of road rage with them. They just keep swimming until they flicker out of view, or clip into a rock and crash the game. Also the above two things still don’t justify why you’re playing Aquanaut’s Holiday.

That Dolphin is just asking to be slammed into repeatedly

There is a little more you could do, besides endlessly looking at fish modeled with the bare minimum of polygons. There was a side game that allowed you to collect Lego-like pieces of…something…to lay down on your own little spot in the ocean. Each piece allowed you to attract different sorts of fish to it, giving you a bit of customization to your over-sized virtual fish tank. You could also build some pretty basic structures, and then swim around in them admiring your handy work. Unfortunately, this also was terribly boring. Simply put, there is no real reason to even do this. You don’t get cool upgrades or better weapons to slam into fish with. Your reward is to, yes, look at even more unresponsive 3D fish. You could have a better undersea adventure by building something with Legos, and then throwing it in your fish tank, watching in wonderment, while your very real fish lose their god damn minds in the process.

And there you have it. That’s Aquanaut’s Holiday. To my surprise, a sequel to AH was released on the PS3, but I can at least say it looks far more interesting than the original. For one, the technology has caught up to the point where such games can look far more convincing. There also seems to be far more of a game this time around built around it. This is something I can get behind, as I’m not slamming AH for being different. I think games as experimental as AH can be pretty amazing when done right. I just think this is sadly a case of a game coming out way, way before a time when such a game should have.

So what should you take from all this? If possible, I’d suggest you go back in time and tell me not to spend fifty bucks on Aquanaut’s Holiday.

I’d sure appreciate it.

So would my cat.