Simple 2000 Vol. 54: The Taikai Kemono / Deep Water

Developer: Tamsoft
Publisher: D3 Publisher / 505 GameStreet
Where to buy: Davy Jones' Locker

What the hell is this? Water, guns, blood, but not a breast in site! D3 must have been drunk to green light this game. Deep Water is very Waterworld-ish in that the world is.. mostly all underwater. There's an introduction to this game, but rather than explaining why the world has become like this, you just get a close up of your boat and a screen telling you to go to the Harbour Shop. Very emotional stuff, Square-Enix could learn a thing or two. So off we go, vrooooom, Harbour Shop! This is where you chat to people to learn the controls of the game. Except you don't actually see these people, and they CHARGE YOU MONEY for these insider secrets. It reminds me of the shop keepers charging you for items in Majora's Mask. "But I'm the only one that can save the day!" "AND I NEED THREE HUNDRED RUPEES, GET OUT". So I guess there's one exciting reason to read the instruction manual for a change.

Harbour Shop also acts as a place to buy weapons and obtain missions. Weapons are useless without missions, it's not like there are any banks to hold up, so go ahead and accept your fate. First mission: kill some sea monsters. A red blob will flash on your radar, calm yourself now. Don't shit your pants. Follow that blob! For a world that's mostly all water, they sure do a good job at injecting claustrophobic panic attacks into your SOUL. There's a wall, and another! Look over there, a conveniently placed rock preventing freedom! Aside from the shop, there's maybe one or two little islands around, that's it. You can't get off your boat and walk around, but you can crash into the side of them. As you inch closer to the red blob, dramatic music will start booming out. Just as that gets started, piss poor rock music will begin. Probably as an attempt to keep you from sleeping.



You can step away from the steering wheel, which is a nice touch. It would be quite difficult trying to kill a sea monster from there. Combat consists of Walking on up to your harpoon at the front of the boat and hoping like hell the enemies decide to swim about in front of you. If not, leave your pointy sea wife, bring out the shot gun and become John McClane. Provided you bought a shot gun, I suppose. The 'sea monsters' include sharks, angry Octopuses and holy cannons that have legs (to walk on the water of course).

Aiming is an absolute disaster, your little dude can only turn around a tiny bit for some reason. Meaning you're constantly running back and forth, trying to predict where the enemy will go next. Almost like a game of Space Invaders, except terrible. There's no lock on function, something that became a standard option in video games about ten years ago. Keepin' up with the times, Tamsoft, keepin' up. But it is pretty entertaining when say, a shark attacks. Very realistic, Tamsoft did their homework. It'll jump really high in the air and then flop on top of the boat before instantly warping somewhere else. All while the main character makes these orgasmic noises and break dances on the spot. It's like an educational video.



This is basically the whole game. Go to the Harbour Shop, get missions which all involve killing and move on to new areas which are just like the last. Well except, the missions appear whenever they feel like it. TOO BUSY, COME BACK LATER. That's fantastic, because there's so much to see and do if you aren't on a mission. You could try and shoot the seagulls made of paper! The fun never ends! Although honestly, it does get a lot more interesting in the later stages, because you get to take on pirate ships in your tiny little boat. Ah, the greatest sea monsters of them all! I enjoy defeating them with the shotgun. It must be the greatest bloody shotgun every created, I swear. You can be thousands of light years away from the pirates and the shotgun will still hit. Try and get too close to use your harpoon and they'll run over the top of you, so hey.

If pirates weren't hardcore enough, some of the sea monsters will grow in size, perhaps with a little help from Rita Repulsa's magic wand. You can also run out of petrol, that's kinda bad. Especially if you want to escape a fight because you're too much of a wuss to slowly rotate on the spot. Taking down the giant enemies results in a visual splender of red. The whole screen will just fill with blood, the frame rate might even choke on it a bit. Aside from the advanced blood mapping, the game pretty much runs on the Superman 64 engine. Lex Luthor's pumped his smells all over this joint for sure. That's not very good, Tamsoft usually make the nicer looking Simple 2000 games. I guess because this one wasn't about huge tits on underage girls they just didn't care. "WHY BOTHER GOING ON...". The music is pretty nice, especially the title screen. It gives you the impression the game will have gameplay. Highly recommended! Too bad the Japanese name is 'Kemono' rather than the much cooler 'Kimono'.



Final score:
Out of five.

Jam it back in, in the dark.