Ocean Commander: The WiiWare Game that Thinks It's Worth a Disc

I picked up Ocean Commander for the Wii the other day, thinking it might represent some reasonably mindless fun. After all, the game bills itself as a "highly stylized" side-scrolling shooter. Okay, I know that side-scrolling games have gone the way of the dinosaur, but if somebody actually made one and put it on a disc, then it must have something above average about it, right? Perhaps that was what Valcon Games thought when they decided to put this game on a disc instead of offering it on WiiWare. In fact, Ocean Commander is a game that would have been unimpressive on the Nintendo 64 ten years ago.

This game does what it is trying do fairly well, but the problem is that what it is trying to do is be a game that would have sold moderately well on the Super Nintendo system. The "mission mode" of the game has 19 missions that take a grand total of about two hours to complete. Yes, that's right, TWO HOURS. There is a "survival mode", but if you've 'survived' the underwhelming excitement of mission mode, you're about as likely to be excited about survival mode as academy award judges would be about the "Gigli Special Edition Triple DVD".

What works about this game? It's controls work well, and I didn't notice any bugs, but that's about it. You battle through 19 VERY repetitive levels. How repetitive, you may ask? So repetitive that after the eighth boss, they actually begin using the same bosses over again. Yes, believe it or not, bosses 9-18 are the same as 1-8, just with some mildly altered attack. Sounds thrilling, doesn't it?

As far as gameplay goes, you do get to upgrade your sub at the end of each level. There are 12 possible upgrades, each costing a different amount. You earn money(somehow) each level based on the number of enemies you hit. The unfortunate part of the upgrade system is that each update only has three levels. Once you have updated, say lasers, for the third time, no more laser firepower is possible. Even those with only a modicum of talent for video games will be able to earn the necessary money to max out all updates with several stages still to go.

As to the stages, they are WAY to easy. In my first(and only, I can assure you) time playing the game, I never even came remotely close to being killed. The weapons upgrades make you far too powerful far to quickly. The bosses are jokes with a capital 'J', being neither difficult nor interesting.

This game wouldn't be half bad if it was a WiiWare title going for around 600 or 700 points, but unfortunately it retails for $19.99. Assuming you're not a masochist and shun the survival mode, that equals out to about $10 per hour of gameplay. That's not a terrible dollar-to-hour amount if you're playing an on-rails first person shooter with excellent graphics, say like Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, but if you're an outdated, mediocre, side-scrolling shooter from three generations ago, it's pretty sad.