Beyond Blue Reviews
Beyond Blue is a balanced game that walks on a fine line between a fun experience, and an educational one.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Beyond Blue is a concise experience. You can finish it in about two to three hours, and you can 100% it in less than five. While I really enjoyed all of the educational value that the game provides, if you don’t happen to be interested in the real-world ocean, there isn’t any reason for you to play this game.
Worst of all, so much of the effort that’s gone into making the very deepest locales seem melancholy and strange is wasted, as there’s no sense of scale. Thanks to handwaved technology, Morai is capable of diving in her regular suit even at abyssal depths, and there’s no real sense in having to travel to get there. The madness-inviting vertical isolation of the deeps, the monstrous cold and the pressure, are all absent. These lonely pits feel like any of the other levels: roughly oval patches of water, about so high and so wide, with a certain number of fish spawned within them. It’s not that I’m unimpressed, or ungrateful, you understand. I just think the developers set themselves a near-impossible task.
Beyond Blue is a beautiful and enchanting journey. The attention to detail and devotion to its creation, along with the companion documentary segments, show a love for the ocean. It's a little on the short side, but there's still so much to enjoy in this gorgeously crafted game.
Beyond Blue excels at being a relaxing experience set in a beautiful ocean. The waters teem with wildlife and its environments are diverse enough to tempt multiple visits. The result is a great educational tool to teach people of all ages about its wildlife. Unlike its partners, it misses its chance to drive home the importance of conservation, though. With more time devoted to the important issues it raises, it could have taught us so much more.
There’s something strangely endearing with Beyond Blue that’ll keep you playing through to the end. The simplicity of its scan/travel gameplay loop does become tiresome by the end but the calming, meditative state of exploring the ocean and watching these creatures in their natural habitat is worth persevering for. The story has some nice emotional beats too and the characters each have their own motivations and a decent level of depth. It may not be as good as Subnautica or Abzu but it does have the edge over those games when it comes to educational content. For that alone, Beyond Blue is well worth playing through and a reminder of how precious and beautiful our watery world really is.
Beyond Blue is an educational game that delivers its lessons in a very relaxing manner. Players spend most of the game swimming around and looking at fish, and that's totally fine. Though it doesn't nail the story, that's not really the point – the documentary footage is informative and interesting. Beyond Blue is well worth the time for those curious about the depths of the sea, and the subtle ecological lessons it teaches are valuable enough to overlook its shortcomings.
Beyond Blue lets you swim alongside marine biologists from the future, tagging and learning about the creatures that occupy our world's oceans.
Beyond Blue offers a unique experience deep down the ocean, and while it feels more like a science project than a video game, it can be still enjoyed by some very specific kind of gamers, or scientists!
Review in Persian | Read full review
Beyond Blue is an overtly educational game that has a message worth sharing. The experience is pleasant enough, but other games manage to convey the majesty and beauty of the ocean more elegantly.
Beyond Blue has a familiar objective when it comes to educational games focusing on the ocean, but it approaches the objective with a novel narrative. It will certainly appeal to any aspiring marine biologists or those looking for something more educational when it comes to ocean exploration games. If you’re looking for a way to relax alongside gentle giants in their (virtual) natural habitat and want to possibly learn something along the way, look no further than Beyond Blue.
My heart feels full playing Beyond Blue. An adventure of exploration as much as anything else, but complemented by a story with some surprising hooks. Ultimately, though, it’s just about looking out at sea, taking in the stunning visuals appreciating what’s in view, and that all I needed Beyond Blue to be and precisely what I’ve been looking for in a game between intense experiences.
Beyond Blue excels in presenting gorgeous marine environments stuffed to the brim with fascinating ocean life and interesting places to explore. Whether you're swimming with humpback whales or exploring underwater caverns, this is an experience that really does make waves.
Although Beyond Blue might not stand out from a gameplay perspective, it hits all the right spots as a remarkable educational tool about the planet’s underwater world.
Should you be looking for a brief distraction or simply a game with a bare input to see most of what it has to offer, Beyond Blue provides a quaint, if a touch short, detour away from the regular catalog of current-year releases.
Beyond Blue struggles as a narrative adventure game but shines as an educational tool that brings awareness and reveals some of the ocean’s secrets. Its few characters don’t quite stand out and the simple core gameplay loop of swimming, scanning and following waypoints comes off as rather bland.
I feel the game would have been a lot more interesting had the developers decided to focus more on the game’s educational and explorational aspects instead of a linear story-based structure. It’s a game that makes the act of looking for marine animals in order to learn more about them really enjoyable. Too bad there’s also a somewhat uninteresting plot in here; one that only drags the experience down.
Beyond Blue does exactly what it set out to do. It isn't trying to compete with action oriented games but instead focuses on a part of our world so often overlooked to create an incredible sense of place, beauty, and conservation out of the people playing it.
The main problem of Beyond Blue is that, in the end, it doesn't do enough to fulfill its main task: to inspire curiosity about the beautiful Blue world of the ocean and make you want to watch all the documentaries of the same name.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Beyond Blue is an entertaining diversion for a few hours, with fun gameplay, but is held back by its small scale and clunky writing.