Review written by Seth Bilodeau

I want to start off by saying that I don’t enjoy writing negative reviews.  However, it’s a necessity, so people don’t spend their hard-earned money on something less than sub-standard.

In case that little intro didn’t tip you off, FishingFishing isn’t a good game.  Everything in it feels unfinished, and it just doesn’t ever become fun.  In it, you play a cute little animal (a bear, a cat, or a penguin, each with little stories) that fishes.  You can play in one of three locations (Pacific, South Pole, or Amazon, as they are called in the game), which have different thing to fish for (which is very rarely fish).  To fish, you move your “boat” with the left and right buttons, and you raise and lower the hook with the up and down buttons.  To catch something, make sure it is on or above your hook, and press up twice, very fast. The hook will shoot into the air, taking anything it touches with it.  It will float in the air for a second, at which time you must put your catch into a second “boat.”  This second boat doesn’t move in easy mode, moves slowly in normal mode, and moves quickly in hard mode.  This is the only difference between the modes, but it is effective at making the difficulty levels effective.  All the while, a time limit is slowly ticking down, but each time you place a “fish” in the boat, you gain a little more time.

The above synopsis may make the game sound like it might be fun for a little while.  The problem is that this is all there is.  No opponents, no advancing through stages, no hidden levels, no rewards, nothing.  This game, quite frankly, gets boring after playing it twice.  That takes about six minutes if you do it right.  To be honest, there are freeware games out there that last forever in terms of fun, so I can’t see why someone would pay for what is, at best, a mediocre time killer.

It certainly isn’t the graphics or sound.  The graphics are very well drawn, quite detailed, and horribly animated.  Nothing moves smoothly, and there is no understanding of the point of animation.  Instead of making everything move fluidly, or at least give the impression of movement at all, it looks like a bunch of pictures are being randomly flashed onscreen.  Don’t expect the fluidity of Turjah here.

The sound is....well....there.  There are some nifty little ditties, and some tinny sound effects, but they don’t add to the game at all.  Plus, they get VERY annoying after about five minutes.  This is a good way to test the mute function on your PPC.

Finally, the control.  Ugh.  This game would have benefited from stylus control immensely.  Instead, we are given button control.  I used to own a Cassiopeia E-125, and I can say that there would have been no problems with the current control setup on that.  However, on my iPAQ, it’s a nightmare, for one reason.  iPAQers, pick up your iPAQ, and look at the control pad.  It’s pretty flimsy, isn’t it?  Now, try to press left, down, up, up, right, down, VERY QUICKLY.  I can promise you it will stick at least once.  Double tapping a direction with the direction pad can be a nightmare, but when you factor in other quick movements, it’s just annoying.

Like I said at the beginning, I don’t like writing bad reviews, because I realize that a lot of work was put into this game.  However, that doesn’t excuse the fact that it isn’t well made, and not really worth your money.

Pros:

• Original idea

• Nifty artwork

• No bugs to be found

Cons:

• Animation is more like a bunch of little slide-shows

• Control is atrocious

• Game is just dull after about five minutes of play

Overall Score: 3/10

Many thanks to Flux2Game for providing us with our review copy.

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