Demo Review 17: Fish 'Em All!

First of all, thanks to all my readers for helping this blog reach 30,000 visits! If this keeps up, we'll reach 40,000 before the end of the year! And maybe 50,000 in early 2015! And 100,000 by 2016!

On to the main article.

As the title indicates, this little game is all about fishing. Gee, what an original idea... This time around, we get to see the fishermen. From the start, you can see the simple designs. The demo lets you try the three 1P modes: Arcade, Challenge and Fishtris. When you select Arcade, you get to choose between Jack or Walter, the fishermen, and then say whether you're right or left-handed.

How does this game work? Well, you control the fisherman walking on a dock. To swing the fishing net (which is more of a bug net, actually), swing the Wii remote. The character can also jump when you press A. In front of the docks, there's a lot of colored fishies jumping out of the water; you have to swing the fishing net to catch them. Not exactly the kind of fishing I was hoping for... Whenever a fish is caught, it adds some points to your score and increases an orange bar on the top left of the screen. The bars are shaped like fish, and when one is filled, you get more points. However, the game also has obstacles: Crabs will often walk by and pinch the fisherman's butt (ow), and even worse, sometimes a shark may show up and try to eat the fisherman! Oh, no worries though, if he gets eaten he comes back. Guess these small, old fishermen are retired shark killers.

Select Challenge and you get to choose between the two fishermen again. The demo lets you try the first four Challenges in the game, two of which consist of catching a certain kind of fish – luckily, only that kind of fish seems to be coming out of the water. The third one demands that you catch one kind of fish, the rarer kind, while other species are also jumping out. And the fourth challenges asks that you catch one kind of fish and avoid all of the others, or else you lose. That's a nice thing added to this game. Honestly, the Challenge mode seems fun, too bad we only get access to four levels in the demo. Eight would have been better.

As for the final mode, Fishtris, it's... Tetris with fish. No, really; each time you catch a fish, its color appears on a bar on either side of the screen; each time you pick up three fishies of the same color in a row, the column of fish disappears and the score greatly increases. It's fun.

My main problem with this game is how the obstacles are very difficult to avoid; I mean, not everyone can press buttons while they're swinging the remote. Also, while I was trying Fishtris, there was an annoying (but cute) little hedgehog who kept getting in my way. Talking about the cuteness, this game is all about it. The style is simple, the designs are cute (even for the fish!). The backgrounds are detailed, and while it takes a little bit of practice to catch the fish at the right moment, it becomes very fun once you get the hang of it. The full version includes a 2-Player mode and all the challenges. I don't think I'd buy it, but I definitely enjoyed testing this demo. I prefer real fishing games though, thank you very much.