THIS ONE'S HUUUUUUGE!
#38
I got this today. It is good fun but has some drawbacks.
The last Sega fishing game I played before this was Bass Fishing Duel on PS2. It allowed for moving the boat around to find different holes to fish. It allowed for varied styles of casting, and for you to adjust the length of your cast. It also had split-screen duels for awesome times.
Having played Sega Bass Fishing Wii for a couple hours, I have to say I'm a tad disappointed that Sims seems to have taken a step back from those improvements.
Detailed gripes:
- Reeling with the nunchuk is pretty lame at slow speed. Obviously your first reaction would be to try and reel in small circles, but the nunchuk itself is just incapable of registering the required slow movements consistently. As a result, you'll reel and watch your lure jerk as every time if you want to go at a slow pace.
Please keep in mind, fishing is an actual hobby of mine, so I may be a lot pickier about this than a lot of other players may be. At higher reeling speeds, the action does work just fine, but a lot of my technique involves subtle movements. YMMV. So, I just fish one-handed, as you can reel at three different speeds with A, B, and A+B. Reeling loses its analog feel if you go this route, but at least it's consistent.
- Casting is very basic. You pivot your boat around with the analog stick or D-pad, and you flick your remote when the cursor is where you want to cast. It automatically casts to the point of the cursor. There is no adjusting casting length based on the strength of your motion. No sidearm or underarm casting. If you need to sidearm it to get under a dock or whatnot, the game just does it for you. Feels very generic. But it works.
- There is no boat driving. You simply rotate your boat on a pivot along a coastline/dam surface/etc. It works well enough, but obviously it takes away a great deal of freedom and the rewarding feeling when you find a honey hole filled with monster bass. If there is boat driving it's a well-hidden feature. Or I'm just retarded, which is also a viable possibility.
- No split-screen duels or online tournaments. UBERFAIL.
- There's slowdown at times. When fishing in certain holes the framerate stays in the 20s. Annoying, but tolerable.
Despite the game's issues (some of which may be inherent in the DC originals' design, and therefore not technically flaws -- I don't remember), I'd say it's worth the $30, particularly if you're itching for some Sega fishing action. The core gameplay is spot-on. Catching fish is a lot of fun, and tilting and jerking the remote for various actions is well done and feels right. Lure action works very well from what I can tell so far. I've used cranks, grubs, jerks, spinners and poppers. They all do what they're supposed to and are controlled well through the Wiimote. Wish there was more liberal use of vibration though.
The music is awesome.
I'm having a lot of fun with it.
Edit: My bad, Sims (who?) programmed this. Cavia had merely a producing role, according to the game's credits.
Last edited by hclflow; 02-28-2008 at 10:08 PM.
Reason: Oops!