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PSM Quick Play: iFishing | PSNStores

PSM Quick Play: iFishing

Posted by on January 17th, 2013 | 3 Comments | Tags:

‘PSM Quick Play‘ are impressions from newly released PlayStation Mobile titles and are based on roughly 45 minutes or more of playtime. Full reviews may be available at a later date.

iFishing


$4.99 – Tested on PlayStation Vita (Game was purchased)

I have always been a pretty big fan of fishing games. Back when I was little it was Black Bass and Blue Marlin then Legend of River King or even fishing in Zelda games. So I was pretty excited when I saw a fishing game show up on the PlayStation Mobile store.

iFishing comes to PSM from Rocking Pocket Games and apparently is rather popular on iDevices. It seems that they brought pretty much the same product over, except when you play on Vita there are buttons of course. Most of the menu inputs are handled by touching and this caused a big problem for me when I first started playing. Apparently if you have the PSM 1.02 runtime package installed there is some massive slowdown on the results screen. I thought the game was frozen because of the sluggish response. It wasn’t until I talked with the devs that I fought out a fix for this until they patch it (you will need to long press menu buttons for them to work.)

Other than that issue the game is pretty fun. Well I guess it is fun if you are a fan of fishing games. The game is set up with a bunch of different tournaments each which are on a different lake. Lakes have all sorts of fish in them, but some species are far more prevalent. The tournament for each lake will have you catching that fish. Each type of fish has different likes and dislikes (lure types, locations) so you will want to be aware of this before you start fishing.

Motoring around is handled in a top down view, much like Blue Marlin on NES. When you find a location you like you simply tap a button to start fishing there. The fishing screen is no longer pixel art, but rather a more realistic look. From here you simply cast and you are away and fishing. Just be mindful of your luck meter. If it is low, you probably won’t find any fish. One thing that really works well is flicking the Vita up to set the hook. However I am not really a fan of rotating the right stick to reel those fish in.

One thing I noticed while playing was that even though lakes were locked, I could still access them. I assume that normally you have to play previous lakes until you get enough cash to enter the other tournaments, but that wasn’t the case here. This sort of makes the practice mode useless in my opinion.

If you can look past the sluggish menus for now you will find a pretty fun little fishing title. The biggest complaint that I have is that it is a full $2 more than the iOS version. Really not a fan of button taxes, especially when the iOS version has a few more features, i.e. multiplayer.

Likes:

  • The fishing is fun
  • Driving the boat reminds me of Blue Marlin
  • Might be a bug, but all the lakes are unlocked
  • Good variety of fish and lures

Dislikes:

  • Technical issues making me think the game froze
  • Wish I could use a button to reel in fish
  • Not a fan of the music
  • Don’t really see the point of practice mode
  • Kind of pricey for what it is (Double the price of iOS version)

 

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