Hudson Gamers’ Day: Fishing Master World Tour (Wii)

Fri, Nov 7, 2008

I think the first time I ever came across fishing inside a video game was when I had to deal with the dreaded "Big the Cat" portion of Sonic Adventure, back on the Dreamcast. I've tried not to let it spoil my impressions of all fishing games going forward, though -- so last night, at a Gamers' Day event with Hudson Entertainment, when I watched four gamers madly casting and reeling with Wiimotes, I was intrigued. The game I was watching turned out to be Fishing Master World Tour, Hudson's sequel to last year's Fishing Master game for the Wii.

A decidedly family/casual take on angling, Fishing Master came out to fairly mediocre reviews, with primary complaints citing the oversimplified mechanics and the lack of variety over extended play sessions. In response, Hudson is preparing the sequel with their usual method of improvement: More, more, more, and perhaps just a little bit more. Casual casters will have a wider variety of fish to catch, more prime fishin' holes, and even a branching storyline to accompany them this time around. I got some hands-on time with the forthcoming game, and I enjoyed myself, but I'm not going to say I was hooked. Not because World Tour wasn't fun, but because that's a terrible and obvious joke, and I would feel shame.

Like its predecessor, Fishing Master World Tour centers around a single-player campaign, challenging the player to travel from town to town, fishing for sport, in tournaments, or according to specific goals (e.g. catch 100 pounds of fish by sundown, catch X number of Y fish type, catch a specific and rare fish, etc). All of the stakes have been raised, however, for the sequel: The fish catalogue now contains over 200 varieties; the game world presents over forty locations, based on real-world spots like San Francisco, Hawaii, or the Amazon; there are more bait types, challenges, and characters to meet on your journey. World Tour even promises to contain "boss battles" against massive and fierce fish, with new controls specific to these sequences, though we didn't get a chance to see these battles in action.

Taking up the Wiimote and Nunchuk as surrogate rod and reel, respectively, I took to the shore of our own San Francisco Bay, and tried my luck. The game mechanics are extremely basic -- only a handful of motion-based operations will see you hauling in fish after fish. After picking a spot and aiming your line via manual control, a simple lift-back-and-flick-forward will cast your hook into the water, where silhouetted fish will mill about and investigate your bait. The final game, I was told, will contain dozens of different baits and lures, some of which is more enticing to specific types of fish, but I was handily outfitted with "Debug Bait" -- a rare and delicious food that, apparently, no fish can hope to resist. With a little feedback from the Wiimote, one needs only to jerk backwards on the fishing rod to hook the unsuspecting animal, and the fight is on.

Once hooked, reeling in a fish is beyond simple: Rolling the Nunchuk in a circle will reel in your line (though, honestly, vaguely flailing the Nunchuk seemed to work, too). A meter at the top of the screen indicates your line tension; too far to the left means step it up before the hook comes loose, and too far to the right means ease off before the line snaps. The bigger fish will fight you harder, making the fight last a bit longer as you wait for rare opportunities to reel them in without breaking the line. In addition, every so often an arrow will appear on the screen, prompting you to flick the rod in that direction to fight back against the fish, allowing you to tire them momentarily for a quick window of extra reeling. Bring the fish all the way in, and you've got a catch.

From there, a player can while away the entire day, hooking fish after fish, but the more goal-oriented outings may require the use of World Tour's other features. For one, the game's 200+ fish will often only appear under appropriate conditions. Besides using the aforementioned different baits, certain fish will only appear at certain times of day, or in certain spots -- freshwater and saltwater fish have to be considered, as well. Players can call up the "tackle box" screen to adjust their rod or reel, check on the day's catches thus far on the "ice chest" screen, or even just kick back for a nap to advance the clock and catch those elusive pre-dusk fish.

In addition, this time around, Fishing Master World Tour contains a handful of different characters to play as, each of whom has different strengths and skills -- and each of whom has his or her own storyline to follow, according to Hudson. As more elements of the game are unlocked, players will have the opportunity to catch more exotic fish in more exotic locations. Did you know the SF Bay contains 270lb atlantic tarpon? News to me. To top it off, for those players who may remember bringing along a dog along in Fishing Master, you may be pleased to know you can bring a cat this time. No specifics were given as to the different advantages each animal would provide, but one hopes the cat will do more than simply act aloof and occasionally steal your catch.

Now accompanied by some online leaderboards, the game's local multiplayer 4-person modes are still intact, and I gave those a try as well. A variety of game modes are being promised for World Tour, but we played a basic match: In 3 minutes, each player had to score as many points as possible. Bigger fish, obviously, were worth more points, but necessarily took longer to catch due to the prolonged fights. It was an enjoyable little party game, as such, with a certain amount of strategy to it, but it was unfortunately marred by the seemingly random "bonus" elements. Swimming among the rest of the fish one was bright red fish, which when caught, proved to be worth roughly ten times as much as any other medium-to-large fish, thus making it a waste of time to try and catch anything else. I didn't happen to see if it was possible to change the rules of the multiplayer matches to remove this imbalance, but I'd highly recommend it.

In the end, Fishing Master World Tour is the kind of game that looks to be geared towards completionists. The mechanics are simple and repetitive, but the sheer number of collectibles and unlockables looks like it could keep an obsessive-compulsive gamer going for a long time. If that gamer happens to also like fishing, well, they're all set.

Fishing Master World Tour is scheduled to launch on the Nintendo Wii in Winter 2009.