iPhone Review: Flick Fishing
by Carter Dotson
Publisher/Developer: Freeverse
Genre: Fishing
Price: $0.99
Verdict: Worth buying if you like fishing, pass otherwise
Pros: Nice graphics; utilizes system features well, including iPhone OS 3.0 in-app purchases.
Cons: Flick mechanic gimmicky and inconsistent; May not keep non-fishermen interested.
Fishing. Some would call it a sport; others call it a good reason to mess around on a boat and drink for a few hours. The problem has long been, why can’t you fish whereever you want? I don’t mean like being able to go fishing in a fountain in the middle of town, what if you’re sitting in a cubicle and thinking, “I could really go fishing right now?” Flick Fishing may be the game that whets your crazy fishing appetite. However, if these thoughts have never crossed your mind, Flick Fishing may not be the game for you.
Lovely weather for a fishing excursion.
Flick Fishing’s main game mechanic is that you flick your device to cast your line, and then you reel it in by rotating your finger around the reel onscreen when you get a bite. You can choose from various locales with various types of fish and different baits to help draw different types of fish, all the kinds of stuff that one would expect a fishing game to include. The game gives you a kind of progression to shoot for with an old man who mentions a variety of goals that you must accomplish at the various fishing locations. You also have a tournament mode where you have 3 minutes to catch a heavier load of fish than your opponent.
It's like the movie Idiocracy - "ULTRA-BIG-ASS FISH!"
The gameplay isn’t bad – it may take some time to master the flick mechanic, which seemed to work best with small fast movements, but still seemed inconsistent for getting the line cast out as far as you might want it. The problem is that it just isn’t very exciting – you go, you fish, you do the ‘missions’ that you get from the old man, and that’s pretty much it. It’s fishing, so there just may not be much that can be done to make it more exciting than what it is. But still, unless you’re completing the challenges, you’re really just playing for your own amusement. Your enjoyment of the game will likely go as far as you want it to go, as the fishing mechanics aren’t bad, and simple enough to pick up. There’s just not much beyond what’s there, and people without an interest in playing a fishing game on their device won’t have much to keep them hooked, especially once the novelty of the ‘flick to cast your line’ mechanic wears off. Flick Fishing does get notoriety for being one of the first games on iPhone 3.0 to support in-app purchases, where $0.99 adds the new ‘Private Beach’ location with new fish and a new multiplayer game mode, ‘Fish Jack’. This may help add longevity to the game for people who play the game and want to expand their experience.
Flick Fishing isn’t a bad game, it features solid graphics and the gameplay works, it’s just a question of whether or not fishing would interest you. And as a person who thinks 5 AM is a better time to go to sleep than to wake up and go fishing, I can’t say that this one kept me hooked (pun consciously not intended, but subconsciously I make no guarantees) – it’s worth checking out if you want a nice casual fishing game on your device, but otherwise, I recommend passing on it.
