 Action Bass for Sony Playstation
This game wasn't my original assignment. My esteemed colleague Illusion Master had dared to me to review a Sega Dreamcast game called I-Spy: Operation Espionage. He had personal experience with it, and wanted me to share in the misery. Unfortunately, this game was an early Dreamcast release, and it pretty much found zero audience in the States, so I was unable to locate a copy that I could rent. So, in the interest of fairness, The Master sought out another suitably painful dare with which to torment me. After some deliberation, he settled on daring me to review a fishing video game. His caveat that allowed me to review any fishing game that I chose allowed me a surprising amount of freedom. Bradley A. Milton immediately weighed in with a tempting suggestion of Fishing Derby for the Atari 2600. The original Nintendo Entertainment System also has a few games, such as The Blue Marlinand The Black Bass. All very intriguing, but I decided to stay in the present to find and review the recent game with the most potential awfulness.
Since fishing games are plentiful, especially on the PlayStation, I knew that I would have little trouble finding one. A trip to my local Blockbuster proved me right. The first game I looked at was Sega Bass Fishing for the Dreamcast. However, due to it being for the Dreamcast, it actually carried some potential of being tolerable, not to mention the fact that it was rented out. Scratch that one. The next one I saw was Reel Fishing II for the PlayStation. It looked like it could be pretty lousy, so I snagged it. I decided to make one more pass through the video game aisles looking for the hidden piece of crap, and I found it at the head of the PlayStation section: Action Bass. It looked even worse than Reel Fishing II, but when I read the question on the back that asked "Do you think your tough enough?" I knew I had my winner. Any game with a blatant spelling error right on the package just cannot be that good.
My hunch proved to be correct. The lack of quality control that went into the packaging was also apparent in the game itself. Action Bass is a dull and monotonous game with an egregious lack of depth or replay value. There are a total of two (TWO?!?) play modes to be chosen: tournament and free fishing. Okay, maybe there aren't many more modes you can realistically have in a fishing game, but when you're used to other types of games with six or eight or more different modes, it just feels so very limited.
In free fishing mode, you simply head out on the lake with no time limit, so you can test different areas and lures to see what nets you the big fish. In tournament mode, you obviously enter a tournament. You have three minutes to catch as many fish as you can in an effort to reach third place. Unfortunately, this proves to be a huge chore. First, if you don't choose the correct lure, the big fish won't bite, and since you have to land the big fish to even have a chance, this is frustrating. Second, when you do land a monster fish, it takes forever to reel it in. You have a meter to watch that indicates the amount of tension on your line – if it goes too high, your line breaks and you lose the fish. The problem is that your fisherman apparently only uses 5-pound test line, since the line tension rockets up to near maximum mere seconds after you hook the fish. Thus, you are constantly cranking the reel and then releasing the pressure, making reeling in even a small fish incredibly arduous, and more importantly, time-consuming. Even after the fish has finally tired out and he's sitting limp in the water, the slightest effort to reel him in immediately sends the line tension up to maximum. There's also no way to let out some slack in the line as in other games like Fisherman's Bait.
The graphics aren't anything special. Above the water, they're adequate at best. You fisherman and his surroundings are represented pretty well. Underwater, however problems abound. The environment is very dull and nearly completely devoid of color, not to mention the problems with pixellation. Pop-up is rampant, often mere inches from you – after nearly three years seizure-free, I had several episodes due to frequency and severity of the pop-up. The fish look fine, but they just don't do much. They pull on the line, but they don't twist or flip out of the water. The sound is fair, but again, it's just nothing special. The cranking of the reel and splashing all sound reasonable, but they don't add much. And I know this is in direct conflict with the office-wide memo that went out calling for a massive reduction in the amount of scatological content in our reviews, but the only thing that comes into my mind when a fish splashes in the water is a turd dropping into the bowl.
Fishing games must sell pretty well, otherwise companies wouldn't keep cranking them out like a white trash trailer park queen squeezes out welfare babies. I have never really had the patience to enjoy fishing as a real-life activity, so I'm definitely not this game's target audience, but even that target audience wouldn't find much substance in Action Bass. There are many other fishing games on the market, and I feel sure that most of them are better, and probably by a significant margin. The lack of depth and frustrating play are just two of the problems here, problems that even a fishing controller wouldn't help clear up. Meanwhile, I've got problems of my own to clear up. My doctor says if I don't stop scratching down there, the sores are never going to heal. Huh? I have severe athlete's foot. What did you think I was talking about?
Review by Mario Speedwagon |
