There’s plenty of fishing games available on the Wii, so what makes this game any different than the others? Not much, but progression and multiplayer add to the appeal and interest.
After starting the game and creating your character, you’ll arrive at Hotel Fishing Resort where you will begin your fishing adventure. The fishing itself is pretty much the same as any other Wii fishing game. You’ll wave the wiimote to cast a line, and use the nunchuk to reel it in. Though, it does require a Motion Plus controller, for some reason. I’m unsure why this is the case, since the movements are jerky and it really doesn’t seem to actually use it. It is nice that to reel in pretty much any of the stronger fish in the game, you’ll have to actually fight them until they tire out, just like you would if you really were fishing.
There are a few other things you can do besides fish, such as explore an aquarium, kayak, and a few minigames. Though, to advance in Fishing Resort you need to catch lots of fish, so doing the other stuff is just a way to distract yourself if you get tired of fishing. Each fish you catch is worth points that you’ll need to use to buy better rods, reels, bait, and in order to access the other areas of the island.
There are eight different main areas to fish in, each varying in environment and in the types of fish you can catch. From a tropical island to temperate lakes, even ice fishing is available. The large variety of environments lead to an equally large number of fish you can catch. There are upwards of 200 types of fish to be caught across all the zones.
As I stated above, there is multiplayer in Fishing Resort. It is oddly-placed and hard to find, though. It is entirely within the main game, yet at the same time, only a part of the game. Player one is always in control of player movement, where you go, what you do, what kind of tackle you use. When you start fishing somewhere though, three more players can join in by pressing A on their wiimotes and join in the fishing. Only one player can catch a fish at a time, which adds a little competitiveness to it, and all fish caught are put into the same basket, so to speak, and all of them contribute to the same group of points.
The graphics are cutesy and cartoony, and look surprisingly similar to those from Harvest Moon, Super Swing Golf and other similar series. It looks really nice during sunsets, but otherwise isn’t really impressive.
The audio is pretty much average all around, and none of the characters are voiced. Though, I actually consider that a plus since many games with lower budgets have horrible voice acting.
Really, this game does a number of things correctly, but there’s one thing it just can’t change: it’s a fishing game. If you like fishing, you’ll probably get a lot of enjoyment out of this game. If you don’t like fishing, then I really don’t know why you’d consider getting it in the first place, but you won’t like it.
Pros: Nice multiplayer; good fishing; variety of environments and fish to catch
Cons: never actually tells you how to play it multiplayer; you can go for a long period of time without catching anything, which is rather boring
