Year Walk and Ridiculous Fishing

You know what I don’t understand?  Portable gaming consoles.  I get the concept, I think.  It’s a console, but you can take it anywhere.  Cool, right?  Except, when I think of situations where I use a portable gaming device, I typically only have a few minutes to play.  I’m not into gaming in car rides (even the nice Vita screen is unplayable with the sun glaring), I don’t do a lot of plane rides, and when I’m at home, I would rather play a game on a proper console.  The only times where it makes sense for me to play a portable game are when I’ve got ten minutes or less to kill.  Waiting in a line, or out having a cigarette, or with whatever time I have to spare during a lunch break.  That’s why I’m baffled at the types of portable games that are popular on Vita or 3DS these days.  Hey, I loved Persona 4 Golden as much as the next person, but I would have loved it just as much if I had played in on the PlayStation 3.  Probably more, in fact.  Why does Uncharted even need a stripped down portable version?  Why did Nintendo make a port of Ocarina of Time one of the flagship launch-window titles for 3DS?  These aren’t games designed to be portable.  These are console games that require significant time investments.  What if I just want to play something for five minutes while taking a dump?

The only valid argument I’ve heard is “what if you have to share the television with others?”  Granted, that was never a problem with me.  Only child here that had her own television from an early age.  I guess my parents weren’t keen on watching endless reruns of Barney and Sesame Street.  Still, as someone who is very fond of consoles, I’ve oddly never had the desire to carry one around with me.  Brian says I’m almost certainly in the minority on that.  I say that just proves how much smarter I am than everyone else.

And don’t say I don’t know humility.  I do.  It’s what measures moisture in the air.

The kind of portable gaming sessions I want are readily available.  They’re typically found on phones.  Most of the time.  Year Walk is a bizarre horror-adventure game based on Swedish mythology.  It seems like it could be a decent title, but this is one of those cases where the game failed to grab my interest right out of the gate and I just couldn’t get into it.  I’m not a big fan of point and click games.  This is more exploration-oriented than average, but I fucking hate games where you wander around with no clue of where to go, what your objectives are, or what the ultimate goal is.  Plus, it had features I’m not too keen on, like sound-based puzzles.  I typically play my iPhone games with the sound turned off, because I have a strong desire to not annoy those around me.  I mean, more so than usual.

I don’t deny Year Walk is spooky. It really is. But I don’t feel it’s put to good use on iOS. I would have rather played this on a television.

I didn’t finish Year Walk.  Not even close.  I spent most of the game just aimlessly shambling about.  Yea, the settings were spooky, but I would have rather played this on a console, or the Vita.  I probably should have fired this up on the iPad, where at least I could have seen things better.  But, the truth was, I didn’t want to play it anymore.  I was bored.  I think horror-adventure fans might get a lot more mileage out of this than I did.  Really, I was just disappointed that this wasn’t a game about Wicket’s first birthday.

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Get it?  Wicket was an Ewok.  Ewok sounds like Year Walk?

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You know, Brian told me that one was no good.  I didn’t listen to him.  And now he’s gloating.  He said “it’s too obscure a Star Wars pun and you have to make too large a logical leap to draw the connection.”  Fine.  Trying again: I thought Year Walk was boring.  Would have been better if it had starred Luke Yearwalker.

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Ridiculous Fishing has absolutely no connection to Year Walk, other than being on iPhone.  When I told someone I was reviewing this, they said “I’ve never liked a fishing game.  Never ever ever.”  Although I can’t say the same (I was quite fond of Sega Bass Fishing when I was ten),  saying this is about fishing is like saying Punch-Out is an authentic boxing simulator.  Here, you use the tilt-controls of your phone to lower a fishing lure to the bottom of the sea.  While it’s descending,  you want to avoid touching fish.  Once you touch a fish, the descent stops and the lure starts to surface.  Any fish you touch at this point are on the hook and being reeled in.  When you reach the surface, the fish fly up in the air.  At this point, you whip out a gun and shoot them.

No, seriously.  You shoot them.  With a gun.  Okay, so it’s not the most ridiculous form of fishing I’ve ever seen.  These Lithuanians I believe have that covered.

God bless YouTube.

Fishy fishy in the brook.. I wonder if Brooks Bishop hated that rhyme as a kid?

I’ve never, ever liked tilt-controls.  Ridiculous Fishing is the first game that I truly enjoyed because of tilt-controls.  It just works.  It’s accurate, it feels natural, and it makes the game more fun.  And Ridiculous Fishing is perfectly suited for micro-gaming sessions.  Got five minutes to kill?  Cast a line, scoop up some fish, shoot those fuckers up, and get back to what you were doing.  It also has actual depth to it, with time-sinky upgrades and a decent (not spectacular) variety of fish to catch.   In a sense, it’s the perfect mobile game.  My biggest complaints are how there’s no jelly-fish repellent among the items.  Well, that and the Game Center leaderboards are sort of limited.  Oh, and maybe the game is a teeny-tiny bit overpriced at $2.99.  A little steep for a game with no variety at all, especially on the iPhone market.  Of course, Year Walk cost $3.99 and it’s on the wrong platform.  It would probably make an excellent PC game, but at its price, it’s like paying LeBron James to play on your cricket team.

Wait, you mean we’re not going to eat them?

Year Walk was developed by Simogo and I really want to try it on a console at some point. Ouya, perhaps?

Ridiculous Fishing was developed by Vlambeer and is Chick Approved.