Fishing? At My LAN Party?

If you were wondering when I would reach the bottom of the barrel, today is the day. In-Fisherman: Freshwater Trophies is one of many games that my father has purchased for meeting two criteria. That is, it is about fishing, and it was cheap. There is a very large stack of these sorts of games, and this just happened to be on the top. I'm sure it will come as a great shock to you to find out that this game is garbage and not even a father that just wants to fish on his computer could love it. Especially when games like Sega Bass Fishing exist.

In-Fisherman is perhaps the most awkward name that could possibly have been conceived. This 2004 game is exactly the type of game you might see stacked up under a bunch of ugly colored plates in a back aisle at Target. In fact, that is probably where this copy came from. I would expect no less from the prestigious Global Star Software, a company so respected they were trusted with the venerable Army Men franchise in 2004.

The game is an unremarkable semi-modern fishing game, just like every other fishing game out there. First, you choose the fisherman you'd like to play as. I chose this sad looking woman because she looks like she was just diagnosed with cancer, and that is basically the look I had on my face when installing the game. You choose your location, boat, season, and weather, then you're dour woman or mentally defective hillbilly are off to some fishing.

While the game does have cool things like the in-game pro tips, it does not have more important things, like regular tips that explain the basic controls. Thankfully the game is simple enough to figure out in a short amount of time. You can fish from your boat, or use the map to teleport around to docks. It doesn't really matter where you go, the you can't go to an area that is not ugly. When you start casting, everything is controlled with the mouse. You select where to cast, click to cast, click to real in, and if you get a fish on, you have to hook it by waggling the mouse around. From there, catching your fish is simple a matter of controlling the amount of tension by reeling/not reeling.

That's pretty much it. The only feature that stood out to me with this game is the multiplayer option. Yep, you can totally have In-Fisherman: Freshwater Trophies LAN parties. And to play multiplayer you'd have to, because it is the only option.

I'd be sad if I had a severely deformed hand too.