When I was a kid, I’d spend a good chunk of the summer at my grandparents’ house in New England. They loved across from a nice sized pond, which my aunt lived on, and a small dock and a rowboat. Every evening after dinner my grandfather would take me over to the dock and we’d fish off the wharf or go out on the boat. We’d catch bluegills, hornpouts (a local form of catfish), and the occasional bass.
He taught me about those fish and I’d swear that he could identify anything that came out of that lake or anywhere else as well. He taught me about rods, and lures, and bait (and we’d sometimes go out late at night after a storm and collect nightcrawlers to use the next night). He taught me about how big a fish needed to be for us to take them home (for dinner at some point) and he taught me how to clean the fish.
Somewhere in my head, I have all this information locked away but since he died, in the early 90s when I was in high school, I haven’t gone out on a lake with a rod and reel. But I do have this strong nostalgia for that time period, I just happen to dislike being outdoors much anymore.
What I have done a lot in the years since his death is play a lot of video games. I’ve played all sorts of games and have touched a few of the fishing games that have released over the years. None quite captured that feel of being out with my grandfather though.
I’m not going to tell you that The Fisherman: Fishing Planet has done that because it would be impossible to recreate the experience of being a kid at dusk out with my grandfather teaching me the ins and outs of his favorite hobby. It would also be unfair to expect that a game of any sort could do that. But, The Fisherman is a damn good attempt to place the player on a body of water and give them the most realistic virtual experience that they can get.
Standing inside my avatar, which the game has you create as you start with a simplistic editor, I found myself on a lake with a rod in hand. The tutorial pushed me forward and quickly had me dropping my line in the water to start catching fish and very quickly I started doing just that. And there is something emotionally captivating about hooking a fish and reeling it in, just like there was when I would catch something with my grandfather.
As the tutorial progressed, the game showed me more and more of its layers. And by god does this game have layers and for those willing to dive in deep there is going to be a lot to consume. It’s massive, there are tons of different fishing locations all across the globe, there are different rods, reels, test lines, baits, hooks, and everything in between. And most importantly there are a ton of different fish to catch and information on each of them to help point you in the right direction on where and how to catch them. Hell, you can even advance time to when the fish are most active.
As you progress, by catching fish and gaining experience for doing challenges and missions, you’ll unlock the ability to fish at different locations around the world and tournaments to show off your talents and compete against the best in the world. There is a zen like feel to playing the game and the progress loop fits into that nicely.
What doesn’t necessarily fit nicely is that the game is always online. I was greeted by a notification that the game needed to be online to function and people kept appearing in my games. I’m not sure why I need to load in to a body of water with other people if I don’t want to and nothing quite busts the immersion of the game than finding a nice spot to fish and then four other people deciding your spot is a good spot to and clipping in and out of each other and you as you are trying to reel a catch in. It’s a big downpoint for me in a game that otherwise really does a great job of placing you in the wild to catch some fish.
Aside from the multiplayer invasion though, which I suppose some will enjoy, The Fisherman does everything I wanted it to do and I can only imagine with its depth of options and features that it will also do everything the avid videogame fisherman wants it to do. In a marketplace that is filled with big budget narrative driven experiences and low-budget indie darlings that leach off of your nostalgia, it is nice to see a game that isn’t trying to do any of that. It’s just a damn good sim game about fishing and it reminded me of all the good times I had fishing with my grandfather.
Achievement note: Aside from the achievement for the tutorial, the achievements here will take some time as they require you to catch a lot of fish of different types.
This article was written with material provided from the developer for the Xbox One. For more on our review process, please read here.
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