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PreviousDS Roundup Review
DS Review by James Lyon
Page 2
Fish Tycoon
- Publisher: Majesco
- Developer: Aquaria Interactive
Your business here is one of fish breeding. Feed your fish, give them medicine when they're sick, cross-breed them to make better models and sell them off to buy new items for your tank in order to breed seven magical fish. That, readers, is the whole game. Now keep that in mind, and then re-imagine it as a wholly horrific, drawn-out affair where absolutely nothing exciting happens.
In some misguided effort to make this more of a realistic simulation, your fish live on even when your DS is off. Leave them for a while and they'll get hungry or sick, forcing you to check back every now and again to find out how they're doing. Now granted, you can turn this feature off if you don't want to, pausing the game effectively, but why would you when there's absolutely nothing to do except wait for your fish to grow.
There's something dreadful going on.
Even the fastest speed option is still treacle slow. You either wait around impatiently until your pregnant fish give birth or you go play something else instead. Then you take a few hours longer than expected and come back later to find all your babies are dead despite all your efforts. Not so much Finding Nemo as finding Nemo floating like a frozen fish finger on the surface of your tank.
Even if you're on time, your breeding efforts in the early stages appear to kill off most of your sprogs outright without any say in the matter. The ones that do survive seem to starve to death if you don't hit that window of opportunity. On top of that, disease regularly hits your parent fish and you have to spend precious money on medicine. And then you realise the one fish you managed to rescue after all those hours earned 18 dollars towards the purchase of a 650-dollar plant and you cry in despair.
Checking on the developer's forums, I found that there's an effective strategy to follow to win (as well as discovering this is a port of an old PC game, where pottering about in a separate window while you're doing boring office work makes a little more sense), but why aren't there hints in-game? Even if there were, it wouldn't excuse the terrible graphics and extremely limited interaction. Even my girlfriend, who normal gets obsessive about these sorts of pet games, lasted a day before she gave up. "Just let them die," was her uncommonly heartless reply to my query toward her inaction. I'm inclined to agree.
2/10
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Comments: 1-28 of 28 in total
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Mmm. Rather harsh Bleach review. Although I do hate that whole card system thing because it distracts from what 2d fighters should be all about: the fighting. It only superficially adds some depth to the fighting, which isn't necessary in the first place because the combo and move system is tight and deep enough to warrant prolongued play. Or something.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 09/04/08 @ 11:56
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JohnnyWashnGo
09/04/08 @ 11:03
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All of these games look bloody awful - still, its good to know what to avoid buying.
Especially Kira Kira as I was thinking of getting that ;) |
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Muddtallica
09/04/08 @ 11:06
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Hmmm...I seem to remember IGN giving the Bleach game a very good write-up. Maybe it's one of those love-it or hate-it affairs.
Fish Tycoon looks hilariously atrocious. |
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StringBeanJean
09/04/08 @ 11:23
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There really is a dearth of decent games for the DS recently. I love my DS but there is very little to recommend coming out it wouls seem. Bear in mind I'm not interested in RPGs, J or otherwise. Well there's Apollo Justice I guess.
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absolutezero
09/04/08 @ 12:36
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Kira Kira is based loosely around the Japanese fashion toys Pinkt St. Its not surprising that the game would have a major dress up feature.
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JenkinsScooby
09/04/08 @ 12:37
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Bleach is a fantastic game. I'm a fan of the anime so the game had a lot to live up to. I own this version in Japanese and the sequel and they're both very good games.
At work we played everyday at lunch 4-way battles over wireless... no lag. |
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@StringBeanJean,
Ninja Gaiden is out on US import (or if you have an M3 then well erm you know ) and its pretty damn nice. Ive been playing it for the last week or so and its decent. Though have to say that there isnt that much to shout about at the mo as you rightly point out. :)
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 09/04/08 @ 15:19
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Half of the levels feel like they went through a random generator, while the other half were designed by drawing pictures of things like swords out of platforms with no thought of how they would affect play... Was this a part of the original design? I sincerely hope not.
Er... yeah, pretty much. Not so much the randomness, but there was quite a bit of the old 'blocky pictures of random items' going on, which didn't always work. Disclaimer: I am not for a single moment suggesting that Bubble Bobble is anything less than a bona fide classic (the original, I mean, not this ham-fisted DS turd). |
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Waffleaber
09/04/08 @ 14:42
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Bleach is IMO the best 2-D fighter for nigh on a decade. The balance between fighters is excellent and the one touch special system is great for beginners or pulling off supers. Having never watched the anime the story mode seemed a bit random but gameplay is top-notch. An easy 8.
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immateriaux
09/04/08 @ 21:04
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Christ on a bike... "Fish Tycoon", are some developers THAT devoid of ideas?
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Death-of-Imagination
09/04/08 @ 22:37
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@immatriaux
This is the unfortunate state of DS development when publishers (not development) want this kind of cheap tat and will only pay 3p for it. Literally a 3 month dev period (or less) with a budget of no more than £20K, sometimes less... They just farm it out to the cheapest contractor. In the present climate, it's really diffiicult for smaller devs to secure funding of more than $150K for DS titles... Over here anyway. |
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Just to chip in about Blade of Fate. I also think it's a great fighting game, especially because Treasure clearly tries to turn the tables and say: 'now you DON'T have to learn all those button combinations by heart, here are the one-press combos and you can start thinking about resources, tactics and strategy'. Perhaps this is not the textbook definition of hardcore, but it is not by any means a shallow button masher or any of the sort.
As for the two player lag, well, I can say I did experience some of it, especially with four fighters on screen and James has a good call on that one - the playing area is definitely too small for that many fighters and everything definitely dissolves into a mess. But one on one is really good. Recommended. |
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James_Lyon
10/04/08 @ 09:46
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A bit of Bleach love going on in here. What can I say? It's solid and dependable, it just didn't grab me as much as it did for reasons written. But that's the nature of opinions, I guess.
Put it this way, though: I'd rather play it again than endure another second of Fish Tycoon. :) |
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Bleach is fun, for the hardcore beat 'em up fan, you can find some joy in stringing some Guilty Gear/MvC Style combos, but you'll (righty) have no use for the ds touch screen command actions because you can't string combos together with them (as they all use the 'Hard' version of the special). The special cards do add a nice mixup in battles.
A nice buffer between hardcore beat em up sessions. |
Comments: 1-28 of 28 in total
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