Big Bass Arcade Review

It doesn't get much simpler than WiiWare's latest fishing sim, Big Bass Arcade. It's a wholly uncomplicated and easy-to-understand day out on the lake, casting your line and reeling in fish after fish after fish. It almost wouldn't be worth paying much attention to for how vanilla it is, except that it gets one critical component right -- it make it easy to actually catch fish.

I can't remember how many fishing sims I've played through the past half-decade that drop the ball in that most important part, but suffice it to say that there have been plenty of efforts in this genre before that have tried to be so fancy and complicated with their mechanics that actually completing a catch of a single fish has been a horribly frustrating chore. Big Bass Arcade is the opposite, making it easy for even fishing newbies to land a hefty largemouth bass or a bold and scrappy bluegill.

The motion controls transform your Nunchuk into the reel and the Wii Remote into the rod, as expected, with slow turns of the 'chuk mapped to pulling in your line and quick turns to the Remote made responsible for fighting the fish on the hook. The game offers large instructions on the screen to help you catch each fish, telling you to point the Remote up or down or left or right and helping you feel like a success. You can turn off those bits of advice, though, for a more challenging experience.

You can turn the motion controls off too, if you prefer, in which case Big Bass reverts to an all-buttons control scheme that works just as well. Really, all of this is simple stuff -- but the fact that so many other fishing games have gotten these basics wrong makes Big Bass Arcade seem wonderful for just getting them right.

It's not a revolutionary experience, of course, as there's only so much variety in going through the same fish-catching process again and again. The different unlockables lures, fishing locations and tournaments extend the game, but are also nothing mind-blowing.

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