Aware of its main asset, the game welcomes us with these words: "an open world fishing experience". The promise of an open-world fishing game actually comes to fruition through Golden Ridge National Park, the story of which is told to us by ranger Clayton Johnson during the introductory sequence, but also during the discovery of certain points of interest. Note also that Clayton is one of only two characters that can be encountered in the reserve, the second being the shopkeeper Sophia Taylor. If the artistic direction never tries to go beyond simple realism, certain textures obviously resulting from photogrammetry have their small effect, while the succession of landscapes sometimes rocky sometimes aquatic offers us beautiful panoramas at times. Really vast for a simple fishing game, the playground gives us the opportunity to meet a ghost town, an abandoned dam, a watermill, an impressive waterfall, and multiple bridges, meadows and other outposts. The work done on the construction of the world is rather qualitative, but the absence of life is quickly felt. That a protected reserve is not filled with non-player characters is understandable. On the other hand, it is more difficult to accept the absence of wildlife.
Really vast for a simple fishing game, the playground gives us the opportunity to meet a ghost town, an abandoned dam, a watermill, an impressive waterfall, and multiple bridges, meadows and other outposts. The work done on the construction of the world is rather qualitative, but the absence of life is quickly felt.
Apart from the fish (still happy…) and a few flocks of birds, there is nothing to get your teeth into. The developers could however have taken advantage of the work done on theHunter to populate the park with animals to observe. Instead, Expansive Worlds offers us to do about fifteen services to the ranger. But whether it is a question of indicating the location of invasive plants, diseased trees, dinosaur bones or traces of Bigfoot, the principle is always the same: locate in the decorations a highlighted element, s closer to it and press a key. Yeah… Sophia offers us to complete around thirty challenges centered on catching fish and divided into three categories. Fishing challenges are all about catching a certain fish in a clearly specified location. Same principle for the photo challenges, except that you have to find the place from an image. And again for the card challenges, except that this time you have to recognize a piece of card. The quests therefore lack a little variety, and it is not the presence of a hundred points of interest and twenty watchtowers to discover that really improves things, because going in search of them quickly comes down to turn fishing game into hiking simulator.
MY FISH IS NOT FRESH...
If the game therefore has trouble managing the bivalence "walks in the open world / fishing at the edge of the water", it does, however, benefit from a good heart of gameplay. In other words, the fishing parties are rather pleasant, in particular because they offer an effective compromise between arcade and simulation. It is thus very simple to make your first catches since all you have to do is cast the rod, wait for it to bite and activate the reel. The tutorial then clearly explains the importance of the float indicator and the tension indicator, as well as the need to tire the fish as much as possible while taking care not to break the line. To do this, the brake must be adjusted as well as possible (a high value tires the fish more but increases the risk of breakage) and apply the technique of pumping (raising and lowering the rod). So much for the basics, which can be mastered in a few minutes. But if you want to catch the twelve species of fish present (northern pike, golden trout, channel catfish, kokanee salmon, etc.) and at respectable sizes, you must also adjust the depth of the hook according to the target prey, and to get ever better material. The Angler does not do things by halves since it is possible to buy multiple rods, reels, lines, lures, hooks, baits, floats, jig heads and soft plastics. On this specific point, fishing enthusiasts will not be disappointed. But they will still be cooled by other aspects of the game...
ANGLER OF ATTACK
The aesthetic options are for example too little developed. Boots, gloves, tops, pants, headgear and accessories only vary in color. The same goes for the two types of vehicles, the 4X4 and the outboard, whose liveries can only be changed. Moreover, on the lake as on land, driving is really not very pleasant. The boat drags, while the car stops dead at the slightest contact with a rock or a road sign. We can also notice that there is absolutely no reflection in the mirrors of the latter, which is a bit of a stain in 2022. And this is not the only graphic problem, far from it! We thus suffered flashing aquatic reflections and other scintillating ones (it's quite unwelcome for a fishing game…), crossed the road of pebbles floating in the air, and deplored the ugliness of the faces, starting with those of the avatars . Sophia and Clayton are doing a bit better, but still remain very far from current standards. In general, the game seems to lack finishing and would have benefited from being released a little later, after a few additional months of development.
