Legend of the Skyfish
PlayStation 4
Nostalgia Factor:
I bought this game for a buck on the PlayStation Store a little over a year ago. I normally steer away from these little cheapie games, but the game's art style caught my eye. Kind of reminded me of the Sega Oasis series a bit. I looked up the game online and I saw that beating it gives you a quick and easy platinum trophy as well, so I thought sure, I'll check it out.
It took me a while to get around to finally playing the game, but here we are. Would it be any good, or would it be a waste of my precious dollar? Let's find out.
Story:
Uh, um, ermm.... There's a bad fish out there and you have to sail around a bunch of different islands until you find it and defeat it. The game attempts to tell you a story through a short cutscene at the beginning of the game, but it honestly falls flat on its face. It's a cheap, short story lacking in any real imagination or depth whatsoever. I think this is supposed to be a kids game, so I guess that makes sense.
Gameplay:
There's not much to this game. When I first started playing, I got excited a little bit because it seemed like we had a 16 bit Zelda-like game on our hands. Lush graphics, over the top perspective, character swinging a little sword. That's about where the similarities end, though.
This is not an action RPG. It is a linear game comprised of 45 stages. There are three different sections in the game, each one with 15 stages. At the end of the 15th stage, you fight a boss character. Then you move onto the next section of the game. Combat is not really the emphasis of this game, though. It is all about puzzle solving and using your head.
Your main tool is your fishing pole, which acts as a grappling hook. You either use it to pull things closer to you, or to latch onto something solid and pull yourself over to it. You'll use this tactic quite often to pull yourself over large gaps. The entire focus of the game is based on using this tactic and solving puzzles - like throwing switches and moving blocks around. Nothing too overly complicated. I can safely say I did not have to look online for help once while playing this.
Things clip along pretty quickly. It takes about an hour to make it through each section of the game. So three hours in total. If you catch on quickly and don't get stuck, you can probably knock out this entire game in one sitting.
I am not going to lie and say this was a super fun and exciting game. It's not. It's a time passer. Almost like a mobile game. Not much challenge. Quick and easy levels. But it is addicting and keeps you coming back for more. And most importantly - it is an easy platinum trophy. If you are into that kind of thing, you can't beat that!
Graphics:
The graphics are probably the highlight of this game. It is very bright and fun looking, which is what immediately drew me to the game. Everything is colorful and animated well in 2D. It's almost like a comic book version of Zelda or an Oasis game. Even my wife, who generally does not care about games, said that this looked really cool when she walked in the room.
That said, it could have looked a lot better with today's technology. It is very basic looking. The stages look exactly the same. After the initial reaction of "aww, this game looks so cute" there is not much to keep you interested visually. Just a lot of grass, trees, and water.
Sound:
The game's sound is fine, I guess. It uses the same music for every stage in the game, if I am not mistaken. That gets old pretty quickly, but luckily that one song doesn't suck or anything. Sound effects are fine, too. Just nothing special at all to be found here.
Overall:
This is an alright game. That's about all the praise I am going to offer it. It's alright. I didn't hate myself as I played through it. It's quick, fast paced, and easy. It's utterly forgettable, though. The story sucks, the gameplay is uninspired. It feels as if this was geared towards little kids - even more so than Finding Nemo, which I just played for the PS2. There is NO depth or complexity here whatsoever, and nothing that will make me come back for more.
Legend of the Skyfish is dead average. Nothing more, nothing less. I feel as if the final score should reflect that. It's going to get a C. Right in the middle.
Oh well. It wasn't a total waste of a dollar. The game doesn't completely suck, and it was nice to add another platinum trophy to my collection. Woo hoo.
THE GRADE:
C
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