| The Fish Files
Review by Jen Good grief, it took me a long time to get my hands on The Fish Files! I first saw it mentioned on the Microids site as an upcoming game about two years ago, and I started looking for it every time I hit the Toys R Us ... to no avail. Then I began surfing the 'net, looking at all of the usual suspects, GameTZ, eBay, Amazon.com, etc.—again, no joy. Turns out the game was never released in North America, and it appears only a handful of copies ever made their way into the European market. Finally I traded with a board member from England for the game. Guess what? Within a week, our friends at PGI had it in stock! Grumble...mutter...grrr... Anyway, after I received The Fish Files, I tried it in my trusty pink GBA. Only problem with the GBA is, it's impossible for me to see the screen, even with a worm light! And not just with The Fish Files but every game I ever tried on it. Okay, this was back in February or so, and I decided that instead of torturing myself into blindness I'd just wait a few weeks for that new frontlit GBA SP that was due out at the end of March. So ... March rolls around, and I start haunting the EB ... and finally—finally!—I got a shiny new blue SP ... and first thing I did when I got home with it was begin playing The Fish Files in earnest. And there you have it, the happy ending to my tale of woe. Now, let's turn to Dante's tale of woe. Dante is the protagonist of The Fish Files, a college student whose precious red fish, Ramada, has been kidnapped. As Dante explores the college and talks to his dorm mates, he quickly learns that all of their red fish too have disappeared. What manner of evil doings are afoot? Who's behind these fishy goings-on? Well, that's where you come in. You (mostly) control Dante in the third person. This is a point-and-click inventory game with an absurd premise, along the lines of the classic LucasArts adventures. There are some conversations where you have to select the correct path in order to trigger progress, so it becomes important to talk to everyone not just once but multiple times. This is the kind of game where if you get stuck, you have to go everywhere and try every item on every location and every other item and talk to everyone again, which is always kind of tiresome. There is one instance (only the one that I'm aware of) where you can use item B on item A but not item A on item B, which was a huge sticking point as far as my progress through the game—who'd've thunk? Inventory items usually disappear once you're done with them, so if an item remains in your inventory after you use it, that's a good indication that you will need it again. Also, there is one part of the game where you have to switch to playing other characters for a while. These do not cooperate with each other in any way, and you can't switch between them at all; you merely finish their segments and go on to the next. But they do have their own inventories and their own game worlds within the game world, if that makes sense. Usually I love playing as multiple characters in an adventure game, but in this one it really didn't add much. But on the other hand, neither did it detract. Conversations are presented by means of text at the bottom of the screen, along with an icon of the character doing the speaking. The text changes color, too, based on who's doing the talking—each character has his/her own color. Some of these colors are pretty durned low-contrast against the black background, not to mention the tiny, italicized font itself that is not the best choice for clarity, and even the GBA SP and my reading glasses did not do much to aid me in these situations. Even ol' Evelyn Wood would've had trouble reading parts of the text at anything faster than a snail's pace. Luckily, the main characters always spoke in bright, high-contrast text. But all that aside, graphics are clear and colorful, generally speaking, although some scenes can be busy and cluttered. On the Game Boy screen, everything is just so ... small. I had to call my kids over a couple times and ask them "what's that?" The Fish Files is hard to see. That's all there is to it. It does not make as efficient use of the screen real estate as many other GBC/GBA titles. This is a game that perhaps would've been better suited to a hooked-up-to-your-TV console or even the PC. Although ... I guess I'd have to say its coolness largely arises from the fact of it being one of only a very few point-and-click adventures for the Game Boy. The music is annoying. Pure and simple. But in fairness that can be said of every single Game Boy game I've ever played. Sound effects are pretty sparse and completely unnecessary, so I wound up turning off the volume altogether, as with every single Game Boy game I've ever played. Language choices include English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. I, of course, played in English, since that's the only language I know. You can save anywhere, but there's only one save. Since there are no dead ends and no dying, though, that proves not to be an issue. It's not like you can send saves to your friends or anything ... Gameplay itself is fun and lively, and this is not a particularly short or easy game! I probably spent a good 30 hours on it, and I was stymied for about 28 of those hours. Perhaps I exaggerate, but I did get a little tired of all the backtracking, "did I try this there yet?" tactics I was forced to employ. The puzzles are all pretty well integrated into the story, and most of the time there is a clear reason for doing whatever it is you just did ... but sometimes it only makes sense after the fact. In the end I recommend The Fish Files to anyone who likes
games in the vein of the Monkey Islands or Tony
Tough and who has a Game Boy Color or GBA. Having
an adventure game that I could carry in my purse and take out
and play anywhere was a real treat! |
The Verdict
The Lowdown Developer: 7th
Sense Available for: Four Fat Chicks Links Screenshots Where to Find It Playing
Games Interactive $39.95
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