Dovetail Games Euro Fishing Review

Euro Fishing Review Screenshot 1

Euro-fishing. What a calming and relaxing game. I’ve personally never been fishing, and I thoroughly enjoy this. This will absolutely be my go-to before I plan my own fishing trip. This is a simulator fishing game, and the whole goal and aim is to become the best angler and to catch the biggest fish. Hey, I learned a new word! There are a lot of fancy terminology and technical words in this game, and the narrator does a great job telling you how to play the game. I will mostly be reviewing the design of the game itself, more than the validity of the techniques and how realistic it is compared to actual fishing. To start off, the UI and menus are very easy to navigate through. When you open the game, you choose your character, or make a new one. After this screen, you may continue on to the homepage of the main menu. There are many different menu options, for example Home, Game Modes, Profile, Tackle box, Tackle Shop, Settings and a button to exit the game. Each of these options have many features you can use.

To start off, on the home page you are given straight away the option to either join the Academy, go Freedom Fishing, play in a Live Tournament, or play Multiplayer. To be honest, my favourite ones at this point would be Multiplayer and Freedom Fishing. The academy teaches you everything you need to play the game correctly, which then naturally sets you up to be ready for every other game-mode you can play. These are most likely the most common options, but if you switch to the menu for Game Modes, you can find that there is also a Single player game, where you participate in challenges. On the next menu option, labeled Profile, you can track how many fish of each species you have caught, what you longest cast is and how many Tournaments and Challenges you have completed. This is good, as it’s a quick way to see how well you’ve been playing the game. Next we have the Tackle Box and the Tackle Shop. The Tackle Box is where you can edit your inventory and what equipment you bring with you, and the Tackle Shop gives you the opportunity to spend Tackle Points on more equipment.

Euro Fishing Review Screenshot 2

Lastly but not least, we have the Settings Option. I will talk about this separate to the other menu options as it’s something that is very important in Games Design. There are many options to choose from, such as Game, screen, audio and control settings, and also the opportunity to change your character, restore defaults and view the credits. Game settings gives you the option to decide what units you use, Metric or Imperial, and also what type of casting you would like to choose. I played the academy, and I enjoy using the Total Cast Control mechanic, even though it’s marginally harder than the alternative meter casting, which is similar to arcade fishing (how long you let the meter charge up before you let go, affects the distance). Next we will look at the screen settings. Straight away you get the basic resolution choices, what type of window mode you would like, for example windowed, windowed border-less and full-screen. This is a great feature as not every game features border-less, which is favoured by a lot of gamers, especially the ones on Windows 10, having better FPS on windowed mode. This is also good for multi screen setups, as you do not have to tab out to access the other monitor. As well as those options you also get the chance to set your graphics preset, and whether or not you would like to use V Sync. These are basic, and not as in-depth as other games, but that is understandable, but it would be desired to have a more in-depth graphics option screen. Audio settings are implied, as it lets you change the volume of each source of audio, and control settings lets you choose your sensitivity, whether or not you’ll use keyboard and mouse or controller, invert Y axis option, and to change the keyboard or controller layout.

Here is the section of the review where I mention everything negative about the game itself. In the academy classes, the second lesson propped you under a tree. The amount of times my line got blocked by the tree, or stuck in the tree tired me quickly. I wasn’t given the option to move my position, to make things easier for myself. If I had the option to shuffle about, like I can in freedom fishing or other modes, I would have been able to fix that issue instantly. Another issue would be how common it is for the game to crash. I get a fatal error every once in a while that seems to be random, and not actually caused by anything in particular that I could notice. I even updated my graphics card and reinstalled all drivers, but to no avail this did not fix it. As I am reviewing the game itself, I won’t discredit it for this negative, as it may just be due to something external altogether. To move on to my next issue, I have found a player model bug, which while is hilarious to see, it’s distracting from the calming and relaxing nature of the game. This bug actually causes the player model’s arms to disappear while holding the fish you caught.

Euro Fishing Review Screenshot 3

The graphics of the game are good. They’re not overly detailed to then take away from the game play, but they’re still good, compared to current games out there. The areas you fish in are gorgeous, and due to the game being made on Unreal Engine, the lighting and shaders are very pleasing to the eye. Everything looks realistic enough, to be able to get fully immersed into the fishing lifestyle of the game.

Due to the game being a simulator, the game has a lot of re-playable value to it. This is great, as I have found that I can just log in, fish for an hour or two, then come back another time to continue. The relaxing nature of the game, and the satisfying cast control makes you want to play the game again and again.

Overall, I give Dovetail Games Euro Fishing a solid 8/10. The game is brilliantly relaxing. It’s one of those games that are perfect for someone who enjoys fishing, who just can’t get out there enough. I find myself putting hours at a time into this game, doing something else while waiting for a fish to bite, to then rush to the controller and catch it. It’s great, and there’s a lot of adrenaline involved. If you want a simulator game, this is a game I recommend. While there is a few issues, none are issues that cannot be fixed. I have sent logs of my crashes, and hopefully soon the crashing issue is fixed. For consoles, these issues may not exist.

Rating 8

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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