Rapala Trophies for Nintendo Wii

This game was so bad that I honestly wasn’t even going to waste the finger power to write a review on it. I figured it might P--- me off if I did.

Rapla Trophies for the Nintendo Wii was one of the releases that came out quickly after the wii console launch.
Seeing how Wii’s gaming library was so small and this game was in this small library, I figured I’d give it a try. I love fishing. Why not right?!

I’m still confused as to why this one was even released; it really made me doubt Nintendo wii after I played it.

THE BEGINNING:

After I plopped the disc into the wii I was surprised at how beautiful this game looked. The opening scene had me in awe. Was this fishing game going to be that realistic!? I was super hyped, till the game actually started. Everything changed, and it took a turn for the worst.

SO WHAT IS IT?

It is a fishing game obviously. You pick a character out of the extremely small library of playable characters, then you pick your boat (only one is available at first, you have to unlock the rest) and you pick your fishing location.

Okay, got my dude, got my boat, got my pole. Got my location. There are 20 of them. I choose somewhere out in Florida. Figuring maybe I would see some gators while fishing.

No such luck though, what I did get was a small swamp like atmosphere with so much fog in the sky that I could barely make out what was going on. And no, this is not a glitch, its thick fog distorting the already pathetic grainy graphics.


GRAPHICS-

Aside from the fog screwing everything up Rapala Fishing looks like a game that got left in the closet for the Super Nintendo console. When Nintendo discovered this treasure in the closet they must have decided to go ahead and put it on the wii. The graphics are terrible. They look choppy, grainy, and blurry. Throw in some weather, such as fog or rain (in the game) and you really have yourself a mess.

GAME PLAY-

This is where things get really pathetic. I figured I would be okay with the crappy graphics if the game play was at least good.
You ride the boat around with the controller, and you steer with the nun chuck. (This is probably the best thing this game has going for it). Now you choose a spot on the water, and start fishing.

Wait… why isn’t he throwing in the line? Hmm, no instructions or pop up balloon like most wii games have on how to do this.
Looks like you have to figure that one out on your own.
So after about 2 minutes of jerking the wii remote around the idiot finally tosses the lure into the pond… and… oops, he flings it back up on the boat.
Great! Just wonderful! 2 more minutes of struggling with your wii controllers trying to figure out how to toss in the line, and finally we got it in the water.

I bet you’re thinking that the underwater environment will be much prettier; like the beautiful scenes in the beginning of the game. I thought so too.

I wanted to scream at myself for wasting money on this sucker. The underwater environment is equivalent to sticking your head underwater in a pool filled with a fresh spill of chlorine, and opening your eyes without goggles. AHHH! MY EYES! I can’t see a thing!

That’s what you get in Rapala Trophies. It’s blurry, but if you study real hard, you can see your thick fishing line, and then suddenly for no reason at all the camera zooms off into space and now the line is back on the boat. Great, great, great! Can things get any glitchier?

Why yes, yes they can actually.

Once you manage to figure out how to control your freaking line, which is almost impossible because the slightest movement will throw the camera off horrendously you will notice the fish. FINALLY! It looks like a giant brown blob, and the way it swims looks as if it is either hurt, or drying. The fish will dart around in an almost robotic rhythm. You will sometimes see a fish swimming forward, then instantaneously flip around in a lightning strike like glitch and be facing the other way. Its magic!

They don’t come often, and when they do most of them will swim right past your lure. If you actually manage to get one hooked to your line this is where the fun begins right?

Nope. Now one would think that when the fish is on the hook you would rotate your nun chuck in a circular reeling in motion. I thought so too, but I was disappointed to see that all you have to do is press the A button.

Something goes wrong though, while you’re pressing the A button the line will break if you keep pressing it. Make sure you release when you are prompted to. It took me quite a while to figure that trick out.

Not done yet, this part is what sucks the most. If you manage to keep the fish on the line long enough, the game screen will flash into this idiot Atari like mini game. Inside of a pale yellow circle is a fish. Now the screen will prompt you to press the A button on top of this black radar looking fish. It will move around the yellow circle and you have to hit it 3 or 4 times (It’s similar to duck hunt on Wii Play).

If you do this correctly, you win the fish. Yay! If not, it gets away! Shucks!
As if getting the damn thing on the line wasn’t hard enough they go and throw in this unnecessary glitched up mini game in the middle of my fishing tournament!

Okay, so now that I have already solved that this game sucks in less than 10 minutes I continued to play it, figuring after some time, I would maybe get used to these controls. However after about an hour of the same headaches I realized indeed, this game DOES suck, and it sucks BAD.

Not only that but even when I switched locations I seemed to only be catching the exact same species of fish, over and over again. Oh but I guess the developers thought this was okay, because yah know; their weight is different.

MUSIC: ((twitches))

You know I can’t wrap this up until I tell you about the music in the game. Haha! As if game play and controls weren’t enough to give you a headache they go and throw in this music. To me it sounds like an upbeat rodeo type beat. There isn’t really anything else but the beating of drum syllables. It gets annoying, and it doesn’t change. Even if it did, it sounds the same. It’s repeated versus give you a headache very fast.

Bad music combined with awful gaming is bound for failure, and that is exactly what this game is, a huge failure.

Overall Gaming Experience:

I honestly have never played a more awful fishing game. Even old fishing games for the N64 and PS1 are better than the garbage in this game. The controls are WAY too glitchy, the graphics don’t even deserve a grade. The game doesn’t even deserve a star.

Hmm how can I compare this to a real fishing experience? Oh I know, go get a stick of bamboo, tie on some shoelace and stick it in a puddle. Flail around for a bit, mucking up the water, and wait. You’ll probably have more fun doing that.