Okay, let’s get one thing out of the way —— despite the gaming press’ tendency to look down upon the hunting genre, I won’t do that. It should go without saying that Simon & Schuster Interactive’s parody, "Bass Avenger", is not meant to be artistically compared to the true classics of computer gaming. Bass Avenger is simply a time waster, a simplistic low—priced title that is meant to be played in 10 or 20—minute spurts. So, rather than blindly tee off on the game’s designers and publishers like so many gaming journalists do with these types of titles, I’m going to try and objectively determine whether this game succeeds at providing enough entertainment to last a lunch break and to justify its low price. The certain answer to that question is an unequivocal "kind of".
Bass Avenger is, of course, a parody on the many bass fishing simulations available. The exception with this fish sim is that you play the part of the bass (what’ll they think of next?), and go out in search of various fishermen and fisherwomen to capture, stuff, and mount on the wall of your cosmopolitan undersea boudoir. To achieve your goal, you must swim around one of two lakes until your sonar detects a potential sportsman nearby. At this point, you zoom into a localized version of the lake, and use one of many different styles of bait (money, pizza, beer, toilet paper, and more) to lure the unsuspecting human to jump in after your goodies —— so you can reel ’em in. You also have a megaphone at your disposal to further attract the dimwitted anglers by shouting out lines such as, "Skinny dipping is fun!" in a female voice (high—brow humor this ain’t).
OK, so let’s talk about where Bass Avenger actually manages to succeed. First off, the voice of the bass actually had me cracking up quite a bit, it’s kind of a mix between Marlon Brando and one of those Budweiser frogs. Some of the dialog is sort of amusing at first, although it does get a bit repetitious rather quickly. The various types of fishermen you get to go after include token rednecks, fat gypsy women, straight jacketed loons roaming the coastline, and biker dudes musing over their next piercing, all with their own (and at times humorous) dialog. So as far as the atmosphere and humor factors go, developer Hypnotix did an admirable job, given the baseness of the material that it had to work with. I chuckled quite a bit more during this game then I thought I would.
That leads us to game play itself. This is where the problems begin. For starters, using your arrow keys on the screen to swim around the lake looking for fishing spots is INCREDIBLY tedious. There were a few instances where I spent upwards of three entire minutes just randomly pressing my arrow keys waiting to find a potential human to ensnare, which is way too long to be mindlessly staring at the monitor. Also, once you get a fisherman to latch onto your bait, it’s just a matter of clicking the mouse button periodically in order to reel the catch in. Sure, there’s a chance that your line may break, but since there’s a huge line tension meter taking up a quarter of the screen it’s doubtful that you’ll ever be unsuccessful in landing the big one. Finally, the overall "sameness" of the game gets old very quick. There simply isn’t much more to Bass Avenger other than the wacky premise and the sometimes—humorous dialog.
If you’re looking for a cheap title to serve as a decent aversion during a lunch break,
Bass Avenger may do the trick, assuming that you don’t actually enjoy THINKING during your gaming sessions. However, those who insist upon some actual challenges, or strategizing, should stay away from
Bass Avenger and stick with
Solitaire or
Minesweeper for their lunchtime entertainment.
"Who, indeed, states that digital hunting is not without its fans and offers good game play? Aye, but a mediocre title, despite a humorous twist, does not a smash–hit make."
