'Ridiculous Fishing' Jumps In The Boat [REVIEW]

"Ya'll know me, know how I make my living."

With my eyes typically geared towards either a television screen or a computer monitor, my finger is usually far away from the pulse of mobile gaming. But "Ridiculous Fishing" is making far too many waves (yes, I wrote that) to be ignored.

"Ridiculous Fishing" is just that. It's not "Bass Masters," and it's not fishing with your grandpa. Unless that is your grandpa packed a firearm with endless ammunition and a chainsaw lure that sliced n' diced punier fish before setting his sights on the larger, more profitable ones. Like Wicked Tuna without the atrocious accents.

Gameplay is simple enough. You cast your line, avoiding fish on the way down, 'til your lure makes it as far down as your reel allows. On the way back up, you snag as many fish as possible. Controlling the lure is fairly basic, tilting the iPad or iPhone back and forth. It's a bit twitchy at first, but easy to get used to.

Once you reel em to the surface, the writhing mass of fish attached to your hook quickly becomes airbore, and fishing quickly turns into a shooting gallery, where you pop as many fish as you can (the term "shooting fish in a barrel" seems an accurate reflection), keeping them afloat with your shots, 'til your bullets reduce 'em in to chum and you collect the winnings. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Sounds monotonous, but a "shoppe ship" provides 8 different levels of upgrades, each with their own strengths and weakness to keep it interesting. Your beginning pistol is little more than a pea shooter, whereas the next upgrade, the shotgun, is indeed powerful, able to bring down a group of fish with one blast, but you'll have to wait between shots as reloading is required. Soon enough, you'll find the best balance of lure, gun, and tech to help you bring in the biggest and baddest representatives of the underwater kingdom, and you'll be blasting fish out of the water like Chief Brody.

The team easily could've left it at that, but decided to add in a fish-o-pedia complete with humorous entries, a twitter parody called "Byrdr," as well as multiple waters for you to fish in, each with an alarming amount of depth and variety of fishies to hook, everything from piranha to sea turtles, and deep sea monsters.

Glitches aren't plentiful, but they do seem to happen. I saw one Mouth climb to an astonishing height of over 1800 meters with no sign of slowing down, 'til I finally got bored and let him have it with the shotgun. This was long before I equipped myself with any new tech, mind you.

It's a complete game, with good variety, and the availability of options helps keep the experience from wearing thin. At $2.99, it's also a great price for the amount of game you get. Sadly, it's an iOS exclusive at this point, so if Android is your game, you'll be missing out on this one.