My Angle on Championship Bass

I have always been a passionate fisherman. Ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper you could not keep me away from a rod and reel and the beach. When on holidays at our beach house in Mandurah, Australia I would be out first thing every morning while everyone else was still long to sleep and would eventually roll back up just in time for afternoon tea. Some pretty harsh sunburns resulted!

As you can imagine, whenever I see a new fishing game I strike faster than the fish in this very game, and when I saw Championship Bass nestled among the usual myriad of basketball, doom clones, kiddie Pokemon games and other standard fare I quickly snapped it up.

Bass fishing is largely a mystery to me. In fact, American style fishing at large is vastly different from what I experienced in Australia. Not only, the different species, but also the attitudes and stereotyping. I have always found the manly, "Oooohh what a big rod I have got" feel of Bass fishing games to be extremely off putting and Championship Bass is no exception. The angler is startled by an extremely "cool" sounding "Ooooooh YEAH!!!" or something similar when a fish is hooked.

The graphics are quite lovely in all their 3d glory and the lakes feature sunken logs and stones, bobbing lilly pads, numerous weeds and rushes and a sometimes blinding glare, so realistic that I almost want to reach for my polaroid sunnies. The fish, look, move and behave like real fish.... Once you attract their attention. To begin with, they sit motionless in the water at a fixed depth, not moving so much as an inch.

Perhaps my main complaint with this and for that matter most other fishing games, is that it is far too easy. Even on the hardest setting, the fish are just too easy to hook. It is quite ludicrous that you can cast your lure and instantly see all the fish in the water as the view switches to underwater mode. Excellent results can be achieved simply by moving the boat right up to within a few feet of the fish and hauling them straight in like you are on a Tuna boat.

Championship Bass features several game modes and a wide variety of tackle to keep you interested, but in my honest opinion the people who are going to be most impressed with the game are non-fishermen who sort of like the idea of fishing. Experienced anglers will find the game amusing for an hour or so and perhaps fun to pick up for 20 minutes every now and then, but ultimately no substitute for the real thing. For all the realism of the lakes and the fish, the fights with leaping Bass and other species, and the spread of different season, time of day and weather conditions, Championship Bass sacrifices true realism in order to become palatable to a wider audience who are not going to enjoy long periods of inaction and patience.

Championship Bass might be the game for you if you like the action thick and fast and you are not too concerned about the realism of it all. For me, I will continue to enjoy the occasional game and frenzied battle with a leapin' Bass, but for now I think I will stick with good old Bass Tour an ancient shareware game which has been a companion of mine for over a decade.