Fish Mouth Lasers
Developed by Nussoft and published by Playism, Ace of Seafood is nonsensical and a straight up ridiculous fish-sim of a game. Always confusing and filled with flaws, this fish shooter essentially turns sea life into a messy Storm Trooper battle.
Ace of Seafood is like playing the all-range mode of Star Fox 64 where the player can fly anywhere in the level to shoot down bad-guys, take over territory, or destroy parts of the environment. Instead of flying through space in a spaceship shooting lasers, the player swims around an ocean as a fish shooting lasers. The goal is to take over the vast map by killing other sea life that stands in your way, homing in on reefs which are basically like little fish cities. Along the way, the fish that are destroyed are added to your inventory to breed once enough genes and resources have been collected. Again, none of this really makes any sense so just go with it. Insert Austin Powers sharks with laser beams on their heads joke here.
Even though the goal is to capture reefs, I still never really knew what I was doing thanks to the cluttered interface and frustrating controls. The camera never does what you want it to do and shooting fish mouth lasers is inaccurate at best. Melee attacks are almost impossible because the camera can never keep up let alone reset properly and things get even worse when swimming near the surface or in a corner. Instead of wrestling with great whites or packs of lobsters, the player will wind up fighting the controls. This issue is only furthered due to the insane user interface. The entire boarder of the screen is filled with so much information it is distracting and only acts to cause more confusion.
You would think shooting lasers out of a fish’s mouth would be fun but it actually grows repetitive quickly. Playing as a new form of sea life, or even a sentient battleship, is sort of cool for the first five minutes but essentially winds up being more of the same. In time, the player will build wingmen, aka a gang of fish, to fight at your side but the AI, both friendly and foe, are either dumb or unfair and didn’t notice any difference when changing their formation. It is frustrating to get sniped from off screen or is hilarious when an enemy fish gets stuck on the environment. But these problems are still minor in comparison to the loose and flighty controls. This underwater world is surprisingly large but would become nearly impossible to navigate without referencing the map as everything looks the same. The soundtrack is also composed of a limited number of tracks that loop much too often.
There are so many things wrong with Ace of Seafood it is hard to find any worthwhile entertainment value here. However, fish shoot lasers out of their mouths. Tuna can fight a great white. You can even play as a man-made sea vessel. This game is so over-the-top ridiculous and stupid, I sort of recommend checking this out simply because of this fact. I doubt you will want to play this game longer than an hour but the wackiness alone is something to see and will stick with you after your school of fish has turned into chum.
SCORE: 4.5/10
Not As Good As: Star Fox 2 on the SNES Classic
Also Try: Endless Ocean (Wii)
Play It Instead: Ace Combat
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz
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