FishCraft Hot

The first thing I noticed with this Angry Birds clone is how painfully slow everything moves. If you compare this to the original Angry Birds title--and how couldn't you, when the gameplay and colors are exactly the game, the only difference being the swap of trademarked characters and icons--you'll notice that this moves at about 1/4th the speed that it should.

Another big difference is the control scheme. Having played Angry Birds on both iPad and Chrome, I'm accustomed to the ease of either clicking and dragging or swiping my finger across the screen. Using the joystick for this 360 version seems less intuitive and less precise than the other two types. It doesn't feel natural, in other words.

FishCraft is an obvious attempt by the developer to cash in on the Angry Birds craze by making it available to 360 owners at a low price. If you haven't played it, you might as well try it by downloading the demo version. It's okay for $1...but why not just download the Google Chrome app and play the original Angry Birds for free?

FishCraft is a nicely done little clone of Angry Birds. The similarities between the two are painfully obvious, everything from the gameplay to the graphics style, color scheme and menus is lifted directly from Angry Birds. Anyone who has played that game will fell right at home with Fishcraft, but for those of you that haven't here's what to expect:
The game's scenario involves a rather miffed group fish and their need for revenge against their rivals: the fiendish cats. The cats have been eating the fishies' friends and family and have now locked themselves away in their fortresses. It's up to you to demolish these structures and crush the cats.
You do this by firing fish out of a cannon, carefully setting the angle and power of your shots to make sure you hit the structures at their weakest points and cause them to topple down. All objects in the game are subject to physics, with the projectile fish flying in an arc and the fortresses falling apart in a predictable manner. There's the odd glitch in the physics engine, but they are quite rare.
While the gaming mechanic is pretty much the same for all 63 levels, variety is introduced in the form of different fish to shoot with. Explosive fish, fish that split into three, fish that drop bombs, and more, are all added to the mix as you progress through the game keeping things fresh and interesting.
That's pretty much it really, the gameplay is simple but very entertaining and highly addictive. If you like Angry Birds or if you want to know what all the fuss is about, then, at only 80 MSP, Fishcraft is a worthwhile purchase.

No escaping it, FishCraft IS Angry Birds.

No bad thing really, till we get an official Angry Birds title on 360 why not get this?

Angry Birds is a phenomenon for a reason. The gameplay is simple and addictive and the graphics are functional but appealing.

If you have Angry Birds on a different device then i can't suggest you get Fishcraft unless you have finished it already and are desperate for more catapulty goodness.

After playing FrozenSoft's FishCraft for the first time, you like me may be left with multiple strange feelings, these feelings can easily be summarized as both Deja- Vu and confusion.

I wasn't confused about the enjoyment factor however, I liked it, the puzzles were great the action was annoyingly addictive, but I felt I had played this game before. Oh yeah, I remember....It was called Angry Birds, and it just so happens to be one of the biggest selling phone games ever.

Seriously, you can do this kind of thing? Replace Birds with Fish, having basically an identical color scheme and calling it a new game. Maybe it isn't too late for me to start developing games after all.

Leaving all that aside, the game is fun and as I said before really addictive. The basic premise is you fire your cannon loaded with one of the three kinds of fish at cats who have build quite frankly poorly structured forts to hide in. Kills the cat, get points and progress.

You will not find yourself wanting for content, there are endless levels to pick and work your way through. Even on completion of the levels then you can go back and try and get higher scores by using less fish and/or different types of fish to defeat each cat.

The background music is good, it doesn't drive you insane like many of these flash style games do when playing on-line. The menu could be better, it feels slow and a little clunky, it would be fair to suggest the developers FrozenSoft have definitely spent more time on the game-play than the interface.

Basically if Angry Birds wasn't already out there, I'd say this game was really fun and would do well on phones and the internet, but that analogy just seems way too obvious now. I'd feel like a stockbroker with brilliant hindsight but no real grasp of prospective markets.

It is hard to get mad at the developers for such a rip-off because Angry Birds itself is like a hundred other flash games, and it is good to have something like this to play on the Xbox, its just I wish they'd done it a little more tactfully.