Day 20 of Eric Vs. 365 is really digging into the deep dark inner workings of Eric's mind. We know he likes cats and big booby anime girls, but is he also maybe a secret hee-yuck redneck in disguise? He is from Idaho, after all, and once the cows are farmed and the potatoes milked there isn't much else to do besides watch NASCAR or go fishing. Today's video features the latter as we play Fishing Planet for Xbox One (also available on PS4).
Fishing Planet is a free to play MMO fishing game that is crammed full of microtransactions and DLC in pretty much the scummiest ways possible. Pretty much anything you want to do to actually have fun fishing is locked away behind a long grind. All of the fun stuff is unlocked after a long level up process that takes forever. Or you could, of course, pay real money to unlock stuff faster. There is also a "Premium" subscription model where you pay money - anywhere from $2 for one day to $100 for one year - to earn money and XP faster and do other in-game stuff (that costs money) for free. What a freaking ripoff. It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.
Know what's even weirder? You have to buy a fishing license for each different pond you fish at. And traveling between locations costs in-game money, too. Everything you do drains your in-game resources ridiculously quickly in order to compel you to start spending real world money to make it easier / faster.
Maybe if the game was actually good it would be worth it. Maybe. But Fishing Planet is not actually a particularly good fishing game. The graphics are atrocious and there is basically no sound while you're actually out fishing. Not even ambient sounds. Just silence. I put in some twangy country music in the video just to make it sound like something.
The gameplay is the worst thing of all. There is no satisfaction in actually catching fish. They don't fight. There is no reaction. You just flop them into your hand as soon as you have a bite. It's bad.
There is one good thing about Fishing Planet, however, and that is the fact the you are playing online with other people all the time. The servers aren't exactly crowded, but there will usually be 4-5+ other players with identical character models all fishing alongside you. You can't interact with other players, but you see each other catching fish and stuff. I used this to my advantage to be ridiculously obnoxious whenever I caught a fish by running around and waving the fish in everyone's faces. I was a real ass, and I absolutely would never do this in real life (unless I'm fishing with my Aunt but she wants to make it a competition so I have to rub it in her face), but it was definitely funny for the video.
