The first Fisherman’s Tale was a clever puzzler that made use of a recursive lighthouse as the crux of its problem solving. Now, in the sequel, you assume the role of the titular fisherman’s daughter. You have a cluttered basement loaded with some elaborate dioramas. It turns out that when you were a kid, your Dad would use these to tell elaborate, highly amusing stories. And the game comprises those tales.
The writing is exceptional, combining silly, off-kilter humor with sombre morbidity in a manner not dissimilar to that of What Remains of Edith Finch. The game effectively conveys a plethora of meaningful anecdotes about your parents and yourself, all without sacrificing puzzle quality.
The puzzles are great, offering up wacky scenarios with equally wacky solutions. While the first title primarily worked off a recursive environment inside a lighthouse, the sequel is all about using different “kinds” of hands to solve nautical puzzles. Need to cut a rope, but you only have regular human hands? Simply take one of them off and slot in a crab’s claw to snip the rope. While there are only a handful of different types to equip, there are plenty to make puzzles interesting.
Of note, your regular hand can be controlled when detached, so you can skitter through vents if need be, while a hook hand allows you to climb walls, and so on. The attachments are all fairly standard, but as they are your hands, you can only have two of them, so it’s up to you to figure out what the right combination is. The puzzles are never too difficult, but they’re just creative enough to make you think.
The environments are richly detailed and incredibly vibrant. The individual levels you complete, as well as your basement “hub”, paints the picture of one of the better looking PSVR2 titles to date. This is further elevated by a great soundtrack, featuring a wonderful original score and some excellent sea shanties.
PSVR2 helps makes the game look incredible, but things feel a bit let down by the PSVR 2 Sense Controllers. Attaching hands can be awkward as the round base on the controllers tends to get in the way, and controlling detached hands is less than precise in regards to turning and moving in a specific direction.
That’s a pretty minor problem in the grand scheme of things, though, and Another Fisherman’s Tale is every bit as worthy of your time as the first.
Comments 16
Sweet! I enjoyed the first game on PSVR, so the sequel was always on the cards for me with PSVR2 👍
Will be picking this up today, alongside Walkabout Mini Golf... Good games to break up playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
This looks really good, I'd certainly love to give this a try soon. Great review, thanks Graham!
@gbanas92 I guess my questions for this are:
1) Do I need to have played the first to get some references in this one?
2) About how long is this?
3) Is the first one coming to PSVR2? Do we know anything about that?
Too much to play currently, so will continue to wait in the hope of a bundle with the first game.
This is coming out now, too?? Wow, people keep saying vr2 is doa and meanwhile I can't manage my backlog/wishlist!
@ztpayne7
1. Some of it would be helpful sure, but the references are mostly just visual callbacks. I wouldn't say having not played the first is an issue.
2. Probably about 2 hours? It's not terribly long, just slightly longer than the first one!
3. Not that I know of, though I'd definitely play it if they did that!
@gbanas92 thank you for responding!
@TrickyDicky99 dear God. You never stop.
@NeonPizza Yeah I've seen others lament that trend in VR to focus ONLY on first person, hand-control stuff and not offer more traditional controller games but in full 3D. Hopefully that changes at some point. I get that the hand controllers are entirely unique gameplay you can't get elsewhere, and it really is the unique gameplay feature you can get only in VR, and that's technically what "VR" is (playing 3rd person isn't really virtual reality, it's just 3D surround TV) but there's a lot VR could add to those traditional games.
Then again, I'm now an NMS addict like the WoW addicts of old, so what do I know....I just hope wearing out my controllers won't result in losing the whole kit, because NMS will surely wear out controllers with all that L3 clicking to run!
I just received my PSVR2 but after playing resident evil village I’m a little bit nauseous. Do any of you guys have tips on the following:
1. Image is sometimes blurry. I adjusted it multiple times through recalibration but sometimes it’s still a little bit blurry (especially RE: village)
2. How to get over this feeling. Does it get better? Or have I just spent 600 euro on a vomit machine (mind you this is my first time VR).
3. Is it me or does VR feel more like a workout than expected? Horizon feels like I’m literally climbing mountains (in an exhausting way haha).
Happy weekend you guys
@Sanquine
1. So the calibration will be helpful only up to a point. Make sure to have the headset on the main menu of the PS5 (I find this the best place to mess around because there are so many more words on screen than normal. Easier to tell how in focus everything is!) and start messing around with basically all the knobs on the front of the headset haha. There's a "scroll wheel" that dictates the spacing of the lenses horizontally, move that around until it feels tight, but not painful on your head. And then after that, start moving the front of the headset up and down trying to find the "Sweet spot" where everything is more in focus. It's infamously a very narrow space where everything looks right with headsets, and PSVR2 seems to have an even smaller sweet spot than normal!
2. It SHOULD get better. VR sickness can be disorienting when it's brand new, but as the brain gets more comfortable with how it's being tricked, you should start to notice the nausea being less of a problem. For some people, it never goes away, but if it's something you intend to do basically every day, you should start noticing it get less problematic within like....2 weeks? Not completely gone, but at least better. I don't personally get motion sick much, and I was completely adapted to VR in about a week when I first started? It seems to vary quite a bit person to person! But once you've adjusted, it's so worth it! VR is marvelous, and I love it!
3. It varies from game to game, but isn't it awesome!? I use a lot of rhythm games intentionally as supplemental forms of exercise. If you like music games, Pistol Whip is incredible, and you'll be exhausted if you play it for a while haha. Same with Beat Saber once the PSVR2 upgrade is released!
@NeonPizza Hard agree! Definitely not enough experiences like that. The 2 Moss' definitely being the strongest examples of that for me
Once I've stopped playing Mini Golf I'll tale a look at this
@NeonPizza Yeah, Astro Bot too! Oh I remember Star Child! That reveal trailer had an earworm of a song haha. Definitely wouldn't mind seeing more games experimenting in that particular region of gaming. Especially given how good some of the ones who have tried it have been
@gbanas92
1. thanks will follow up your advice
2. Glad to hear that! Was not really that sick but felt woozy
3. It’s super awesome. Is pistol whip also on PSVR2? Do you know if the saints and sinners games are good?
@Sanquine Yeah woozy sounds about right. Definitely sounds like pretty standard VR sickness, so I'd expect it to get at least a little better each subsequent time you play!
I haven't played the newest Saints And Sinners myself, but I played 1 on PSVR1 and was very impressed with it. Surprisingly immersive and detailed in how you can interact with the world. If the PSVR2 versions are anything to go by, I'd say they're very much worth your time!
And yep Pistol Whip did indeed get ported over to PSVR2!
@NeonPizza Honestly I don't know if I agree that flattening out Moss would make them not enjoyable. I think they would absolutely lose some of their impact, but I think if I were only ever privy to a non-VR version of those games, I would still love them.
They're exceptional examples of what we're talking about in regards to VR though of course!
I think RE: Village it might just be some degree of being lost in translation since the game wasn't entirely built with VR in mind (even though I'm sure they knew they were gonna be making a VR version before the game launched). Incorporating a number of alternate control schemes seems like such an easy way to allow for people to be immersed in just the way that they choose
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