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The year is 1998. Summer. Racked with insomnia (mostly from hardcore gaming), I would sit
up and watch Letterman, then Craig Kilborn, then late-night M*A*S*H reruns, then settle
at about 2 in the morning to at least three episodes of The X Files. Probably not the
healthiest way to spend a summer, but screw camp or sports or all that other crap, I had
mysteries to solve and RPGs to play. Now I find myself confronted by… fish. Fish doing
their damnedest to riff on the X-Files… and maybe Finding Nemo… and possibly some
D&D? It’s kind of a mess, all set to the beat of a strange sliding-block puzzle game.
Let’s get this straight: from a technical standpoint, it’s tough not to find the Fish
Fillets 2 lacking. The coding seems rough around the edges, to the point where just
moving a particular item up and down can cause the same dialogue to trigger over and over
again, which is fun if you’re a jerk like myself. Some of the extras, like this puzzle
game, can be rendered unwinnable if you assemble them in the wrong order, due to how the pieces
have to move. Audio cuts in and out strangely. There, I’m done being bitter and, y’know,
critical, so let’s get on to the fun part: The Fish Fillets 2 is one of the goofiest,
most ridiculous things I’ve played in some time.
The basic gameplay goal is to get agents Guppy and Flounder - CAN’T MAKE THIS UP - off
of the screen. Usually, this will require pushing, lifting, and sliding a number of
objects out of the way, using your agents as moistened battering rams. The best part
is: The puzzles are actually CHALLENGING. I mean, really challenging. You’ve got some
starfish scattered around as prestige targets, but it’ll take a good bit of sitting there
and thinking things out before you can proceed. Compounding the issue is the fact that Guppy
and Flounder are two different sizes, and thus require different spaces to maneuver.
Drop anything on either of ‘em, from a great height (or even a small one), and the stage
is forfeit… until you hit the undo button. Your time and your move count aren’t even
tracked; all that matters is whether or not you succeeded in clearing the stage, and how
many starfish you managed to pick up in the process.
But the real selling point is the dialogue between your fishy agents. Some of it is just
trying to play up the X-Files angle by making everything out to be a very thinly reasoned
conspiracy. Some of it is just absurd riffing on the situation in general. Some of it is
outright blaming the player when things go wrong, throwing a hunk of wreckage directly
through the fourth wall. And some of it is genuine hints. Music? Pfft to that, we’ve
got ridiculous D&D references to blather on about. In a game with absolutely nothing to
do with D&D, mind. While most of Scully and Mulder’s… I mean… Guppy and… well,
you know. While most of their lines are delivered competently, it sounds like the rest of the
cast was recruited from folks who walked by the studio one day and were offered free chips
and soda. But I’m willing to look past that. I don’t know if the game is just a vehicle
for their goofy premise, or exactly what the story is, but I was far more entertained by
this jangling abomination than I had any business being. Just… no custard, please. That’s
a can of worms we don’t need to open.