Welcome to our review of Ace of Seafood, a new shooter on Nintendo Switch.
Ace of Seafood is a bit of an oddball. When You think about the premise, dominating the sea by making formations of sea creatures like salmon and lobsters and several others, you have to be intrigued, right? Add in lasers shot from the mouths of the salmon for example and you got yourself the main idea behind this game.
Add in a trippy soundtrack composed mostly of typical pew sounds and a house music background, this game has to become more interesting with every word you read, right?
Sadly, this is where it stops. A great premise and music do not make a great game. Let’s start with the worst part of the game, the tutorial. Not joking here, guys! The tutorial is by far the worst experience of this game. Normally the tutorial is a smooth experience to slowly ease you into the game, showing off all aspects of the game and how to play. In Ace of Seafood, this is no different, but the way it is done is just bad. I included a screenshot of how incredibly busy the screen became during the tutorial as to prove my point. Those lines that you see, they indicate the end of the area you can swim in.
It is the sea, there are not supposed to be any virtual limits… I was at the time trying to destroy an enemy, but as the fish was behind these lines, I could not destroy him and thus advance in the tutorial. I had to restart the darn thing to get through this. Considering the tutorial is meant to teach you what the game is about, this was by far a bad experience.
The game itself is actually more fun, having gotten off on a bad foot with this game, I dived into the game. No pun intended, really!
There are a few points I would like to point out about the game itself, once you set up the game, you are thrown into the fray and you soon realize you need a lot of practice before you get to actually conquering any reef, let alone you can attack any of the bigger fish in the sea. Ace of Seafood did a bad job preparing you for the fight and it takes a while before you even figure it out. I died so many times before even having the slightest feeling of delight.
Half of the time, the screen is filled with way too much information and it does not befit the handheld mode in the slightest, sadly enough that is my preferred way of playing. At one point I was battling a cubera snapper, I thought I had it down to 0 health, but it kept attacking me and it was just so unclear whether or not it was going down or even when. Needless to say, I lost the fight…
In conclusion, I know many players out there really enjoyed this game, but I just had a very bad experience with it and can not really give a positive review. I even went as far as to replay the tutorial in hopes to find out I just missed out on parts, but sadly that was not the case. Based on my experience, my rating comes down to 30%..
