Naturally, collectible pieces of bread provide an optional challenge – they’re found on the most difficult or out-of-the-way routes to encourage further pain, if you’re into that sort of thing. You can also chase star ratings by finding the fastest route through levels and completing speedruns with as few deaths as possible. Levels are mostly linear, but usually have a few different paths you can use to reach your goal. I Am Fish isn’t very long, with only 13 levels that I was able to beat in 10 hours or so with a fair amount of goofing off, but there’s quite a bit of replayability to it. For masochists interested in a swift kick in the pants, this can be pretty entertaining, though I can’t see myself ever wanting to put myself through that kind of agony for longer than a level or two. If the normal controls are somehow not difficult enough for you, there’s also the Bossa control style, which makes you flap the thumbstick around like a fish’s tail in one of the most insane control schemes I’ve ever used. In another, I found myself painfully inhibited by my own AI-controlled allies who eagerly followed me wherever I went and constantly got in my way, causing me to die half a hundred times or so. The bottle sections in particular just feel downright cheap sometimes, as I found myself wriggling helplessly in a very unwieldy bottle while trying to navigate extremely precise landscapes. That said, not all the frustration thrown your way is fun some sections cross that delicate line from being entertainingly annoying to just making me want to turn it off and play something more casual, like Demon’s Souls or Battletoads (1991). Figuring out how to think like a fish and overcome absurd obstacles is a completely worthwhile experience, even when you’re dying a ton. Or when you roll your fishbowl over the rooftops of a town using the electrical wiring like guide rails. There are some really stellar levels, like one where you’re swallowed by a drunk man at a club and have to make him stagger to a bathroom from within his stomach before he barfs you up. The introductory levels for each fish are total highlights, where your new abilities are fresh and puzzles gradually become more challenging as you learn to make the most of your latest set of fins. The piranha, for example, can bite and destroy just about anything in his path, while the flying fish can, well, fly. I Am Fish has four playable fish, three of which have unique abilities that must be mastered to solve puzzles. I cried tears of joy when I finally made it past a particularly annoying section where seagulls were trying to kill me while I rolled around in a glass bottle, and I cracked up as I was repeatedly run over by cars. If I added up all the times I shouted something like “Oh, give me a break!” at the screen and gave you the number you’d probably think it was my least favorite game ever, but it’s all by design. As I floundered to direct a rolling fishbowl or flopped my way into a body of water, I never felt like I was completely in control of the aquatic animals, which is equal parts annoying and hysterical. And when you’re constantly under threat from everything, like cars running over you or, oh, I don’t know – coming into contact with air for more than a few seconds, you should expect to die a lot. Like I Am Bread before it, the main obstacle you face in I Am Fish is that your playable characters are just really darn difficult to control, yet precision is almost always required.
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