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It requires massive amounts of patience to make it through any portions of the game, it rarely telegraphs what you're doing wrong, it's a technical disaster, and there's a minimal sense of reward.
If that sounds like your idea of a good time, and you really enjoy fishing in real life, then I still wouldn't recommend it, as there are better games to occupy your time.
A sinking feeling
The whole idea of the game is that you're a fisherman, and you want to catch a whole load of fish. You'll enter tournaments to do so, and there's a freeplay mode where you can visit any body of water you've previously unlocked and cast your line to your heart's content under whatever conditions you like.
You earn money through entering tournaments and selling the fish you catch, and you can spend this on better equipment. Want a boat to head out to deeper areas? You'll need to save up for that. Want some better lures and lines? Ching ching.
Casting your line is easy enough via the inbuilt motion controls of the 3DS. You have to pull back slowly then flick forward to put out a long line, or flick back once for a shorter cast. The A button reels the line back in, and tilting the 3DS left and right moves the tip of the rod in the corresponding direction.
Generally, this all works just fine, but occasionally you'll get a bite, flick up to begin the reeling process, and the game won't recognise the input. It's very annoying, because you don't get the attention of fish all too often.
In one session it took me 35 minutes to catch just one of the little gits, only to be told it was too small by tournament organisers, and that I was going to release it. This situation isn't uncommon, either - it will take you hours to rack up the points needed to win a tournament.
There's a mid-game save feature, and thank cod for that because you'll need it. But it doesn't alleviate the sheer boredom of looking at a screen on which nothing is happening, reeling the line a bit, getting the attention of a fish, the fish too getting bored, and then you going back to looking at a murky lake.
Fish food
It won't surprise you to learn that this looks atrocious. Your character model seems to be a visual representation of what five generations of human inbreeding might look like, the fish move stiffly, and the environments feature low resolution textures everywhere. The water is flat and unresponsive. The frame rate begins at "slow", and at times flirts with "slideshow".
If, somehow, you were to become invested in Super Black Bass 3D then there are online leaderboards to conquer, and records to top. This, coupled with the fact that it's not broken (i.e. the game boots up and doesn't crash), is the highest morsel of praise I can offer.
The major flaw underlying all this is that it just doesn't emulate the pastime effectively. If this was a super-detailed, very realistic-looking fishing game then it could net an audience. If it was a fast-paced action game with cartoon visuals, it might find a home.
But Super Black Bass 3D is neither of those things. It's a basic fishing sim that aims for realism but hits tedium. Don't let it waste any of your time.
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