Euro Fishing now on PS4!

There’s a good chance that you’ll have already played the ultra-realistic Euro Fishing game from Dovetail. If you haven’t, then that might be because you’ve been waiting for the PS4 version? Well, wait no more, because it’s here!

If you’ve never heard of Euro Fishing, let us break it down for you. It’s the closest you can get to going fishing, without actually going. Now, don’t get us wrong, we’re not for a minute suggesting that you put the rods in the corner to gather dust indefinitely, in favour of virtual fishing. However, it is great fun if you’ve got a couple of hours to spare, or you’re suffering from withdrawal symptoms!

Dovetail, who designed the game, spent ages getting the detail right. When you break it down, creating a truly lifelike, credible and immersive carp fishing experience is really tough. Just think about all the little things that add up to a blank session, never mind a successful one. To get their facts straight, Dovetail enlisted the help of one Tom Dove, and his help has been invaluable.

You’ve got convincing detail that stretches right through from choosing the tackle and rigs that you’re going to use, to finding the spot that you’re going to target. (Hint: just like in real carping, casting on showing fish seems to be a great tactic too.)

The team went to unprecedented lengths to create environments that would satisfy the pickiest gamers. They took 1,200 pics of the famous St Johns lake on the Linear complex, allowing them to build a replica so lifelike that you’d feel that you were actually at the Oxford Mecca. All the swims have been rendered in fine detail and the way that the fish move around the lake is governed by the weather, just as it would be in real life! This is partly due to the fact they got fishery scientist Simon Scott to advise on creating the most lifelike carp behaviour! The upshot is that, just like real life, the better you fish, the better your results will be – you can’t simply chuck your rigs anywhere and excel.

As you’d expect for a game of such breathtaking detail and depth, the carp themselves aren’t an afterthought, far from it. In fact, you can catch some of the most sought-after fish in St Johns, for instance, like the Big Plated, or the formidable Box Common. Having these old warriors swimming around, unseen, in the virtual world really does give the game that extra edge, and if we were good enough, we’d be able to tell you what it feels like to catch one of them! Just like real carping, Euro Fishing allows you to engage in a solitary pursuit, or fish socially (or do we mean competitively *cough*). You can play on-line with friends, and compete in hosted multiplayer tournaments to fuel the adrenaline buzz!

The game is already available on PC and Xbox, so the addition of PS4 to the platforms that support it is surely about to make Euro Fishing the most popular fishing game ever!

“GIMME”: £14.99; store.playstation.com