It feels kind of odd to write those words, as I grew up on an island on the west coast of Norway that is primarily known for fishing and offshore supply boats. But fishing kind of sucks to be honest. And before I get a lot of angry emails from fishing enthusiasts, I feel I need to clarify that I'm talking about fishing in video games.

Why this sudden burst of hatred you might ask? Well for the last few weeks I've been playing Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. And as part of the Single Player Caravan quests, one of the things you need to do is to catch and deliver fish for the caravan. The quests require you to do a god awful mini-game where you have to watch the fishes swim aimlessly around the ponds, while you carefully watch the lure for any sign of a bite. When you first get a fish interested, the window you have to press is ridiculously small. And it gets even worse if the fish you need to get is one of the larger ones, as the window is smaller and their bite will throw you into another mini-game where you need to button mash to be able to pull the creature on shore.

There are things you can do to ease the experience a bit, but that does not excuse the fact that these idiotic side quests exist in the first place. They do not add to the Monster Hunter experience in any way and they should have been left behind in the previous installments. As always you get 50 minutes to finish the quest. Fair enough, but then they also throw in a Monster for good measure and of course he'll gladly ruin your experience even more. How many times do I have to tell you Zamtrios, I'm not here for you this time!!

Has there ever been a fishing sidequest that people actually enjoyed? I remember spending far too much time at the Fishing Pond in Ocarina of Time, but I can't remember enjoying it. I was a bit of a completionist back then as new games were few and far between. Hyrule was such a cool place to spend time anyway.

There! I got that off my chest. Anyone else have a similar experience?