Ridiculous Fishing is back, and it is still very ridiculous

Some video game experiences are simply timeless, whether that’s matching up blocks in Tetris or blowing away fish with a shotgun. Good news for fans of the latter: Ridiculous Fishing, a mobile classic, is back in an updated form on Apple Arcade. And it’s just as obscenely engrossing and silly as the original.

The new version is called Ridiculous Fishing EX, and for the most part, it plays the same as the one that launched way back in 2013 and inspired an army of clones. If you haven’t played before, the game is basically divided into three segments. First, you drop your line into the water and tilt your phone back and forth to avoid the various fish and other sea creatures swimming around. The goal is to get as deep as possible before you hook a fish. Then, you go the opposite direction, and as your line goes back up, you attempt to snag as many sea creatures as possible.

Now comes the ridiculous part: all of the fish you caught are tossed into the air, and you have to destroy them with a gun before they drop back into the water. The exploded fish earn you money, which you can use to upgrade your gear. You’ll get better guns, lines that can go deeper, and oddball tech that keeps the fish in the air longer. This, in turn, lets you capture more and different fish, which will earn you even more money for better gear and eventually unlock new seas to ransack.

It’s a cycle that makes it hard to put the game down, particularly as upgrades come pretty quickly. It won’t be long at all before you’re wielding a shotgun and using a fishing lure equipped with a whirring chainsaw blade. And each round of fishing is fast enough that you can squeeze them in whenever — ideal for a mobile game — while also constantly telling yourself you’re just going to play one more round, even though you’ll definitely play more.

There are a few changes in the Apple Arcade version. The graphics have been overhauled with a more 3D look, there are more fish to collect destroy, and for some reason, there’s a bizarro world version of TikTok — called BikBok — so you can watch short clips of people mumbling things about fish. There’s also an endgame mode called Pro Fishing Tour, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.

Essentially, the update makes Ridiculous Fishing feel a touch more modern without messing with any of the parts that made it such a hit in the first place. In fact, this might be even more ridiculous — which is saying something.