Other than performing some extremely light puzzle solving or going on a fetch quest, Finny's primary concern is food. There's a dedicated hunger meter, which will cause Finny to start rapidly losing health if it's allowed to go empty. So, as you go about your business, it's important to keep your eye out for anything alive that's smaller than you, such as insects, amphibians, shellfish, or other fish. Catching your food is pretty easy. Just hit L1 to lock onto the nearest prey, pump X to swim toward it, and then press the square button once the reticle starts flashing red. This is all you'll need to do for smaller prey, but when you start taking on more substantial creatures, they'll put up a struggle, requiring you to rapidly move both analog sticks in order to thrash them around in the water and subdue them. There are, of course, fish in the water that consider you prey, and they should generally be avoided--though you do eventually reach a point where Finny has become strong enough that he can go back and eat bigger fish that previously considered him to be prey.
We'll never eat fish sticks again.
Sometimes something that looks like food to Finny is actually a fisherman's lure. If you find yourself snared, you can try to swim away and hope the line breaks on its own, or you can slap the line with your tail by hitting the circle button, which, under the right circumstances, will weaken the line. Alternately, if you don't think you can break the line, you can head for the surface and thrash about in the air, which can often unhook you rather quickly. The difference between breaking the line and getting unhooked is that you get to keep the lures from the broken lines, and you'll receive various performance-enhancing bonuses as you collect more lures. Truly, the best drama in Finny the Fish is when you're trying to escape death, even though it's fairly easy to escape, and it's not necessarily game over if you do get caught.
Finny's a pretty low-key game, though when it's not low-key, it's often frustrating. It's not an exceptionally long or difficult game, but the exasperating moments make it hard to recommend this game for young players, and its otherwise mellow charm isn't quite enough to engage those with more sophisticated tastes.
Finny the Fish & the Seven Waters (PlayStation 2):
%20PlayStation%202%20Game%20reviews%20-%20CNET%20Reviews&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com/playstation-2-games/finny-the-fish-the/4505-9581_7-31308311-2.html){kind=small}