Jaws Unleashed is something special. This doesn’t necessarily equate to a good game, but there is something quietly appealing about Jaws that propels it above a terrible score. It’s what made Ecco the Dolphin such a great title; the originality – and the underwater adventure. This time around, the icing on the cake is the shark. Australians are no stranger to deadly sea creatures, so our finny friend will feel right at home. As soon as I held down A to begin swimming, it felt great. My first chomp on some unsuspecting swimmer felt even better. At a primal level, Jaws is rather entertaining. The problem here is that it is a video game, and Appaloosa has made no attempt to break free from stock standard mission-based action, despite the unique concept.
The undisputed King of Kill.
The mission structure is fairly open-ended. After the initial tutorial and “break-out” segments, you are free to swim about Amity Island partaking in story or side missions, or even just meander as you please. The missions are all pretty silly and pointless, loosely tied together with poorly animated cutscenes concerning the Amity residents trying to do away with you and make shark fin soup. Again, an excellent idea (it didn’t even necessarily need to be based on the Jaws license, a nondescript shark game would have sufficed) brought down to earth by overused gameplay mechanics. For example, Jaws even has a lock-on feature, and you are given the ability to target which part of an enemy to munch. Who cares about such specifics when you are a mindless eating machine? Get primal, get instinctive, and just start attacking.
A rather interesting thought came to my head whilst playing Jaws. In popular culture, sharks are portrayed as evil killing machines intent on hunting down all swimmers and brutally killing them – for fun. In contrast, nature documentaries are always preaching the survival of the fittest, and the fact that sharks are not man’s enemy. I never through such a poignant issue would hit closest to home when playing an outrageously over the top video game. Missions consist of you, Jaws, blowing up factories and dragging humans to their deaths, for no apparent reason. While carrying an explosive tank in my….jaws to destroy a refinery, I thought – “Why am I doing this?” I’m a shark, an animal, and would just like to swim about eating smaller fish. It was a nice thought, and made me look upon real life sharks rather fondly, while condemning the developers for being mean to poor Jaws by making him do all these awful deeds. Shed a tear for Jaws, my gaming friends, for he is truly a tragic hero and victim of circumstance.
Ok, a bit philosophical there, but the point of the source material (ie, the movie) was that Jaws is indeed evil and enjoys terrorizing small coastal towns. So let’s run with that for a while. There isn’t much relation between the events of the game and movie, but on the other hand there wasn’t much of a deep story in the movie to begin with.
The trip to Sea World wasn't going quite as planned.
The tragic hero is given a decent digitalisation. He looks smooth, animates well (for a cumbersome sea creature) and controls fairly solidly. The camera gets a bit narky, but this is somewhat understandable given the completely free underwater environment Jaws occupies. The main problem here is that while Jaws himself is a great addition to the game, everything else pales in comparison. While munching on carcasses, the hit detection is sloppy and the boss fights (yes, boss fights, another “gamey” elements not needed) are long and fiddly. The open water locations look decent enough, but the story missions take place in such outrageous environments the graphical quality is a mixed bag.
Jaws could have been taken in an entirely different artistic direction. Not for a moment is it scary, or creepy – and there aren’t even any jump-out-of-your-seat moments. It’s almost like Tony Hawk Underground – you are a crazy chap who goes around busting stuff up and harassing the general public. Of course sometimes harassing equates to eating people’s heads, but when in Rome! The graphics and locations are all cartoony, and I couldn’t help but think Jaws could really have been something excellent. Less mindless and easy killing of water-goers, a more serious storyline, realistic events and perhaps a grainy, murky graphical style could all contribute to actually making Jaws scary. John Williams’ legendary, terrifying musical theme is played constantly, even when Jaws is killing scientists to use their key cards to open locked doors. No joke. What a mish-mash of ideas – Jaws could have been at least more engrossing if the developers stuck with one style and one goal – to make the gamer feel as close to how they felt when watching the original movie.
Finally these two can sort out their differences.
There really isn’t much else to say about Jaws Unleashed. It’s fun to mess around with, but the lack of enthralling missions and the overall implausibility of the events don’t give the game any credibility. It’s another open-ended mission game with extras to unlock (including scenes from the movie….why not just watch the movie?), and a “world” to complete. The formula has been used with great success and isn’t a terrible idea – but it is when you are controlling a killer shark. Horses for courses – if you are going to make an underwater game about a shark, come up with some unique gameplay - don’t try to force it into a mold that won't fit.
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