Others are just the ridiculous sorts of things you’d imagine a massive, human-eating shark would get up to in real life, like yanking down bungee jumpers for fun or pulling helicopters out of the sky.
For our money, though, the absolute weirdest challenge involves hurling explosive barrels at the beachfront homes of polluting executives and then killing them as they run for safety not to the trees behind them, but toward the beach. You know, the beach where the explosive barrel came from. And where a killer fish is now waiting for them.
Once they’re down there, you’re free to attempt to eat them (which won’t work), or hurl another barrel at them, which will immediately immolate them.
It seems like a silly, throwaway mission, but it raises some disturbing questions about Jaws’ intelligence. Even if we assume he knows what a house is and what throwing explosives at one will do to it, there’s the question of how he found out that corporate suits responsible for pollution were living there. Did he perform a background check? Did a phone directory float past him at some point? Is he just completely omniscient?
Whatever the case, you can see the toasted corporate types – and a few of the other, weirder challenges – in the video below:
We don’t know why they explode, but they do. And it will never, ever get old.
At least, it’s about as close to a love interest as Jaws has, seeing as he likes to spend time with it and put his mouth on it. It even has a suggestively titled side mission, “Mine All Mine,” which tasks you with defending it from other, more puny sharks. This is, for the record, the only time Jaws ever defends anything other than himself. Given this rare devotion, is it really so strange to think that love could bloom between a vicious predator and an unfathomably gross health hazard several times his size?
Once Jaws has disabled the gun turrets mounted on each rig’s supports (by biting them, naturally), it’s time to go in for the kill. Two torpedoes launched from the mouth of a dopey-looking shark later, and the oil rig is history. Also, whatever oil it was able to extract should probably be contaminating the bay at this point, but, again – we’ve given up on real-world rules ever applying. And we’re much happier for it.
In fact, we actually had bigger reservations with the second half of that level, wherein you’re asked to swim up to an underwater generator and destroy it with no tools other than your face.
