Jaws Unleashed review

Sink boats and eat swimmers all you want - the mayor still won't think you're a threat

GamesRadar+ Verdict

Pros

  • +

    Endless potential to be really evil

  • +

    Pretty undersea environments

  • +

    Astoundingly gruesome

  • +

    but still funny

Cons

  • -

    Weird mission objectives

  • -

    Horrible

  • -

    horrible camera

  • -

    Shark still looks fake

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On paper, Jaws Unleashed is the coolest game you've ever played. Made by the creators of the slightly pointless, but ecologically captivating undersea adventure Ecco the Dolphin, it lets you freely stalk the waters around a seaside town as a bloody great shark. It's incredibly gory, with Jaws able to snag hapless swimmers and tear them apart. You can smash piers, sink boats and eat everything from little tropical fish to a disgustingly huge whale carcass.

It would be awesome, if it wasn't hampered by horrible camera problems and gameplay that switches between repetitive chomping and absurd mission objectives.

In one of the early missions, for example, you're happily munching swimmers and sinking police boats, when all of a sudden the camera pans up to an oil refinery perched high above the water. You're then told to blow it up - you know, because you're a sharkso you can totally do that.

It turns out the key is a pair of goobers who throw exploding barrels at you from a bridge. You need to grab a barrel in Jaws' teeth and spit it at a pipe coming down from the refinery, which then sets the whole works ablaze.

The game never even hints that Jaws is capable of doing this. But once you figure it out, getting through the rest of the missions is a snap: just look for the green blips on your radar, and if they're explosive or otherwise dangerous - like rusty torpedoes, say - you can probably spit them at whatever you're supposed to destroy.

More info

GenreAction
DescriptionTerrorize Amity Island as a giant shark in this free-roaming undersea chomp-fest.
Platform"PS2","PC","Xbox"
US censor rating"Mature","Mature","Mature"
UK censor rating"","",""
Release date1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK)
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Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.