Pre-E3 2006: Jaws Unleashed Hands-On

May 4, 2006

Giant killer monsters are rarely considered the heroes of any movie. For the most part you'd expect to sympathize with the helpless, frail humans being tormented by a monster's rampage. Majesco Entertainment's Jaws Unleashed flips around your expectations by giving you control of the Quint-munching maritime menace. It's certainly an interesting perspective, forcing you to take sides with the mindless killing machine you feared so much in the 1975 film. To make up for your hatred of humanity's cruel and unusual animosity towards "unique" animal life, you'll get to brutally maul their faces. Even better, you get to kill totally innocent aquatic life too.

Jaws Unleashed takes place on the all too familiar Amity Island. The community is currently in the midst of a growth period, hooking up with corporations like Environplus to economically bloom. Little did they know the flurry of activity on the island would attract you, Jaws, to feast on their decadent consumerist lifestyles and undeserved sense of optimism. The main story kicks off when you gleefully slaughter the son of Environplus' CEO. Enter Cruz Ruddock, acclaimed shark hunter, who's hired to diffuse your blood into seawater. At the same time, pesky marine biologist Michael Brody is trying to snatch you up for research purposes. Your goal will be to ruin the town's 4th of July celebration, since, like most marine life, you understand the symbolic significance of ruining national celebrations.

In all you'll get to play through over 10 levels, all containing destructible aspects. We managed to make it through the first few stages of the game, and were greeted with a wide variety of gory challenges. The game starts you off in a training type of stage, actually a narrow channel of ocean where your only option is to swim forward. This is where you'll get used to Jaws' controls, which are more complicated than you may expect. The big fish controls a bit like an impossibly agile plane. By impossibly agile, we simply mean Jaws can slow to a stop, turn 180 degrees, and head back in the other direction in few seconds. Obviously a plane can't do that. When not turning, there's a button to make you swim forward, and while slicing through the water you can veer up, down, and to the sides.

Aside from movement, Jaws has the ability to, of course, smash his gigantic teeth together to rend soft, pinkish flesh into ragged fleshy strands. Jaws has a chargeable ramming attack, great for taking out boats floating arrogantly on the water's surface. Other destructible structures we saw were docks and glass panes, which were both involved with level objectives. When actually targeting spear shooting divers or smaller sea life, Jaws has a handy lock on feature and the ability to cycle through targets. This is especially useful when in small bodies of water with a number of structures blocking the way since it keeps your vision trained on your prey. You can also flip on a Shark Vision mode which highlights underwater prey, making it easier to see through the murk. Finally, Jaws can pull off a tail whip, great for knocking pretentious cage divers out from their shark-proof enclosures.

Though Jaws can blindly bite whoever's in his path, he's also capable of more precise feasting. Not only is Jaws capable of targeting specific enemies, but also specific parts of enemies. Chomping down on a hand, foot, or leg will result in a severely maimed but still living enemy. You'll need to be aware of what state of disrepair enemies are in after you've feasted, lest you get hit with an unexpected harpoon. For some of the stealth oriented objectives, Jaws can drag victims under the water with a move that grabs them but doesn't consume them. This is great for maximizing how many swimmers you can snag from around a beach, but hilarious should you decide to grab them and swim around on the water's surface. Keeping your nose poked out of the seawater causes the trapped victim to scream their lungs out while blood geysers shoot everywhere. Slamming the bite button while carrying them results in a stomach-twisting scene where Jaws finally gives in and snaps down hard, sending bits of the victim spewing in all directions.

Eating isn't only for fun in Jaws Unleashed, it's a necessity. Health and hunger meters will always be visible at the bottom left of your screen. As you take harpoon, shotgun blasts, and bites from other vicious fish, you'll need to replenish health by eating ocean floor dwellers and smaller fish, or by eating your enemies. When biting down on them, you'll actually need to eat them in order to build life back. Specifically, you'll need to hold down the eat button to keep chewing them, sucking out nutrients in a hazy cloud of red. Continuing to sink your teeth into pulpy victims keeps your hunger meter filled, which is almost as important as making sure your health bar doesn't empty. If you decide to take Jaws down an anorexic avenue, his hunger meter will drop, doing constant damage to the big guy if the issue isn't addressed.

Through the first few missions we had to break up a dock, ward off attack boats by hopping onto their decks, rending their crew to bits, and destroying the boat with a few rams, and escape a containment facility. The facility showed off how Jaws wasn't just a simplistic eat-everything-that-moves type of game. Instead, we had to snag a scientist off a catwalk, move him over to an access card reader to open a hatch, then escape into the adjoining room.

Next, we had to ward off shotgun toting henchmen while slamming into a series of glass panes that eventually burst us outdoors in a rush of water. The pool we fell into was teeming with harpoon blasting divers and vicious lesser sharks, all of which had to be kept at bay with massive bites as we slammed on a glass tunnel below. Once a panel was shattered, the tunnel flooded, giving us safe passage through.

In terms of graphics, the standout feature was definitely the blood, as it exploded out of just about everything in the game including Jaws himself. Aside from that we saw some expansive under and above water environments, and Jaws himself animated well. One issue we had was the camera, which made it too easy to get jammed into corners or lose track of where we were headed, so hopefully that gets refined before this game releases. The soundtrack ranges from hilarious to, well, hilarious. It's funny when you hear all the victims' screams, either crystal clear above water or aquatically muffled. It's also amusing to hear the original John Williams movie score through the game's levels. The theme music has been overdone and played upon so many times since this movie came out, it's absolutely impossible to take it seriously, but it's certainly still welcome.

Considering this game is being developed by Appaloosa Interactive, those responsible for the Ecco the Dolphin series, it could very well turn out to be quite the title. For a game design standpoint, they're certainly headed in the right direction letting players control the mighty movie fish. We'll let you know more as the game is scheduled to ship later this month.