Jaws Unleashed [PS2]

Now my shark-like instincts are telling me that with all that I've said thus far, some of you might be wondering where that "symbiotic disappointment" I mentioned earlier comes in. For that answer, I also ask that you remember the bit I had about the bugs, the camera issues, and the lock-ups. It's those frequent aspects that grab what could have been a very impressive underwater actioner and harpoon it downward a couple of notches. Fun and mindless as JAWS may be, it could have been a lot better thanks to a couple of rather devastating hitches.

It's hard to say which problem is the most bothersome of all JAWS Unleashed's issues, but if we had to pick one it would be the camera -- it is one stubborn and schizophrenic little bastard. Though users have the option to choose three different perspectives (free, locked, and first-person), it frequently gets caught in weird positions making it hard to see what's going on in tight spaces or populated areas. This dilemma is made even worse in that during most missions, JAWS will find himself in tight spaces or populated areas, and the camera becomes even more problematic if you travel from the surface to underwater on a regular basis (which you will, because you're a shark!). The sad thing is, that while you can certainly learn to live with this problem after an hour or so, it never goes away -- so it always feels like you're fighting the analog sticks when in combat.

Unleashed's bugs and glitches are almost as bad. Swim too close to some kind of structure (especially in narrow quarters), for example, and it's entirely possible (re: likely) that Bruce will get stuck on invisible polygons never to detach again -- forcing you to load from an earlier save point and thereby repeating everything you just did; this sequence is especially a pain if you had just uncovered a lot of hidden stuff prior to the need for a restart. But that's not the only glitch, not by a long shot. Required victims for missions will sometimes never be accessible at all (forcing another reload), while certain enemies will mysteriously double and triple in damage power for no apparent reason. It's also not unheard of to see the game lock-up altogether and require a hard boot... and this is with the retail copy folks (the Xbox version seemed to give us the most trouble of them all). That's pretty annoying!

As you might imagine, these problems definitely take their toll and when combined with a few questionable design choices make it harder to enjoy (the overworld map, for instance, doesn't show you which missions you've completed and which ones you haven't). The visuals aren't very impressive either. Strange textures and character models occasionally make people look inhuman and unexplained showdown, pop-in, and tearing will occur with frequency. The island of Amity is populated with all sorts of different life and objects, however, and the animations for most everything are pretty good too. Credit goes to the team for that.

Closing Comments
JAWS Unleashed is one of those difficult kinds of games to pigeonhole because it has such strong plusses and minuses. What it really boils down to is "What kind of experience are you're looking for?" Are you a "My ocean is half-full" kind of a guy or a "my ocean is half-empty" sort of person? From our perspective, we tend to lean in the more positive direction because the destruction and people-eating is just so dang fun despite all the technical problems. Sadly, with a little more fine-tuning and care it could have been a one heck of a cool game.

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