Jaws Unleashed [PS2]

Instead of coming up with ways to make the shark's lack of grace work with the controls, Jaws Unleashed pretends that you're controlling an entirely different, more nimble character. So missions require the sort of precision that just isn't possible when guiding a two-ton missile through water. It's bad enough that we have to continually fight the controls to advance; even worse when there's a life meter constantly ticking away.

Not to mention that most of the missions and objectives are just silly. We had a hard time getting past the first, where the shark has to grab a doctor in his teeth, then swipe his body across a key card reader to open a gate. This sort of silliness permeates the game -- there's a goofy anti-corporate plot -- and totally undermines the admittedly cool premise of controlling the world's most dangerous predator in a vast, watery sandbox.

This could have worked with a more cartoonish or fantastic license. Games should bend and break the rules of reality. But by tying Jaws to the film concept -- a story that almost every player is guaranteed to know -- the game also ties itself to a very specific and relatively realistic world. In that world, a massive shark beaching itself to eat a human is criminally dumb. No doubt Appaloosa would insist the game is supposed to be tongue in cheek, but there's nothing in the content to indicate that.

Given how long the game has been in production, we'd hoped for a better sense of production design. But the graphics are middling, with only the shark and a few sea creatures standing out. The humans are poorly animated and even more poorly voiced; in fact, the cutscenes and dialogue are amateurish. So too are the menus, which look as if they were thrown together in a weekend.

In the spirit of generosity, we'll offer that there's about 30 minutes of entertainment to be had. Any fan of Grand Theft Auto's goofy violence will grin as the shark tears people limb from limb. Hours of doing that and little else for hours, however, will dull the enthusiasm of even the most bloodthirsty gamer.