Jaws Unleashed
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| Jaws Unleashed | |
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| Developer(s) | Appaloosa Interactive |
| Publisher(s) | Majesco Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | May 23, 2006 (North America)October 20 (UK) |
| Genre(s) | Action-Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Mature 17+ |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation 2, Xbox, PC |
| Media | DVD |
Jaws Unleashed is a 2006 video game licensed from the 1975 film Jaws. It was developed by Appaloosa Interactive, developer of the popular Ecco the Dolphin series, and released by Majesco. Like the Grand Theft Auto series, the game is open-ended; the player can free roam throughout the water, feeding on other animals and destroying everything in his path.
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[edit] Storyline
Jaws Unleashed follows another great white shark (called "Jaws" in the game) from the Jaws films as he invades and terrorizes Amity Island 30 years after the original film. The game also features references to plot elements from the other three films.
Amity Island is growing, with huge businesses like Environplus moving in and others making the island a huge tourist attraction. Jaws comes into the story at this point, and kills the son of Enviroplus' CEO, forcing him to hire shark hunter Cruz Ruddock to kill the shark. Also, marine biologist Mike Brody (son of Chief Brody, played by Roy Scheider in the film) wants to capture Jaws for studies. Players are introduced to the controls and abilities of Jaws in a tutorial, where the player kills several divers, learns to attack swimmers at a beach, and must destroy a set of docks. Mike Brody shows up at this point, and captures Jaws and transports him to a waterpark, similar to Sea World.
The CEO comes into Jaws' holding tank, where Mayor Vaughn and Brody are arguing about what to do with Jaws. The officer demands that Jaws be killed for eating his son, a diver from the tutorial. After they leave, Jaws springs into action. The shark eventually escapes from his holding pen, and floods the waterpark, and makes his way to the show tanks, where he battles it out with an orca. After killing the orca, Jaws escapes and is free to roam around Amity Island to wreak havoc, eat any sea creatures and kill any enemies. Jaws finds his way into a bay in the middle of the night, and attacks swimmers at a party. When a truck starts throwing explosive barrels in the water, Jaws grabs one, and throws it at a pipe, flooding the water with toxic waste. The barrel explodes, causing a chain reaction that blows up the entire Environplus refinery. After this he causes more carnage such as destroying an underwater facility, destroying an oil shipment and finally devouring the mayor. Seeing this as the last straw Cruz sets out to blow Jaws up but ends up blowing up himself. His mission completed, Jaws then swims off into the sunset.
[edit] Free roam
The game also contains a free roam mode. In this mode, players can travel above water and under it, exploring the sea. One may encounter an array of different creatures, although some of the animals from the story missions are absent in free roam mode (for example, the colossal squid from the level entitled "The Deep"). However, players can encounter smaller, less powerful squid and orca whales. A few of the creatures players can meet are octopi, squid, crocodiles, killer whales, whale sharks, and many species of sharks. Notable features of the free roam mode include the skeletons of enormous animals on the sea floor and a dead blue whale in Fisherman's Isle. At the borders of the map in certain areas, it is possible to see several species of live whales, including blue whales, sperm whales and humpback whales.
Also in free roam are small side challenges that do not advance the story. Some of the side challenges recreate scenes from the films. For example, in one mission, players must sneak up on a girl, drag her across the surface of the water, smash her onto a buoy, and finally kill her. This is a recreation of the opening scene of the movie where Chrissie Watkins is killed by the shark.
[edit] Reception
Jaws Unleashed received an overall poor critical reaction. Most complaints against the game center around the game's glitches and freezing up and its camera problems. One of the most positive reviews came from IGN, which rewarded the game with a score of 7.4 out of 10 while calling it "Grand Shark Auto". Other reviews were far more harsh: GameSpot gave the game a rating of a 4.8 out of 10, while Official Playstation Magazine gave it a 1.5 out of 5. Metacritic's aggregate scores for Jaws Unleashed were 51 (on the low extreme of "Mixed or average reviews" for the Xbox version and 49 (on the high extreme of "Generally negative reviews") for the Playstation 2 version. Gameinformer magazine gave the game a sub-par 4.75, saying, "This game reaches a new level of video game absurdity, going well out of its way to make a complete mockery of the license it's based on." As the game was released on PC, players experienced a better overall performance, handling, and less problems during game play were reported. Indicating the later released PC version to be if not better than the console versions maybe the best release of the game so far. The same has been thought to be true in the PAL (Europe) version. Despite this, the game was a commercial success, selling over 250,000 copies, therefore earning it Gamespot's "Worst Game Everyone Played of 2006" award [1]
[edit] References
Jaws Unleashed was featured in a skit on MADtv on March 10, 2007.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Official Jaws Unleashed website
- Official Majesco Entertainment website
- Official Appaloosa Interactive website
- NTSC-uk's Jaws Unleashed Review
| The Jaws films |
| Jaws (1975) | Jaws 2 (1978) | Jaws 3-D (1983) | Jaws: The Revenge (1987) |
