Where the Wii version took Unleashed’s ridiculousness and ran with it to create a weird, cel-shaded adventure, the 3DS version is considerably more “realistic” – and and considerably less interesting. Here, Jaws (in a story told through text journal entries by the first movie’s marine biologist, Matt Hooper) is back to terrorizing Amity Island, without interference from any enemy more sinister than the Coast Guard, or from any monster more improbable than a colossal squid. And the focus, for the most part, is on gruesomely chowing down on any humans dumb enough to enter the water.

On paper, it offers Jaws fans exactly what they want: a chance to crush swimmers between powerful teeth and see their dismembered bits float by in glorious 3D. And for the bulk of its 16-level campaign, that’s really all Ultimate Predator offers, as Jaws clumsily targets swimmers and knocks fishermen off boats in enclosed ocean levels bounded by invisible walls.

Most of these levels are quota-driven, with success declared after you’ve destroyed a certain number of fish/swimmers/boats/other sharks, although a few levels late in the game are actually driven by exploration and goals other than eating. Those levels – which involve finding your way through a maze of caves, taking down a Coast Guard cutter by releasing aquatic mines and an obligatory escape from captivity – are among the most interesting parts of the game (which is not to say that they’re good), but they’re offset by occasional, excruciating minigame levels that limit Jaws to a narrow area of movement as he tediously dodges mines or machinegun fire lobbed by fleeing/chasing boats.

So, that’s a little boring, maybe, but an OK foundation for a Jaws game. Like so many of Jaws’ victims, however, Ultimate Predator falls apart on execution. Your prey, whether human or fish, are all tiny on the 3DS screen, and can therefore be really hard to see, especially when they’re swimming on the near-opaque surface of the water. (Eventually, you’ll learn to spot the surface swimmers by the little ripples they make in the waves, but there’s not much fun in eating those.) Even when you spot and successfully chomp your prey, seeing the game’s stick-figure humans instantly turn into clouds of gibs to the tune of half-hearted screams gets old surprisingly fast.

Above: On the plus side, you do get to wreck a few submarines

Given the huge, murky environments, it can also be difficult to judge the distance between you, your prey and any other objects you’re supposed to interact with, which in turn makes targeting tough. Turning on 3D helps that a little, but not as much as you might think, as Ultimate Predator’s 3D is prone to frequent camera glitching and adds only a limited sense of depth to the gameplay.

As troubling as Ultimate Predator’s visual problems are, they might have been forgivable if not for the game’s biggest flaw: its controls are terrible. While the 3DS Ultimate Predator keeps it simple, giving Jaws only a few key moves based around bite, dodge and charge commands, there’s always a half-second delay between pushing a button (or tapping the touchscreen) and seeing Jaws do as he’s told. And given that anything more complicated than a bite requires jamming on multiple buttons/touchscreen panels in quick, mushy succession, it ensures that Jaws will only do as he’s told about half the time. That’s inexcusable, and not only makes taking down enemies more confusing than it should be, but also makes any task requiring precision or split-second reactions a nightmare.

Above: The four basic commands – bite, charge, dodge and quick turn – can be executed by button presses or touchscreen taps. Both options are equally unresponsive

Of course, all of this – the controls, the visuals, everything – could be overlooked if what you were doing was actually fun. Knocking people off boats and eating them is a cheap thrill, but one that wears out its welcome rapidly, and by the time the game decides to offer more, it A) is nearly over, and B) has implemented those things so clumsily that all it accomplishes is to turn bored disinterest into frustration.

Experience has taught us not to expect a whole lot from Jaws games, but the 3DS Ultimate Predator is disappointing even by the franchise’s lovably mediocre standards. The game’s just not much fun; the controls are sluggish to the point of being broken, the visuals are bland, the 3D is glitchy and seeing blood in the water does little to make the bare-bones gameplay and story interesting. If it had even a fraction of the weirdness of its bloodless Wii cousin (or Jaws Unleashed, for that matter), it might have been entertaining – but hey, if all you want out of the game is to play as a shark that eats people, at least there’s plenty of that.

The post Jaws: Ultimate Predator 3DS review appeared first on Game News.

Above: Stealth and aerial attacks require you to stop an arrow on a meter, just like the real Jaws!

Where the 3DS version of JUP is a comparatively realistic, bloody shark sim in which Jaws chews on swimmers and fishermen, the Wii version runs in the exact opposite direction, offering up a bizarre, linear, story-driven adventure. Instead of just snacking on swimmers, Jaws goes head-to-head against aquatic enemies that range from elephant seals, other sharks and (occasional) divers, to huge undersea robots, mutant leviathans and (presumably cloned) dinosaurs. It’s nothing on par with the open-world madness that was 2006’s Jaws Unleashed (you’ll never, for example, have to swipe a scientist across a card reader to open a door), and it’s disappointingly gore-free and entirely linear. But it’s nevertheless a jaw-droppingly ridiculous game in its own right.

Somewhere out there, there’s an alternate universe where Jaws was turned into a Saturday-morning cartoon. There has to be. How else can one explain the bright, cel-shaded weirdness on display here?

Above: Here, let us give you a brief demonstration, with vaguely indignant commentary

For starters, there’s Jaws himself (Herself? Itself?), a big gray horror who the camera follows way too closely, who attacks his foes with unlockable bite and tail-whip combos, and whose appearance can be continually changed and upgraded with new and tougher fins, teeth and skin textures. His attacks start out credibly enough, as he flails at enemies and stealth-chomps divers to death, but as you unlock more of them (with points earned from kills and by collecting shark teeth), they’ll contort him into increasingly improbable somersaults, twists and figure-8s. If you’re looking for a “serious” shark sim, this isn’t it.

His attacks, by the way, are almost completely blood-free (the only red stuff in the water appears in tiny, barely perceptible bursts), and are calculated to give the impression that he’s not actually, you know, eating his enemies (apart from schools of little angelfish, which Jaws gulps down to refill his health). Where Jaws Unleashed set new benchmarks for undersea gore and dismemberment, defeated enemies in Ultimate Predator simply drift away (intact) and disappear. Even when Jaws bites down and shakes the life out of them, the result is never anything more violent than a cloud of bubbles.

Above: This may look like blood, but don’t be fooled. It’s actually a camera filter brought on by eating a power-up jellyfish

Factor in a tinny rendition of the Jaws score and the game’s nominal storyline (related in still-image cutscenes with voiceovers), which pits Jaws against a sinister megacorporation with vague world-domination goals and a weird vendetta against him, and it begs the question: Just who the hell is this for? Who looked at the Jaws license and decided the best way to adapt it would be as a bloodless, aquatic brawler? As much as we (perhaps more than anyone else) can appreciate that the most absurd aspects of Jaws Unleashed have been blown out into a full game, we have to wonder why Majesco didn’t just turn this into “Discovery Channel Presents: Shark Adventure” and leave cinema’s most iconic shark to chomp his way through more appropriately bloody people-eating sims.

The silliness doesn’t end with the bloodless combat, of course. The levels Jaws visits are a seemingly random assortment of underwater locales that range from the Suez Canal and the Great Barrier Reef to a flooded Egyptian temple, a sinking research vessel and a remote mad-scientist facility filled with giant monsters and robotic diving suits. The developers deserve some credit for filling these with occasional secret detours and collectible fish to devour, but they’re still simplistic, linear, and above all goofy.

Above: Jaws also has “shark sense,” which makes everything green and reveals enemies, objects and lines of sight (for stealth purposes)

The boss fights also deserve a mention. Every so often, Jaws will run afoul of something huge, whether it’s a creepy elephant seal with giant claws, a colossal squid, a sperm whale or a massive diving robot piloted by another, smaller diving robot (in turn piloted by a fragile scuba diver). And that’s to say nothing of the final confrontation, which involves a boat that hides more absurdly convenient guns than a six-year-old boy’s dream fort. Instead of being a challenge, these confrontations are simple, hard-to-fail quick time events in which you’ll just swing the Wii remote and Nunchuk in the directions indicated onscreen.

While that makes for prettier(?) boss fights, it also underlines Ultimate Predator’s near-total lack of challenge. There are occasional awkward stealth elements, but right up until the end, you’ll spend the game flailing away at interchangeable groups of sharks, seals, divers, orcas and alligators, and will only occasionally run up against something that represents a genuine threat. Given how repetitive the action is, though, the easiness actually works in the game’s favor, turning what might have otherwise been a miserable slog (with a few notable-but-clumsily executed set-pieces) into a breezy romp through varied, occasionally eerie settings as a big, mean sea-beast.

Jaws: Ultimate Predator isn’t a good game by any stretch (although it’s still more interesting than the bloodier 3DS version). It’s ugly, clumsy and buggy, and will hugely disappoint anyone who’s just looking to play as a giant shark that messily eats people. For all its faults, however, it’s still surprisingly competent, and its short run-time and lack of challenge make it worth breezing through once, for the weird spectacle alone.

The post Jaws: Ultimate Predator Wii review appeared first on Game News.