Jaws (1987)

Jaws

Oh why hello there audience! So how was everyone's Christmas and New Years? Yeah mine was awesome too! Oh, how did you hear I had my birthday over break? That's kinda stalker-ish of you... What?! You think I'm trying to be funny to avoid the fact that I haven't posted in over a month? How absurd of you audience, why would I ever do that? Anyways, let's get on to the game.

So Jaws is just one of those movies that everyone sees, one of those prominent horror movies that will scare kids out of the water for months at a time. Now I don't know about you audience, but I've noticed a trend in video games made after movies... they are terrible. So I went into this game not expecting a whole lot, but I kept hope thinking, "It's Jaws, it can't be that bad."

Really? That is Jaws? The biggest great white ever?

Game Commentary: So when you start the game, you begin on a boat in a port. You sail around until you "hit something" and decide to dive down and check it out, but when you go down, there's nothing there except jellyfish and stingrays which kill you instantly if you touch them. This is the game's way of getting you to collect the shells, which are then used to upgrade your boat. After a while, Jaws appears; this means that the game can be beaten within 10 minutes. After you shoot him until his health is down, you have to spear his heart. After that, you fly away on a plane and the game is over. And that's the game.

The sequences where you're underwater can get pretty intense (there can be 6 sharks coming after you while jellyfish are floating up at you). On top of that, you have to collect the conch shells. Then after that, you get to play a "Bonus Scene" which is impossibly hard for me. I don't know if I just had awful timing or if the jellyfish were just exceptional at dodging my bombs... wait why was I dropping bombs on jellyfish in the first place? Oh yeah, I've been playing so many current gen games that I forgot NES games don't have to sense! Oh I'm only joking, but seriously though, bombs are a little overboard...

The traders in the ports apparently accept shells as payment

What I Loved: This game was really entertaining. The scenes underwater were really fun and would occasionally get extremely intense leaving me with the "How in the world did I manage to get out of that without dying" feeling I've felt so often playing these games. I wouldn't say the gameplay was awesome, but it was definitely entertaining.


What I Hated: It was really short (I've heard of people beating it in under 5 minutes). Now I know why developers made games (like Contra) so hard! If they didn't, the games would be over in a ridiculously short amount of time. Also, it may just be a small personal gripe, but shouldn't Jaws be more... I don't know... menacing looking? In the game, Jaws is barely double the size of your diver, when in the movie he is ginormous (only made up words can describe his size).

I can never get these bombs to kill those jellyfish

General Impression: I actually enjoyed this game a lot as a break from the more intense games I've been playing lately (Fable, Black Ops, Burnout 3, Super Smash Bros, etc). But that being said, it only lasted me about 20 minutes before I beat the game, and once I beat it, I had no real interest in replaying the game. I could barely imagine paying full price for a game nowadays and only having 30 minutes of gametime tops. I'd say that it wasn't necessarily a terrible game as most made after movies tend to be, but it was by no means a very good game.