Game Reviews

Jaws

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Jaws
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Without wunderkind filmmaker Spielberg at the helm, Jaws would have made no more of a splash at the cinema than any other B-movie monster flick about a giant, suspiciously rubbery creature from the deep.

This official video game clearly doesn’t have the director of E.T. and Close Encounters steering it, and while it’s always fun to pit man against monster this is definitely more a straight-to-video knock off of a movie classic than a potential Android blockbuster.

Fast fish

Ported from the 2010 iOS title, Connect2Media’s title swims safely onto Google handsets with all of its gameplay limbs intact.

You’re playing as police chief Brody, presumably from a helicopter directly above the water, as he defends the population of Amity from a ravenous great white shark that's hell bent on spoiling the island’s fourth of July celebrations by eating the revellers.

The gameplay and visuals takes a heavy dose of inspiration from the likes of Flight Control and Harbor Master. Your job is simple: save as many lives as possible from the sporadically appearing shark by guiding swimmers back to shore or directing boats to pick them up.

Swimmers are moved by flicking in the safest direction, while the course of boat and can be mapped by tapping the vessel and tracing a line with your digit.

It’s a simple tried-and-tested mechanic given an added dose of tension by a shark fin meter at the bottom of the screen, which tells you when Jaws will attack – but not from where.

Over the ten missions, the challenge grows, while a gun boat capable of scaring the shark away gives you some way to fight back later in the game.

Smile, you son of a …

There’s no denying Jaws is a nail-biting game, but the brevity and hilariously poor (man in sound booth screaming half-heartedly) voice acting hint at the shoestring production values.

Providing you’ve earned high enough star ratings in each level (always a sign of desperate padding), you can polish off the game in under an hour.

An endless Survival mode, which involves rescuing swimmers using only boats, adds some replay value, but without online leaderboards to compare scores it’s a toothless effort to extend the life of a tense but painfully brief game.

Jaws

Jaws is a nerve-wracking spin on the Flight Control template that’s unfortunately saddled with the life expectancy of that nude swimmer on the movie’s iconic poster
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Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
A newspaper reporter turned games journo, Paul's first ever console was an original white Game Boy (still in working order, albeit with a yellowing tinge and 30 second battery life). Now he writes about Android with a style positively dripping in Honeycomb, stuffed with Gingerbread and coated with Froyo