S1E27 - Jaws: Unleashed

Welcome back to another episode of Discreet Error, the podcast where every week we dive into the extensive and fascinating library of the greatest selling video game console of all time, the motherfucking PlayStation Two. I'm Derek Kicker.

I'm Ian Golding.

And just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, we're playing Jaws Unleashed for Blockbuster Month. Blockbuster Month.

Blockbuster.

This was not a boating accident.

Jaws Unleashed.

He is unfucking leashed.

When was the first time you saw Jaws?

I don't remember. Literally. I don't think we saw it in theaters. I think, do you?

But do you remember how old you were?

I was very young.

I was young enough that I was scared to go in the fucking pool for a long time after that because.

You never fucking I'm pretty sure that's.

When I started taking showers instead of baths.

Yeah, that's probably about right.

Fuck that. There's a great white in the tub. I've seen this.

Yeah, he'll get in there. He'll get into the fucking drain.

Yeah.

He didn't fucking care. Fucking try to hold Jaws back.

Terrifying. Like, nowadays, parents would not fucking let their kids see this fucking movie. Like, young kids, because the trauma but for us, it was like, yeah, it'll be fine.

You know what's weird is I saw.

Jurassic Park in theaters, okay?

And I was like, five.

Wow.

And it did not have that effect on me, Jurassic Park. I was like, this is the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

Also, dinosaurs aren't fucking real, so you're fine there.

But they're real enough when you're five.

That's true.

That's fair.

I was like, this is the coolest. It's crazy how they got a fucking trex to be in this movie.

How did they do it? How much did they pay him?

Yeah. Was he doing it for scale? Just for, like, the was he doing it for exposure?

Was there a trex wrangler on set.

With a fucking is there a Velociraptor casting couch?

God. Yeah. This is the good well, you want to get it was like that burnt the bear that was in every movie for, like, ten years. It had this really distinctive, like, weird up lower lip. If you know, you're like, well, that's the same bear.

So wonder if that's the bear from that what's that Anthony Hopkins movie?

The Edge? Yes, that's the bear.

Yes, sir. Bert the bear.

Well, Jaws was one of those movies that scared the shit out of me, of course. And I loved it as a horror movie. And then as I got older, I appreciated it more for what it really is as, like, a thriller.

And I obviously remember seeing it as a kid. And then I think I watched it after high school, and I was like, this is like, a good movie. This is like a well crafted movie.

This is cinema.

Exactly. It's a good, well done movie. It's not just duh dun dun.

Dude.

There's so much more going on there. Yeah, I really appreciate it a lot.

More as I got older. Absolutely.

And it seems as if almost as soon as there were video games, there were Jaws video games.

Oh, yes.

I feel like the 80s is like the golden age of movies being video games.

Oh, absolutely.

Right.

I feel like every 80s movie had an NES game, and Jaws is no exception. And I actually have a complete inbox copy of Jaws for the NES. And I actually really like it. And it's hard as shit.

Of course. All those fucking early nas movie tie in Top Gun, they're all fucking ridiculously. Friday the 13th and ridiculously difficult.

Yeah.

And then there was a Jaws game for the Amiga in 89, the year I was born.

Sure.

Also in 89, there was a Jaws game for the Commodore 64, which looks you should Google the graphics for this thing. It looks fucking hilarious. And then there's kind of like a hiatus. There's a little bit of a hiatus. There's a Universal Studios theme park adventure game.

Come on.

And it has Jaws as part of it. But then there's nothing until this game Jaws Unleashed, which is a late PS Two release. It came out in North America on May 23, 2006.

Beautiful. Is that on an anniversary of the movie coming out, you think?

No, the release date is June 20, 1975.

Okay.

And then there, of course, would be Jaws Ultimate Predator on the Wi.

Sure, I guess.

And now we're not getting any more Jaws video games, but we are getting games like Manhunter.

Is that the name of the game? I don't know. What are you talking about?

There's a Shark game that's, like, new.

Oh, yeah. I don't know anything about that. I'm into it.

Man Eater. It's called man eater. And I think it was a free title on PlayStation Store at 1.1 of those, like, free monthly games. Right. And it's a lot like this game. So this game was maybe a little bit ahead of its time.

Yeah, it was.

But let's get into the development of this game. Like I said, it came out in 2006 and it was developed by Appalooza Interactive.

Appalooza. Okay.

Which is a Hungarian developer. Very best known, I think, for the Echo, the Dolphin series.

Okay.

Which I love. I'm an Echo head fuck.

Yeah, it's a great game. Great games, plural.

Yeah.

I really like Tides of Time on the Genesis. And of course, Defender of the Future for Dreamcast was just the best one.

Yeah, of course it was.

Yeah.

Incredible.

They haven't done a ton since this game. Let me see.

That's a shame.

They did the Simpsons arcade game, port to the Commodore 64 and Ms. Dos.

Okay.

They did the Lost World. Jurassic park for the genesis.

That's a good one. That's actually a really good game.

Yeah, it's a very expensive game. Weirdly enough they did the South Park game for PlayStation.

Okay. But not flex your butthole.

No, they did RBI baseball two.

Not one or three, just two. Number two. Yeah.

They did the game gear port of a game. We have already talked I never would have thought we would have talked this much about this game on this podcast, but they did the game gear Port of Garfield, caught in the act.

Damn. Listen to that. I think that's like two fucking shows or two or three shows in a row that we've talked about Garfield.

Wow.

About Garfield caught in the act.

Specifically that exact game. Yeah. Lasagna based.

Yeah, you love it.

I believe they're out of business now, too.

It's weird how many developers just either get absorbed by the big ones. I mean, I guess it's happening with everything, but they just go away.

It's like a lot of these people.

Were probably just the owners probably weren't trying to be billionaires. They're probably just trying to make a living, make some fun games, and you get one fucking problem. Game one doesn't sell well and you're just gone.

Well, funny enough, Jaws Unleashed was actually their last game.

Yeah.

The company ceased production operations in 2006.

Wow. After this game to crime.

Yeah. R-I-P. This was published by Majesco.

Okay.

Sounds like fucking carpet company.

Majestico of.

I guess Cubert fame. Love Cubert.

Underrated, underrated, classic Cubert.

I'll die on that hill.

I will die on that hill.

They've also published PC Ports of the Blood Rain games, which are fine.

They're fine. They're fine there.

Yeah, they're fine.

Yeah, they're not really fine.

The ports are bad. I think the ports on I think the ports on switch are very bad.

Well, I think the game itself is probably pretty bad.

If I remember the controls, the controls do not translate sure well, but other than that, there is not a ton of information on the development of this somewhat obscure, late in life PlayStation Two game that apparently sunk an entire company.

Sunk.

Get it?

But surprisingly enough, this game does have a story, and it is the most PS, two ass story ever. Let's get into it.

Welcome to Amity Island. This year promises to be better than ever. Seal island continues to be a great attraction, especially with a recent increase in its population and new partnerships with corporations such as environ us to open our doors to even more visitors.

So this game takes place 30 years after the event of the first film?

Yes. Right.

So I don't know if it's meaning that's to imply that in this game's, canon, the other movies don't exist.

I don't think they do, because one of the characters is one of the Brody children, and I think he's like Oceanographer. Maybe he was in Jaws Three. You know what? Maybe it is canon with the other.

Movies, because I remember him being an.

Oceanographer in Jaws Three.

The best one yeah.

Jaws Revenge.

Yes. That's the actual best one.

Yeah.

But it seems as if it is.

Implied that this is the Jaws somehow, somehow he survived.

He's a 35 foot great white shark and he gives negative fucks, zero fucks.

He's a literal force of fucking nature.

And you control Jaws and the bad guy, which I actually dig in this is a company called Environ Plus.

Yes.

Envyron plus. One word.

Yes.

And very early on in the game, the CEO, Steven Shaw, is eaten by the ferocious beast.

Indeed he is.

Yes.

His son. His son. It's his son, the son of the CEO is eaten by Jaws early in the game. And so Shaw hires Cruise Raddock, who is a shark hunter, which is a thing which is a thing to kill Jaws, to bust a cap. And he look, with Jaws it's on site.

Yeah, absolutely on site. Yeah.

At the same time, Michael Brody, who is a marine biologist, wants to capture.

Jaws to study him.

Study him. Now. So if this is Michael hubris of man of course, if this is Michael, then definitely four is not canon because.

He gets killed in four.

So the only one that is canon is the first one in this two.

And three might be canon, but definitely four is not.

So in the beginning of the game, you kill a bunch of people. Like, it is it is a fucking murder fail.

It is a schmorgus board of fucking gleeful violence.

And eventually Brody catches you and transports you to, like a SeaWorld analog.

And let's be clear here.

This SeaWorld is on Amity Island somehow. Yes.

Just clearing that up.

Absolutely. And you're put in a tank. And if we know anything about sharks and other marine animals, they fucking love being in tanks best.

This is where they belong.

And of course, the CEO of Environment.

Plus is like, yo, kill this motherfucker.

Killed my fucking shark.

Killed my motherfucking son. Killed my son.

Yeah.

You think I'm going to stand for this? But the mayor, of course, the mayor of Hammondy, always, they just have a great track record of electing mayors that really put the people first. Always he wants to put the shark on display.

Of course.

Why wouldn't you?

And they argue about this and then they leave. And the second they leave, Jaws being the crafty shark he is, I am busting out. And then he kills Shamoo and then busts out.

You are fucking glossing over a lot, my friends. First of all, the way he gets out of the first tank is he kills a fucking scientist and gets his key card.

He gets his key card, the shark.

And then he somehow floods the entire complex with water so he can swim through the displays and start smashing up fucking doors. And then he gets, like you said, he did, the main thing. And he does fight Shamoo in the middle of a Shamoo performance. P fucking S. There are children, their parents watching a fucking killer whale show. And then they watch a battle to the death between Jaws and fucking Shamoo.

It is incredible.

Yeah, they really went for it.

It might be the best boss fight in fucking video game history.

Yeah.

I'm not exaggerating.

This is actually where Deep Blue Sea and Jaws crosses over the two franchises.

Yes.

And it turns out Jaws was one of the first Deep Blue Sea sharks where they made him super smart.

Yeah.

He knew his key cards. The game told me that he understands what a key card is, said, get the scientist key card.

Absolutely. This whole time we'll get into it in the gameplay. But when you're out in the wild, you're like fighting submarines and other sharks want to get up in your shit. Scuba divers are shooting spear guns at you.

What the fuck?

But once he escapes, they find out that the environment plus slow submarine things are blowing sound in the water and it's pissing off all the sharks. And that's why sharks are fucking going.

Ham sharks are going off on Amity Island this year.

Yeah.

And the mayor is like, I don't give a shit.

So what's the problem?

So what?

We're not closing. It's 4 July weekend.

Yeah, surprise.

Of course.

So then Jaws finds his way into a beach party and kills a bunch of people.

There's a rave going on in the background. You're hearing rave music and there's people swimming and I don't know if you're like me, you're not a big fan of rave culture. There's a real feeling of accomplishment.

Killing rave. What's that German word for being happy at other people's?

Misery? Oh, shot and Freud.

Yeah, some serious shot and Freud at killing these people.

And you know that their friends can't hear their screams because of their horrible, horrible music. Oh, it's wonderful. It's wonderful.

They think it's just a sample.

Yeah, exactly.

And then eventually there's a last battle where they're shooting you with a fucking spear gun and they got the barrels attached to you. And then at one point after you've destroyed the boat that they're shooting you from in one of the funniest fucking things I've ever seen, a helicopter is like, it looks like he's at the wreck of the boat. And then he's like, oh, well, drop the bomb. And they drop a bomb that looks like a rocket from twisted metal.

Yes.

And they just drop a bomb in the ocean where they think the shark is might be.

And then it blows up.

And then the helicopter is like, good job, and flies away. They don't really wait. They actually start flying away before the bomb goes off and just pretty much yeah. They kill Jaws as they fly off into the distance. What do we hear? We hear the and then what do we see?

Little fin.

Dorsal fin. Little dorsal dorsal fin popping out on the water. You can't keep jaws down.

No, not even with a bomb.

This shark is supernatural. He's full of fucking harpoons.

Yeah, the bomb got dropped on him.

Yeah, a bomb got dropped on him. Somehow he got these, like, barrels off of him and the tracker, all of it, and he's off. Still kicking.

Did you particularly enjoy the part where he used an exploding barrel to destroy a factory? Because I did. Or the refinery? That was pretty early in the game. They were like shirtless dudes in a truck on a bridge rolling exploding barrels into the water. And it's like, destroy the refinery. And I was like, what do you mean? And you just pick up fucking swim.

Over these floating that's right after the rave.

Yeah, I think it was right after the rave. That was fucking incredible.

Barrel and throws it at an oil.

Pipeline and just blows the whole thing up. Just the environmental cost alone of this three day weekend that fucking Jaws was, oh, my gosh.

Jaws is an eco terrorist.

Absolutely fucking is.

Yeah.

There's no question.

Which is wild.

Yeah.

I would have thought that the reason there were so many shark attacks around Amity at this time was because there's so much blood in the water from your fucking antics.

That's true. Yeah.

In the tutorial alone, I would say you kill close to two dozen people.

Yes.

And plenty more seals and anything you.

Can get your mouth around.

Yeah.

You destroy quite a few boats, too. And the rule in this game, if the boat has an engine, it will explode. It will. Including a pontoon boat, a little RA sea do wrap that fucker will blow up.

If I know anything about boats, it's that they are very prone to being blown up.

They always explode.

It is very easy. A headbutt from a shark will make.

A boat explode 100%, 100% of the time.

This is very accurate.

Yeah. We've all seen it.

So let's get into the gameplay of this because the story doesn't matter. Well, especially when you start playing.

Yeah.

Distress call on the police bands and the shark sightings were in this area. Everyone keep an eye out.

There it is.

So this game is fucking Grand Theft Auto as a shark?

Yes.

It is an open world game.

Kind of. Sort of. Yeah.

I mean, the open world around him of the island.

Yeah.

You can swim around and do all kinds of side quests. Yeah, you got quests. You can get all kinds of antics. You have a big map. You could literally, if you wanted to. You don't have to do any of the story. You could just fucking swim around, eat people, eat seals, eat whatever you want. Fish, other sharks, blow up boats.

Eat.

Skiers off the back of boats.

Why not jump onto the land and get some fucking people sunbathing? You got 10 seconds to get back in the water. And it's not as hard as maybe.

It should be, but fuck it. You can do that. Yeah. Because this is Jaws.

This isn't your normal this isn't your normal Shark Week bullshit.

Oh, no, certainly.

Right. All right.

And you have a couple things at your disposal.

Right.

You have shark sense. Shark sense mode. And it'll highlight your objectives, which is convenient. Very real hand holdy ass thing, but convenient. You can whip shit with your tail, which comes in handy because there's lots of divers in cages. Amity is the number one stop in the world if you want to go cage diving.

Cage diving? Yeah. It's this epicenter of that world because.

There are hundreds of divers in cages there waiting for you, seemingly.

Seemingly. Because they're not doing anything else until you show up. They go, oh, my God, get out of the water.

And then you roll up, you whip it with your fucking tail, and he gets knocked out of the cage somehow. And then you can bite him. Biting him doesn't always kill him right away, though. Sometimes it just takes off their clothes.

Yeah.

And sometimes it just takes off their limb and you can swim past them and watch them swim without a leg. And you're like it's weird.

Now, like we said, Jaws's stated size this was a sticking point for me in this game. Jaws stated size is 35ft.

Yeah.

That is a fucking huge shark.

Yes. Right.

But it is not so big to where a seal is basically able to be eaten in a single bite in a chomp.

Yeah. It's awesome.

So there are some scale issues in the game, especially because when you are on land, the seals are bigger the seals are bigger on land than they are in the water.

Yeah. They shrink.

And the seals at some points seem to be not much larger than the fish.

Yeah.

Which doesn't make any goddamn sense.

Doesn't make any goddamn sense.

And if he's 35ft long, some of these cages seem like they're like 20 sqft.

Yeah.

Yes.

And, like, some of these sea dos must be massive. It seemed like there just wasn't a lot of thought put into the scaling of things.

Right.

Which is very funny.

I think it's yeah, it's it's fucking great.

And of course, there's a mechanic where, as you play through the game, your health bar goes up, your Stamina bar goes up, which is important because you need to charge up that stamina to hit to Ram.

Yeah. You get points for completing missions or whatnot. And then in between checkpoints, it's like, do you want to upgrade your speed, your hunger, your whatever? You can put some points into those and make yourself a better shark.

Yeah. And you have to eat all the time. You have a hunger gauge. You have two gauges, two little meters. You have the HUD right.

Yeah.

Which has your, like, sonar stuff, red sonar. And then it has your health and then it has your hunger level. You have to eat. If you get too hungry, you start losing health. It is not good. But the less hungry you are, the.

More you are good to go.

You can part your head butt meter and when that's fully charged and it's also the same as your tailwip meter and you're whipping shit.

Yes.

That's pretty much the do violence meter.

How you can upgrade and get new attacks.

Yes. What is it called? The big body bomb.

Yeah.

Where you jump in the air and you land on a boat and it explodes immediately. You don't have to hit it twice.

And doesn't hurt you.

No, it doesn't, somehow.

And then there's like a spiraling attack and you're like.

That makes any sense.

Yeah, whatever.

And this game is largely about just mayhem, which I love fucking love.

I fucking love it.

I love a game that's just like, who fucking cares if you do the missions? Just be a shark.

Be a shark. Wreak havoc.

Just cause fucking mayhem everywhere you swim.

It's great. Yeah.

And you can tell, like I said, that, you know, you have this game, Man Eater, which came out in 2020. It is eerie how similar these two games are.

Interesting.

Like in game, in gameplay especially, it is eerie how similar they are. Yeah, it's crazy. Like how I guess.

This game could.

Influence I feel like they went back and listened and what, played this game for inspiration. Because it is very similar.

Yeah, for sure.

And there's just not a lot to it's. A simple game that's fun, I would say. This is a game that can be picked up and played for 45 minutes to an hour and put down and then maybe you don't play it for a week.

Sure. And then you come back to it.

Yeah. And the good thing is it's not like modern games where you're like, oh, I have to relearn all the controls. Oh, what was I doing? Oh, where was I?

What quest was I? There's none of that.

Just get in there, start swimming around and breaking shit.

Yeah, because who cares at a certain point.

Yeah, exactly.

And this game is not that long, I would say.

This game is 5 hours long, tops.

Way tops.

But here's the cool thing. This game also has a lot of replayability because once you beat the game, you can go back and do all the side quest things that you missed or try to get better scores on the challenges or fully upgrade your shark.

Yeah.

So there's like a completionist aspect to it.

There is. There sure is.

Which is a lot of game for something that's like this.

Clearly goofy.

Yeah, exactly.

A surprising amount of game. But hey, what the fuck do we know? Let's see what the critics had to.

Say about Jaws Unleashed.

Let's do that.

For the first time ever, Amity has its own great white shark on display for the tourists. This is going to draw crowds at record numbers.

Mayor our research tank can hold the shark, but we are not prepared to display him in the showroom tank.

Nonsense. The warden is already spread. Give the people what they want. Brody mr. Mayor, I understand you captured a shark by the COVID That him. My son was killed by a shark there. Damn thing ripped right through the cage. I demand you kill that creature immediately.

So this game came out on PC, p s Two and Xbox.

No, I mean, I guess GameCube was.

Like, dead by probably.

Yeah.

Nobody really gave a shit about GameCube anymore.

Truth. But I mean, what?

I feel like the 360 came out in 2007.

Yeah.

Right around there.

Yeah, 2007 ish this is like tail end of Xbox life, too. But it did receive mixed reviews.

What?

And most of the complaints center around the game's glitches and freezing up and its camera problems, which is true.

Yeah.

We kind of glossed over this because we were having, like, so much fun reliving this game, but yeah, occasionally you'll clip through a wall and get stuck and sometimes the game will just freeze and sometimes the camera just whips around.

For no fucking fucking reason.

Yeah.

And sometimes you cannot complete a quest.

Right. You cannot do it.

It is impossible. And then you have to restart the game.

Yeah.

Restart the game. And hopefully hope your save is before the game decided to glitch out.

Yeah.

And sometimes that's not enough.

No.

And you just cannot do a quest.

Right. Exactly.

But this was a commercial success, which is weird that it was that loser's last game sold over 250,000 copies on the Xbox alone.

Oh, shit. Okay.

And Game Spot gave it the worst game everyone played of 2006 award. Okay, well, cheeky fuckers.

Cheeky fucks.

On Metacritic, it got a 52 out of 100.

Damn. Okay.

The PC version scored a little bit better, got a 55.

Xbox a little bit worse. 51. Okay.

But Edge, you remember the famous gaming publication Edge?

I missed them.

UK based magazine monthly Edge gave it a four out of ten.

Ouch. Come on.

I know. Game Informer gave it a 4.75 out of ten.

Sure.

Game Pro gave it a 2.75 out of five. Game Revolution gave it a D minus. Game Spot gave it a 3.8 out of ten. Game Zone gave it a 4.5 out of ten. Game Spy gave it two out of five stars. IGN. IGN gave it a 7.4 out of ten.

Okay.

PlayStation Magazine, one and a half stars. The AV Club, because we want to know what those fucking nerds, let's find.

Out what they have to do.

Gave it a D plus.

Wow. Dicks. Yeah.

Fucking dorks, man. So people weren't too hyped on this game.

A lot of hate. Lot of hate.

A lot of hate for no reason. I think a lot of this is unfounded. I guess if you are unlucky enough to run into a lot of the camera problems and it like fucking up, you know, that could be a put a real bit of a damper.

Yeah.

Put some mud in your muffin.

That's true. But I don't think this game is that bad.

I don't either. I don't know why it's weird, because I did not expect it.

It was unexpected.

I think it's pretty fun, actually, considering how many dog shit video games are out there. I wouldn't put this in, like, the bottom.

We have played far, far worse games on this podcast.

This is so much better than Celebrity Death Match.

100%. 100% true.

Well, Ian, what do you rate in this game?

I mean, as we said, I have.

A soft spot for this game because.

It'S just fucking swimming around and killing.

Fuckers and blowing up boats and doing missions.

That's all about violence, and I think.

It knows what it is. So I'm going to give Jaws Unleashed.

Six and a half dead swimmers out of ten.

It's just a good time and I'm.

Not going to apologize for liking it.

Yeah, I think this game is very much like this is a C plus game.

Yes. Which I mean, hey, that's passing grade, baby.

Hey, man, no one's going to call your parents for that.

Seas get degrees.

That's right.

Which is why I'm giving this game also six and a half.

Nice.

Dead shamoos.

Nice.

That boss fight is for that alone is for bonkers.

That whole section of the game is one of the most unhinged things it's beautiful I've ever seen. It's beautiful. Absolutely worth it.

Absolutely worth it. Worth every second. Play this game. Play this game.

Play it. Play it. Play it.

All right, well, thanks so much for listening to our thoughts on Jaws Unleashed.

And if you just can't get enough of us, you can follow us on social media. You can find us on instagram at discrete error pod. You can also follow me at Funeral.

Casual Games, and you got me at Ian Golding games.

And tune in every PS Tuesday, where we drop a new episode. Or every Friday where we do our weekly update, which, I mean, sometimes when we talk about video games, sometimes we just rip into the Ted Lasso season.

Finale and we just shoot the shit or whatever.

Yeah, or quote, I think you should leave for most ideas until you turn off your phone or whatever you're listening to podcasts on your ham radio.

Whatever.

I can't take those guys. I don't give a shit about the show. Well, fuck you. You should.

Yeah, you should.

Absolutely.

Shit.

So, thanks again and we will see you next week.

Badaboom, badaboo.