Giant shark battles are few and far between in survival horror games, but we explore why it’s finally time to do them justice!
There are a lot of truly terrifying moments to be found in video games that arguably rival any scares that come from a horror film. There’s the infamous one-way mirror scene in Resident Evil 2. There’s that alarming bathtub mindfuck moment out of Eternal Darkness. There’s Silent Hill 2’s introduction of the Pyramid Head. But is there anything in the history of video games that can generate more fear in a gamer than this?
Yes, absolutely. Most things, in fact. Honestly, even the fight with King Koopa in Super Mario Bros. is more frightening than an 8-bit rendition of the Jaws theme, complete with an 8-bit image of the titular shark. And that’s kind of the problem here.
In spite of how many surprising creatures or topics have led to some great scares in video games, one beast that’s largely evaded the conversation is the giant bloodthirsty shark. There have been a number of video games that are based on the Jaws films and vicious sharks are definitely no strangers to video games, yet the ferocious animals are not turned to when there’s a need for horror. However, the fact that Shark Week is still a celebrated “event” every year, that there are six Sharknado movies, and that a film like The Meg is already well on its way to making half a billion dollars is pure enough that the public’s fascination with giant sharks is far from over. Accordingly, we’ll explore the video game industry’s relationship with giant sharks, try to figure out why this specific brand of horror hasn’t translated over to the medium, and propose how the sub-genre could finally be done right.
When it comes to the treatment of sharks in past video games, it’s interesting to see that a large sect of them have been approached with more humorous slants, like the cartoonish offerings from Banjo-Kazooie, Snacker and Clanker, or the Shark bosses found in Okami and Ariel: The Little Mermaid (although Ariel’s shark packs a surprising amount of bite for a children’s game). Additionally, more open world titles like the MMO game, World of Warcraft, and Nintendo’s Endless Ocean even feature massive whale sharks that might not look too intimidating, but still require a massive party to take down in the case of the former.
Furthermore, there are plenty of other titles that feature sharks, but just in bland, uneventful contexts, like the sharks in Nintendo’s Jaws, Genesis’ Ecco the Dolphin, or the Atari 2600’s Shark Attack. You’d forget that sharks are even dangerous animals from their representation in these games.
Thankfully, once the ’90s come along and video games grow up a little there begin to be some titles that feature legitimately frightening sharks, albeit in unusual places. Surprisingly, the best examples of frightening sharks are found in non-Jaws or shark-related games, like a shark boss in the original Resident Evil, the persistent enemies in Tomb Raider: Underworld, or even the inexplicable Santorini Shark obstacle in Tony Hawk: Shred (which seriously doesn’t get enough credit).
Some titles find unexpected success from expanding the boundaries of their water-centric boss battles, many of which adopt top-down perspectives to accommodate the massive beasts that are on display. The elusive Megalodon Easter egg in Battlefield 4’s “Naval Strike DLC”, the Great White Sharks in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, the water-based Del Lago Lake Monster battle in Resident Evil 4, all fit into this mold. Saints Row The Third even features a ridiculous land shark gun to up its already high insanity factor. Crysis decides to use an invincible shark as its official “get back on land” referee and its terrifying presence is sure to keep players out of the water for as long as possible.
On top of all of this, the few survival horror titles that have featured aquatic settings like Sega Saturn’s Deep Fear or the XBOX’s Cold Fear don’t fully take advantage of the full range of aquatic enemies at their disposal. These games are more concerned with the claustrophobic confines of a submarine than the dangers that lie outside of it. What’s crucial about all of this is that none of the above titles choose to make these sorts of aquatic-based battles their priority and it’s about time that they do.
What’s worth pointing out here is that the few “next-gen” Jaws titles that try to cash in on the gore and violence of giant sharks decide that the best approach is to play as Jaws, but that in itself may be what’s fundamentally held back these games from mass success. Admittedly, the original Jaws game for the Nintendo allows players to fight against and avoid Jaws, but unsurprisingly the 8-bit experience is far from frightening.
Jaws: Unleashed and Jaws: Ultimate Predator both allow the gamer to control Jaws, rather than be at his mercy. There’s obviously a certain appeal to controlling a rampaging shark, but there is a lot more material to mine from this horror than simply being its prey. It’s reminiscent of how the Sega Genesis Jurassic Park game allows players to control a raptor, but that was in addition to also playing as a human. There have been some radical re-design for survival horror franchises, but none of them have ever banked on the idea of solely playing as the monster, which is what both of these Jaws titles choose to do. At least provide the alternative as an unlockable option or something! This design certainly speaks to a clear era in video games, but it’s just funny how tone-deaf it can also be in retrospect. The big, flashy game experience isn’t always the superior one.
Curiously, both Jaws: Unleashed and Jaws: Ultimate Predator decide to set themselves three decades after the events of the original film, while also ignoring the events of the various sequels. It’s interesting to see both games follow such a similar structure, even though they came out five years apart and it was fairly unanimously agreed that the first game, Jaws: Unleashed, was a failure. For whatever reason Majesco Entertainment decided to not attempt to improve their shoddy formula at all and even though Jaws: Ultimate Predator is a slightly better game, it still suffers from the same exact downfalls and it’s somehow an even less ambitious endeavor.
In the meager defense of these games, Jaws: Unleashed tries to pride itself on a robust story campaign. The game even makes some ambitious decisions, like capturing Jaws and putting him in a Seaworld knockoff, only for him to eventually break out and cause even more destruction. The open sandbox and exploration aspect are also appreciated when you’re not in a destructive mood.
Players have the ability to upgrade Jaws’ various stats, like his speed, health, hunger, and power. When Jaws’ hunger increases, his health drops accordingly and he has to eat or he’ll take further damage. Ideas like this are creative and unique, but again, playing as Jaws still seems like a fundamentally flawed design that centers around being the danger instead of being in danger, which is really what’s important here. At its best moments it perhaps feels like Grand Theft Auto, but with a shark, but that’s not exactly what a Jaws game should feel like.
Any innovation aside in these titles, they’re both plagued by a wealth of camera and control problems as well as unnecessary glitches that hold it back. In spite of the bad reputation of these titles, gamers were still so desperate for giant shark content that Jaws: Unleashed still sold over 250,000 copies on the XBOX alone, yet it still earned the sarcastic title, “Worst Game Everyone Played of 2006” by Gamespot.
The games also decide to incorporate unnecessary puzzle elements that employ very confusing game logic at that. Most of the times that it seems like applying the raw strength of a shark would make sense, there are instead obtuse obstacles that involve grabbing scientists and using them as keycards as you pull them into the water.
Jaws: Ultimate Predator doesn’t exactly offer up better gameplay (in fact the incorporation of Wii motion controls make it even more tedious), but the game becomes more memorable for how ridiculous it gets. Rather than modest obstacles like escaping an aquarium, Jaws is now up against mech diving suits, megalodons, and literal dinosaurs as he attempts to survive. In spite of these interesting threats, the Wii version takes a real dive in the animation department and the title loses its open world quality that was present in the previous game. The 3DS version of Jaws: Ultimate Predator is apparently a much better version of the game than its Wii counterpart (which features no blood, by the way), but it’s still a deeply problematic title.
Lesser known titles outside of the Jaws franchise, like Depth for the PC (which allows players to control seven different types of sharks, including a megalodon) as well as the Hungry Shark World series for the mobile world, continue to explore the trend of allowing players to control blood-thirsty sharks with other fish or hapless scuba divers as prey. Shark Attack Deathmatch 2 for the PC may be the apex of this structure, which was an online title that allowed players to finally be either the shark or scuba divers, but it failed to make that big of a splash. There’s even a bizarre Shark Dating Simulator XL, which attempts to anthropomorphize sharks and put them in the popular dating sim genre, which inexplicably has found more success than conventional giant shark titles.
Finally, a canceled title that was meant to come out for XBOX and PS2 called Bloody Waters: Terror From the Deep was another killer shark game that put the player in control of the beast rather than the other way around. It was supposed to operate extremely similar to Jaws: Unleashed, which likely means that its cancellation was for the best.
With all of these failed experiments and half-baked ideas that struggle to understand what makes films like Jaws or The Meg so satisfying, it may finally be time to develop a fresh strategy. Why not take the same approach used for Alien: Isolation (or even high the exact same team) and give Jaws an insanely intelligent AI and turn it into more of a stealth experience? It took a radical change like this to finally make the Alien games viable again, so why not Jaws? A slow, lonely fishing boat in the vast open waters is different than being locked in a space station, but there’s still room for overlap and ways to adapt this game engine. Besides, shouldn’t a Jaws game just have one big shark that’s always hunting you down rather than a bunch of expendable fish with sharp teeth?
If this more atmospheric survival horror filter doesn’t work, then why not try something like “Shark Crisis” and adopt more of an action slant, but play into the set camera angles and limited ammo that made Dino Crisis and early Resident Evil games a triumph. Even attempting the basic cat-and-mouse structure of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis would work with Jaws, it just needs to sink Raccoon City. Couldn’t Telltale Games try an episodic take on the Jaws franchise? It’s ambitious approaches like these that could later pay off in big ways (and if Aquaman turns out to be a big hit, developers that can handle water-set environments could be in demand…).
It still may take some more time for the giant shark brand of horror to find legitimacy in video games, but developers need to first not be afraid to jump back in these waters and get messy. With any luck, Jaws or Meg will be a serious contender the next time a new Tekken or Smash Bros. rolls around…
