Jaws Unleashed E3 2005 Hands-On

During a visit to Majesco's E3 booth earlier today, we were able to get our hands on a playable Xbox version of Jaws Unleashed for the first time. Currently in development at Appaloosa, whose previous credits include Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future, Jaws Unleashed will see you assuming the role of a great white shark much like the one that terrified movie fans back in 1975 when Jaws was released.

If you played Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future on the Dreamcast or PlayStation 2, you'll have a pretty good idea of what you can expect from Jaws Unleashed, at least in terms of its visuals and controls. The underwater environments are convincing, there's plenty of sea life to interact with (and eat, on this occasion), and the controls are actually really intuitive since they're not that far removed from what you'd expect in a flying game or any game that gives you the freedom to move vertically as well as horizontally.

Since you play as an aggressive great white shark rather than a helpful dolphin in Jaws Unleashed, you can expect there to be some major differences in the gameplay, some of which we were able to check out during our time with the game today. Our mission objectives in the E3 version of Jaws Unleashed included killing lifeguards and preventing a character named Martin Walker from rescuing three seals. While swimming through the water, moves at our disposal included a powerful bite attack, a tail whip attack, a stealth attack, and a shark vision view that highlighted potential targets. The targets highlighted appeared to include just about every living thing that we could see, since even the smallest fish can be eaten to regain health.

Enemies that were attacking us in the demo included smaller hammerhead sharks and the humans who were hunting us in boats above. Our bite attack was able to make short work of most of them, and our whip tail attack was able to break some of the smaller boats in half. We died before we were able to complete either of our objectives, but a trailer for the game that was running alongside the playable demo afforded us glimpses of other areas of the game, including a sequences in which Jaws wrecked a pier and battled with a killer whale boss.

We'll bring you more information on Jaws Unleashed as soon as it becomes available.