Deadliest Catch: Sea of Chaos Hands-On

When it was released in 2008, Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm was pretty disappointing. There was something inherently engaging about the strategy involved in the lengthy Career mode, but there were also extended periods of play where you had almost nothing to do and technical problems that would occasionally cause the game to completely crash. Deadliest Catch is still a great TV show, though, and so two years later Crave--which had no involvement with the first game--is having a stab at making a second game.

Deadliest Catch: Sea of Chaos will be quite different from the original game in that it's clearly making some compromises on realism in favor of better gameplay. Rather than playing through just one career, Sea of Chaos will feature around 10 distinct campaigns, ranging from single-season challenges to 10-season careers. For example, in one of the shorted campaigns, you'll be pitted head-to-head against Captain Sig Hansen's Northwestern to see who can catch the most crab in a single season when there are no other boats on the water. In longer campaigns, on the other hand, you and the other captains might start out in small boats and then the challenge will be to see who has the most valuable boat after a number of seasons.

The most interesting new feature of Deadliest Catch: Sea of Chaos is undoubtedly that a number of activities will be handled via minigames. Three of these were available for us to check out at E3, including pot retrieval, crab sorting, and unloading. All of these games were clearly designed with gameplay rather than realism in mind, so when throwing the hook to retrieve the pots, for example, multiple pairs of buoys were moving across the screen at a decent speed, and bonuses were awarded for stringing together combos. Similar combo mechanics appeared in the other minigames as well.

Sorting crabs required us to pick up and move large red crabs to the right side of the sorting table (which filled the whole screen) and push everything else to the left, while the unloading minigame had us tossing crabs toward a basket that was swinging from left to right while simultaneously making sure that the crabs didn't get ruined by hitting the hook that was also swinging below deck. Additional minigames in the finished game will, we're told, include setting the pots and carrying out repairs. All of the minigames will be available for play in a multiplayer Party mode. And interestingly, they're all made more challenging by adverse weather conditions that, for example, cause the sorting table to rock from side to side. Incidentally, we played the minigames on the Xbox 360, but we're told that on both the Wii and PlayStation 3, they'll incorporate motion controls.

Traditional, simultaneous multiplayer won't feature in Deadliest Catch: Sea of Chaos because, depending on what you're doing, time moves at different speeds. You'll have the option to take part in full fishing seasons alongside other players, though, using a turn-based system that's perhaps best likened to that used in play-by-mail games. You'll be able to play at the same time as the other captains in your game (the current plan is to support eight players), but your respective statistics and the like will only sync at predetermined intervals.

Another interesting feature of Deadliest Catch: Sea of Chaos is the way that fishermen will improve over time, depending on which minigames you use them in. Every fishermen is rated in five different disciplines: setting, offloading, retrieving, patching, and sorting, and as they improve in those areas throughout the course of any given season, they'll become more valuable members of your crew. That also means, predictably, that they'll be looking for a bigger share of the profits if you choose to keep them on for subsequent seasons. From deciding on crew members, choosing when and where to fish, and being forced to spend money on either repairing or replacing your ship, there should be no shortage of strategy in the game.

Deadliest Catch: Sea of Chaos is looking a bit rough around the edges right now, but it's still in a pre-alpha state and certainly won't be arriving in stores much before Christmas. We look forward to bringing you more information on the game as soon as it becomes available.