Commodore User


Jaws
By Screen 7 Ltd
Commodore 64/128

 
Published in Commodore User #71

Jaws

Amity Island is in the middle of a crisis. A female swimmer was almost completely eaten by a huge shark. All the police have been able to deduce from what's left is that she had dandruff - they found her head and shoulders on the beach.

If is your job as the leader of a team of divers to search out and kill the shark (nicknamed Jaws) before too many more swimmers get chomped. Unfortunately the weaponry required was on board a ship that sank on a nearby reef. Your first task is to locate and recover the four bits of a gun and then find the mega-bullets needed to kill Jaws and win the game.

Basically, Jaws is one of those games in which you search a large map for different items whilst killing anything that moves. Like so many other games of this type the playing area lacks variety and becomes very boring very quickly. After about five minutes, you start to realise that you've probably seen everything that the game has to offer, another five minutes and you'll be reaching for the on/off switch (if you're still conscious that is).

Jaws

Some of the sprites are quite reasonable but are let down primarily by the game itself, and also by the lack of animation and variety. The graphics that make up the backgrounds are not as good as the sprites and some of them could quite easily be mistaken for corrupt blocks.

Sound is just about on par with the rest of the game. All you get is a semi-decent rendition of the Jaws theme tune and a few feeble sound effects.

If the game had been based more closely on the film then Jaws could have been a real winner but as it stands I just can't see anyone getting any enjoyment out of it for more than about half an hour.

You won't have to bother about killing Jaws. I think that Screen 7 have done that quite adequately themselves.

Mark Malnwood