Shark Tale
Better than licensed kids' games ought to be.
Published: October 1, 2004
I think I can finally see it coming. Out there, way out on the horizon, I see the seas of change reversing, bringing with them actual, decent licensed videogame conversions of movies (and, perhaps if we're really lucky, TV). Shark Tale isn't exactly leading that revolution or anything, but it is a definite step in the right direction, where a game can loosely hold true to the movie it was based on, but manages to be, well, a game in it's own right.
Developer Edge of Reality, who previously tackled the surprisingly effective remake of Pitfall for Activision, have been tapped again to work some magic with a potentially lucrative property for the Big A. Luckily, thanks to a handful of different gameplay types and an overarching storyline that does a fair job of tying the disparate mini-games together, Shark Tale ends up being a worthwhile experience – especially if you're a parent looking for something for kids that won't bore you to tears.
Shark Tale[i] chronicles the rise to fame of little Oscar, a little fish with a big enough mouth to get him into and out of some hairy situations with everyone from landladies to bookies to sharks, the game/movie's undersea equivalent of the Mob. When Oscar "accidentally" offs a shark by being in the right place at the right time, he suddenly gains that fame he so eagerly craves, though he quickly finds that all eyes on his previously… slanted lifestyle may not be the best thing.
[i]ST does its best to continually mix things up in order to keep from stagnating. Things start with standard exploration, where Oscar can interact with a few key objects like entering doors or changing direction around corners, but they quickly transition into the more entertaining offerings the game is capable of.
A dance game (complete with dance pad support, though the moves are really too quick to try without a controller) where you tap the corresponding direction to the beat of a song that plays in the background, is moderate fun, but it's nothing that hasn't been seen before (howdy, there, Britney's Dance Beat).
Other bits include a two-sided torture attack where you must simply outlast a pair of Rasta jellyfish that reach out to shock our hero while he's tied to a stick in the seabed while the camera rotates around the scene (far harder than it sounds), and a couple of outrun moments where Oscar is either being chased and has to avoid the attacker by swimming to the sides of the screen when arrows appear, or where he decides to fight back, and uses the square, triangle and circle buttons to land blows, or just flat-out races where the objective is to arrive at the finish within a time limit.
What can best be described as a "swimming shooter"; classic 2D-style shooter avoidance and maneuvering actually smacks of the most original part of the game. Fans of the good ol' days where deftly avoiding sprites with clean controls will go ape when they run the gauntlet of a forced scrolling screen or patterned boss battles where memorization of attacks and movements is the key to staying alive.
The game regularly cycles between the modes, sometimes offering little tweaks on the exploratory elements (such as hiding from paparazzi cameras or roaming policemen/henchmen by interacting with fire hydrants or bushes), all in the name of variety, and for the most part it works, though towards the end, you'll tire of re-entering the same city level. Each mission offers a normal goal, a bonus mission and an elite mission, usually of the "collect 1500 small pearls" (coughed up after breaking boxes, defeating enemies or by swimming a full circle around larger pearls, causing them to burst into smaller collectables) or the "don't get seen/take no damage" variety. They offer a limited amount of replay value, but more importantly give more advanced gamers something to shoot for, though the difficulty curve in the game will have even seasoned pros retrying a couple levels.
With the exception of the "boxing" levels, where things feel a little sluggish and the punches and kicks you unload never really feel like they connect, the controls in the game are superb. Oscar is quite honestly one of the most fun characters I've been able to control in quite a while, mainly due to how Edge of Reality constructed the levels in a sort of 2.5D (a la Klonoa) plane rather than offering full 3D exploration. This allows you to dart Oscar around in circles, or up and over objects with surprising grace, even during bursts of speed (tapping or double-tapping the square button during these exploration levels offers up a quick zip ahead, and holding it down allows for Oscar's only weapon: a charge attack).
It's this kind of control that blends so well with the more interesting parts of the gameplay, like the aforementioned almost shooter-like segments or 2.5D mazes where you may swim around the corners of buildings or into and out of windows to get around. It's also the only thing that will keep you alive in the side-scrolling parts of the game, and the developers really do deserve a lot of praise for keeping things so tight.
The graphics undoubtedly have a lot to do with this, since Oscar's grace would be nothing if not animated with the kind of fluidity that something darting around the screen required. Again, Edge of Reality really does offer something to be proud of here; Oscar's body contorts and flits from side to side, turns and stretches with plenty of complexity, offering a couple of subtle ooohh and aaaahh moments when you manage to navigate a particularly tough spot. It's honestly one of those things you don't really notice until you actually pay attention to it, which I suppose is a tribute to the animation team's ability to make things seem like, well, they should move that well.
As I said before, the "on rails" nature of the game keeps you constrained inside the developers' bounds, but it also allows them to add some nice details and flourishes; the chase and boxing levels wind through complex open water and sunken ship environments that regularly take the camera and characters between fissures and narrow openings, and the races throw literally hundreds of objects into Oscar's path throughout the course of a level, be they other fish, floats, bubbles, pipes, or buildings. About the only time where all the detail isn't really apparent is in the dancing levels, and that's mainly because your eyes are constantly fixed on the bottom of the screen in wait of the next arrow; a shame really, because there can be moments of impressive background detail.
All that attention to detail (and the texture work and lighting really is nice for a PS2 game) does come at a high price on the PS2, though; the engine regularly spits out too much for our lovable black brick to handle, resulting in pretty regular framerate drops. During race or boxing levels, anytime you have too much environmental detail, the game chokes -- a stark contrast to the butter-smooth open water parts – and any time there are too many pearls or enemies on screen during the exploration or stealth sections, there are hiccups. If it weren't so common, it wouldn't be much of a big deal, but it does pop up often, and usually interrupts a normally smooth game.
The audio does a decent job of giving your ears something to digest, but it's nothing stellar. Activision opted to license music, most of it slightly old-school (like M.C. Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" or the Fresh Prince classic "Summertime" or Inner Circle's "Bad Boys" – yes the very same theme from the Cops TV show), rather than scoring the whole thing with original tunes save for a the cutscenes and a few key levels. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that all the tunes are level-specific, meaning you could hear that radio-sized three- or four-minute song a dozen times in a level if you decide to hunt for all the extra missions (which, by the way, give you more fame, and allow you to unlock extras like artwork and clips from the movie – pretty standard stuff).
The voice actors hired more or less do decent job of sounding like their Hollywood counterparts, through you won't be mistaking the lead for Will Smith anytime soon, and the voice sub-in for Lenny (played in the movies by Jack Black) doesn't sound anything like the big screen voice, but in all, there's nothing cringe-worthy about the cutscene filler – even if it is just that.
It would have been nice to see the game follow the events of the movie a little more closely (some of the major plot points are completely skimmed over here), but I suppose that's the sacrifice developers must make to ensure that just because it's a licensed property, it won't by definition suck.
Shark Tale certainly doesn't suck. It's not especially amazing either, but for a licensed game, it fares far better than recent offerings (*cough*Catwoman*cough*). It's also, as I mentioned before, good for both parent and kid, with enough simplicity to keep the kids (or parents depending on how much of a gamer Mom or Dad is) entertained while still offering enough of a challenge and incentive to unlock the goodies).
Keep in mind, though, that this is a game targeted at the kiddies, and as such, hardcore gamers aren't going to find a whole lot of substance here. Head into it with that in mind, and you'll find that there are indeed exceptions to the "licensed games suck" rule.
Developer Edge of Reality, who previously tackled the surprisingly effective remake of Pitfall for Activision, have been tapped again to work some magic with a potentially lucrative property for the Big A. Luckily, thanks to a handful of different gameplay types and an overarching storyline that does a fair job of tying the disparate mini-games together, Shark Tale ends up being a worthwhile experience – especially if you're a parent looking for something for kids that won't bore you to tears.
Shark Tale[i] chronicles the rise to fame of little Oscar, a little fish with a big enough mouth to get him into and out of some hairy situations with everyone from landladies to bookies to sharks, the game/movie's undersea equivalent of the Mob. When Oscar "accidentally" offs a shark by being in the right place at the right time, he suddenly gains that fame he so eagerly craves, though he quickly finds that all eyes on his previously… slanted lifestyle may not be the best thing.
[i]ST does its best to continually mix things up in order to keep from stagnating. Things start with standard exploration, where Oscar can interact with a few key objects like entering doors or changing direction around corners, but they quickly transition into the more entertaining offerings the game is capable of.
A dance game (complete with dance pad support, though the moves are really too quick to try without a controller) where you tap the corresponding direction to the beat of a song that plays in the background, is moderate fun, but it's nothing that hasn't been seen before (howdy, there, Britney's Dance Beat).
Other bits include a two-sided torture attack where you must simply outlast a pair of Rasta jellyfish that reach out to shock our hero while he's tied to a stick in the seabed while the camera rotates around the scene (far harder than it sounds), and a couple of outrun moments where Oscar is either being chased and has to avoid the attacker by swimming to the sides of the screen when arrows appear, or where he decides to fight back, and uses the square, triangle and circle buttons to land blows, or just flat-out races where the objective is to arrive at the finish within a time limit.
What can best be described as a "swimming shooter"; classic 2D-style shooter avoidance and maneuvering actually smacks of the most original part of the game. Fans of the good ol' days where deftly avoiding sprites with clean controls will go ape when they run the gauntlet of a forced scrolling screen or patterned boss battles where memorization of attacks and movements is the key to staying alive.
The game regularly cycles between the modes, sometimes offering little tweaks on the exploratory elements (such as hiding from paparazzi cameras or roaming policemen/henchmen by interacting with fire hydrants or bushes), all in the name of variety, and for the most part it works, though towards the end, you'll tire of re-entering the same city level. Each mission offers a normal goal, a bonus mission and an elite mission, usually of the "collect 1500 small pearls" (coughed up after breaking boxes, defeating enemies or by swimming a full circle around larger pearls, causing them to burst into smaller collectables) or the "don't get seen/take no damage" variety. They offer a limited amount of replay value, but more importantly give more advanced gamers something to shoot for, though the difficulty curve in the game will have even seasoned pros retrying a couple levels.
With the exception of the "boxing" levels, where things feel a little sluggish and the punches and kicks you unload never really feel like they connect, the controls in the game are superb. Oscar is quite honestly one of the most fun characters I've been able to control in quite a while, mainly due to how Edge of Reality constructed the levels in a sort of 2.5D (a la Klonoa) plane rather than offering full 3D exploration. This allows you to dart Oscar around in circles, or up and over objects with surprising grace, even during bursts of speed (tapping or double-tapping the square button during these exploration levels offers up a quick zip ahead, and holding it down allows for Oscar's only weapon: a charge attack).
It's this kind of control that blends so well with the more interesting parts of the gameplay, like the aforementioned almost shooter-like segments or 2.5D mazes where you may swim around the corners of buildings or into and out of windows to get around. It's also the only thing that will keep you alive in the side-scrolling parts of the game, and the developers really do deserve a lot of praise for keeping things so tight.
The graphics undoubtedly have a lot to do with this, since Oscar's grace would be nothing if not animated with the kind of fluidity that something darting around the screen required. Again, Edge of Reality really does offer something to be proud of here; Oscar's body contorts and flits from side to side, turns and stretches with plenty of complexity, offering a couple of subtle ooohh and aaaahh moments when you manage to navigate a particularly tough spot. It's honestly one of those things you don't really notice until you actually pay attention to it, which I suppose is a tribute to the animation team's ability to make things seem like, well, they should move that well.
As I said before, the "on rails" nature of the game keeps you constrained inside the developers' bounds, but it also allows them to add some nice details and flourishes; the chase and boxing levels wind through complex open water and sunken ship environments that regularly take the camera and characters between fissures and narrow openings, and the races throw literally hundreds of objects into Oscar's path throughout the course of a level, be they other fish, floats, bubbles, pipes, or buildings. About the only time where all the detail isn't really apparent is in the dancing levels, and that's mainly because your eyes are constantly fixed on the bottom of the screen in wait of the next arrow; a shame really, because there can be moments of impressive background detail.
All that attention to detail (and the texture work and lighting really is nice for a PS2 game) does come at a high price on the PS2, though; the engine regularly spits out too much for our lovable black brick to handle, resulting in pretty regular framerate drops. During race or boxing levels, anytime you have too much environmental detail, the game chokes -- a stark contrast to the butter-smooth open water parts – and any time there are too many pearls or enemies on screen during the exploration or stealth sections, there are hiccups. If it weren't so common, it wouldn't be much of a big deal, but it does pop up often, and usually interrupts a normally smooth game.
The audio does a decent job of giving your ears something to digest, but it's nothing stellar. Activision opted to license music, most of it slightly old-school (like M.C. Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" or the Fresh Prince classic "Summertime" or Inner Circle's "Bad Boys" – yes the very same theme from the Cops TV show), rather than scoring the whole thing with original tunes save for a the cutscenes and a few key levels. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that all the tunes are level-specific, meaning you could hear that radio-sized three- or four-minute song a dozen times in a level if you decide to hunt for all the extra missions (which, by the way, give you more fame, and allow you to unlock extras like artwork and clips from the movie – pretty standard stuff).
The voice actors hired more or less do decent job of sounding like their Hollywood counterparts, through you won't be mistaking the lead for Will Smith anytime soon, and the voice sub-in for Lenny (played in the movies by Jack Black) doesn't sound anything like the big screen voice, but in all, there's nothing cringe-worthy about the cutscene filler – even if it is just that.
It would have been nice to see the game follow the events of the movie a little more closely (some of the major plot points are completely skimmed over here), but I suppose that's the sacrifice developers must make to ensure that just because it's a licensed property, it won't by definition suck.
Shark Tale certainly doesn't suck. It's not especially amazing either, but for a licensed game, it fares far better than recent offerings (*cough*Catwoman*cough*). It's also, as I mentioned before, good for both parent and kid, with enough simplicity to keep the kids (or parents depending on how much of a gamer Mom or Dad is) entertained while still offering enough of a challenge and incentive to unlock the goodies).
Keep in mind, though, that this is a game targeted at the kiddies, and as such, hardcore gamers aren't going to find a whole lot of substance here. Head into it with that in mind, and you'll find that there are indeed exceptions to the "licensed games suck" rule.
