Fishing is hard, man. You have to dress up in silly clothing, haul a bunch of equipment (tackle, line, rod, bait, and of course, beer) out to a body of water, and then sit around and get sunburned while the fish outwit you using their highly developed brain stems. But I remembered something after playing Sorrent's new Shark Hunt title: Sharks ain't fish, brother. They are angry, atavistic killing machines of the sea, and are about as related to fish as John Madden's commentary is to the game of football. Ergo, hunting sharks makes fishing look like Lamaze. We're talking about a whole different mind-set here, more akin to a Greco-Roman wrestling match than the veritable Oktoberfest that is your average fishing trip. All you aquatic adrenaline junkies out there will be happy to know that Sorrent got it right with this one. Even if it is something of a one-trick pony, Shark Hunt wraps up all of the thrills of sportfishing in a very nicely presented package.
The object of Shark Hunt is to journey between three fishing locations-- California, Australia, and Africa--and catch the five biggest sharks you can in eight minutes. There's nothing tough about the control schema; the "OK" button casts, and you can select and use different types of chum using the 1 and 3 buttons, respectively. Shark Hunt looks really sharp graphically. The three different locations are beautifully rendered, with little boats, waverunners, and clouds drifting past, and your hunter's arms and rod are very realistically animated. Sound effects, like the clicking of your rod and the squawking of seagulls, add to the overall ocean-faring experience; a little reggae music or something wouldn't have gone amiss, though.
The gameplay is an interesting mix of peaceful lull and frenetic action. After you set up shop in your chosen location, you cast over and over again until a shark deigns to investigate your bait. For the Sprint version of the game, Sorrent ditched the original Shark Hunt's reeling-in sequence to speed up gameplay and mesh better with Sprint's Game Lobby service. In my opinion, this is a mistake--even though the reel-in element was slow, it provided a refreshingly different game element to consider, and without it the casting sequence feels somewhat truncated. You'll forget all that once the trophy-to-be chomps down on your hook, though. It's still a no-holds-barred, sweaty-palms fight to get sharks into your boat. This part of the game is quite exciting, as the fight meter springs to life and your handset starts buzzing like a possessed doorbell. The buggers are tenacious as heck, and if you don't correctly equalize their motion using the D pad, your line will break; three broken lines and it's back to shore.
Shark Hunt's a good title in spite of its somewhat repetitive gameplay. I really appreciated the game's little comical touches, like randomly catching boots and mermaids and such. Though the difficulty level was lowered considerably in the new version, Shark Hunt remains enough of a challenge to keep you coming back for more. There's also an online mode using Game Lobby where you can upload and compare your best scores. Very cool.
