Shark Attack Deathmatch

Yeah! Sharks! SHARK WEEK! BEER!

Shark Attack Deathmatch is an Xbox Indie game made by Lighthouse Stuido Games and released on November 9^th 2012. The game description states it’s an online multiplayer death match game featuring sharks. So for those of us who wish Shark Week was a yearlong event, does this satisfy that niche that needs filling?

That shark is totally going to eat your shit.

SAD’s graphics are actually pretty good. The game only comes with one map, but it’s pretty large and features a lot of areas. I've found an old minefield, a sunken boat, a sunken plane, and a series of caves. You can explore the caverns of the cave and go inside the sunken boat and plane, which I thought was a lot of fun. A lot of games like these have those things as set pieces in the environment, and its fun to actually be able to interact with those objects. The sharks themselves look nice, but they also all look the same. It would've been nice if there was some variation to them. When you shoot one of them or another player, a cloud of blood appears around them, which looks really good. The underwater effects are pretty convincing.

His mouth already looks a little bloody. Or he just has your mother's lipstick smeared all over his face.

Oh look! Turtles!!!*

The survival mode pits you against the sharks, trying to get as high a score as you can in ten minutes. I didn't find this very interesting, but the online multiplayer aspect was a lot of fun when I played it with friends. I love that the game has no mini-map or radar, allowing you to stalk your targets and making sure that you have to stay on your toes. I also felt this led to some really exciting conflicts, as it was fun to try and gun down other players while under siege by sharks. I also enjoyed trying to anticipate my shots with the harpoon gun. The knife was the strongest weapon, but you needed to be within melee range to use it.

As you’re swimming underwater you have a supply of oxygen that is constantly depleting. The more you move around, the quicker it depletes. This seems like it encourages people to hide out and camp oxygen supply points. There are also pickups for more flash grenades and health.

That's not a shark. Now, this, this is a .... wait... no, that's not a shark either. Sharks can be killed, eels cannot. This frustrates me, because in order for my homicidal rage to be quenched I need to be able to kill EVERYTHING.

Overall, I did have a lot of fun playing this with a friend. It was exciting and hilarious, and the game is only 80 MSP. Right now if you go to the developer’s blog, they’re asking for suggestion for what they should put in an update, so if you think there are any additional features that you’d like to see in the game, let them know! Really, the only thing I would like to see is support for additional players, say 8-10, and I think a team death match mode would be fun. 

* - Turtles are apparently immortal and cannot be killed. They are also fancied by zombies.