Jaws Unleashed

Farewell and Adieu to You, Old PS2…

Makes as much sense as a roaring shark

Alright, let’s dive in! Pause for laughter.

Have you ever wanted to be an unstoppable, 25-foot killing machine with zero chill and a vendetta against literally everything that floats? No morality meter — just Jaws, fury, and a never-ending buffet of limbs and propellers. Jaws Unleashed doesn’t ask you to save the world. It asks, “How many jet skiers can you turn into confetti before lunch?” It’s loud, dumb, chaotic as heck — and I loved every bite of it.

You play as the big guy himself — Jaws — as you swim, smash, and chomp your way through an open-world version of Amity Island. The gameplay is a mix of free-roaming and loosely structured missions, with objectives ranging from sinking boats and disabling oil rigs to terrorizing beach parties like it’s your full-time job. There’s even a mission pretty early on where you have to escape captivity. You’ve got a health bar, a hunger meter, and a growing arsenal of shark abilities that somehow get more absurd as you go:

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Tail Whip
A powerful flick of the tail that can knock enemies back, destroy boats, and stun prey.

Lung Capacity Upgrade
Increases the amount of time you can stay out of water (on land or leaping through air) without dying.

Sonar Ping (aka shark “vision”)
Helps you detect targets and hidden objects more easily — kind of like predator mode.

Explosive Barrel Launch (yes, really)
You can grab explosive barrels and toss them at enemies. It’s amazing.

Boat Destruction Abilities
As you grow stronger, you can destroy bigger and faster boats — starting with jet skis, then moving on to Coast Guard patrols, and eventually body-slamming luxury cruise liners (okay, not really — but close).

There is nothing funnier in this game — maybe in gaming history — than watching a massive apex predator full-body launch itself out of the water, belly-flop onto the sand, and start wriggling after tourists, terrorizing them like a giant, angry fish on a mission. You can wreak havoc on sunbathers and watch as beachgoers lose their minds, tripping over coolers and each other while you, a literal sea monster, inch-worm across the shore biting everything within flopping distance.

There’s zero grace. You’re just a wet, furious torpedo of teeth and spite, bulldozing through beach towels, lifeguard stands, umbrellas, and probably someone’s unfortunate grandparent. And the best part? The game lets you do it. Not once, not as a joke — but constantly. It’s comedy gold wrapped in unintentional horror, and it never stops being hilarious. It’s like the developers knew the title alone would sell — so they leaned all the way into the madness, cranked it to 11, and made the dumbest game they possibly could. And honestly? It’s fantastic.

Now, I’ll take off my rose-tinted diving goggles from the PS2 era for a second and admit: this is not a good game. But it is a deeply entertaining, gloriously broken, borderline-unhinged mess that lets you live out your fantasy of being a giant shark. The controls are clunky, the camera has a mind of its own, and the story is the kind of B-movie nonsense you’d expect from a straight-to-DVD sequel — but none of that matters when you’re flinging dolphins like frisbees or biting through a yacht like it’s made of graham crackers.

This game doesn’t work in the traditional sense…
…but it absolutely delivers if you were 12 years old in the mid-2000s, when your peak idea of “radical” was launching yourself into the air as a great white terror and colliding with a helicopter mid-flight just as it explodes into a glorious fireball — and you drag the wreckage into the sea. You do not get more owned than that.

With Sony releasing old titles on PS5 at the speed of a sloth doing its taxes, maybe — just maybe — we’ll see more of these buried-at-sea treasures resurface. Jaws Unleashed even earned Gamespot’s “Worst Game Everyone Played” award in 2006. And honestly? I agree. It’s probably aged about as well as a soggy pirate boot fished out of the Mariana Trench.

It’s janky, clunky, and borderline unplayable at times — but that’s also what makes it such a fun disaster. If you’re browsing the retro gaming shops (which may eventually just be GameStop itself), and you’ve ever wanted to play as nature’s most chaotic middle finger, Jaws Unleashed still delivers a bite worth savoring.

Smile, you son of a glitch!

Mikhail

Verdict: 5.5/10