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SEWER SHARK REVIEW - February 1993

So, back we go for another try with the Mega CD. Sega's flagship piece of kit, the big hope for the early 90s, is still awaiting that one big game, the machine's Sonic The Hedgehog, the piece of software that people will buy the hardware just to be able to play. It's going to have to be quick in coming, though - with the official UK launch just a breath away, time is of the essence. Could this, a groundbreaking Full Motion Video game, be what we've all been waiting for?

As any regular reader will know, a leading question like that's only going to have one answer. Sadly, Sewer Shark isn't going to have shoppers besieging their local Dixons to splash out £270 on a Mega CD. Indeed, it's going to have a bit of a job selling itself, never mind any expensive hardware. If you've been reading up on some of our previous Mega CD reviews, particularly the likes of Thunderstorm FX and its rather better sister game Roadblaster FX, you might well, if you're the perceptive type, be expecting Sewer Shark to be an
impressive-looking game boasting stunning real-life visuals but gameplay over which you have very little real control. If so, take a little moment out to pat yourself on the back. Well done.

In Sewer Shark, you're a kind of futuristic Rentokil man, in control of a zappy little sewer buggy and with a mission to, er, clean up the sewers. Yes, I know it's a contradiction in terms, but at least you haven't got a princess to save at the end of it all, so be grateful for small plot mercies. You fly down the tubes and blast at a variety of nasties (an impressive total of, er, about five different types) with your buggy-mounted laser. Frequently, tunnel junctions crop up, which the digitised voice of a guide will give you directions down. Take the wrong turn and you risk running into a dead end, which is also what you'll get if you do. And that's all you do. Oh dear.


Oddly, though, it's not as bad as all that, as long as you make a few allowances. First, allow for the fact that the Mega CD isn't quite up to the job of displaying the fast-moving and detailed tunnels very well - it looks better moving than the screenshots on these pages suggest, but it's still very bitmappy indeed. To get the best effect, play the game sitting as far away from the monitor as you possibly can, and screw your eyes up a bit. You'll also have to allow for some very confusing gameplay - much of the time, the instructions shouted to you appear to have almost no relevance to whether you smash into a dead-end wall or not.

This, in fact, is the biggest handicap to the game's addictive qualities - it's hard to make yourself play again and think 'I'll do better this time' when you're not at all sure what you did wrong the last time. And finally, you'll have to allow for the fact that at its heart, this is a game which in terms of depth and brainpower, makes G-LOC look like The Secret Of Monkey Island. Sewer Shark, a bit like Thunderstorm FX only a lot more so, does almost all of the game-playing work for you - doing screenshots, I stuck it on demo mode for a bit while I fiddled with the screen-grabbing equipment. Or at least, I thought I did. I was actually (without touching any of the controls, of course) playing the game as normal
and lasting for about the same length of time, the only difference being that I wasn't shooting any sewer beasties.

In all honesty, this is quite entertaining. If you play it in a shop, you'll probably end up thinking 'Hey, that's really neat, I'll have some of that', but beware. In that five-minute skim, you'll have experienced practically everything that there is in the whole game. If you fork out your 40 quid and take it home, chances are that after an hour you'll be trying to think of ways in which you can persuade the shop to take it back. Or at least contemplating a joypad with a lead 30 feet long.

 GRAPHICS 7
SOUND 9
GAMEPLAY 4
GAME SIZE
ADDICTION 7

More engaging than it first appears, but not much of a game and it
won't last you long at all.

59 PERCENT

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