Game Reviews

Hungry Shark

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Hungry Shark
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| Hungry Shark

Ever wondered what being a shark is like? From my experience, gleaned exclusively from playing Hungry Shark, the answer is the single-minded pursuit of anything that might be edible.

If you stop eating, your health bar empties. So you have to either kill everything else in the sea or live with a dead virtual shark on your conscience.

Deep sea dinner

As you might expect from the above, Hungry Shark is not a game that plays heavily on story, and everything you need to know is conveyed through the title.

Most things in the sea are on the menu, with a few non-digestible items scattered around to throw you off the scent.

Naval mines offer a spicy and stomach destroying kick, jellyfish will be edible but sting on the way down, and certain fish will fight back, so must be eaten with care.

If you take damage, your health/hunger bar rapidly deteriorates and you need to quickly go on a fish-eating binge. After eating certain quantities, your shark will get bigger. Levelling up makes him hungrier for bigger fish, and harder to manoeuvre.

By default, the shark is controlled by the accelerometer. Tilting the handset will see the shark shooting off in that direction, and if you need a little extra speed you can tap the screen for a quick burst to help you catch up with an illusive target.

There’s a touchscreen alternative for those who don’t like motion controls, and these are acceptable, if occasionally frustrating with precise movements.

Fortunately, the game is generally quite forgiving - even if you hit a mine or jellyfish, you typically lose a bit of health rather than a life.

Let’s not go overboard

And that’s pretty much all there is to the gameplay. There’s a fairly expansive map to explore with a handful of collectables to hunt down and a whole bunch of achievements to unlock, but otherwise Hungry Shark is incredibly simplistic.

The trouble is that it feels suited to a quick go but games tend to last upwards of ten minutes per session, which is long enough to grow bored of the mechanics.

Indeed, there’s an achievement for getting the shark to full size in under ten minutes, which puts it in a pretty awkward place: too long-lasting for quick play, but not deep enough for longer sessions.

The game will remember where you left off if you need a break, but it’s doubtful whether the gameplay has enough to drag you in time and again.

Ultimately, your enjoyment of Hungry Shark will depend on your tolerance for repetitive gameplay and highscore hunting.

With longish sessions and shallow gameplay, it’s a small fish in a big Market.

Hungry Shark

Fun, visceral, and entertaining in small doses, but it’s quickly apparent that the hungry shark is actually a one trick pony
Score
Alan Martin
Alan Martin
Having left the metropolitan paradise of Derby for the barren wasteland of London, Alan now produces flash games by day and reviews Android ones by night. It's safe to say he's really putting that English Literature degree to good use