With Deadliest Catch: The Game recently hitting the Xbox Store, we take a closer look at Discovery’s game adaptation of their hit TV show.
When you think of The Discovery Channel‘s very own hit show, Deadliest Catch, you are reminded of exciting expeditions in which a team of men braves the elements to catch king crabs for people like you and me to enjoy at the dinner table.
With this in mind, one would think it would be a safe bet to assume that the game would carry with it the same brand of excitement, that familiar sense of adventure and peril that we have come to expect from the hit TV show. Regrettably, Deadliest Catch: The Game falls short of this expectation and instead delivers a mundane experience that feels both dated and unfinished.
The Graphics in Deadliest Catch: The Game
The website for Deadliest Catch: The Game promises “realistic graphics” and further elaborates by saying “modern graphics, particularly the water”, if this strange statement alone doesn’t raise red flags, the realization will hit you as soon as you enter the game.
The best way we can describe the graphics in Deadliest Catch: The Game is to compare them to early Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 titles. The dockyard – where the tutorial starts – is lifeless and drab, surrounding buildings are basic and lazily designed, while shop and service signs are vague and undescriptive.
To say such things about a game in 2023, where consoles have the technological capabilities they do, is a crying shame. We should be leagues beyond the graphical car crash that is Deadliest Catch: The Game and to release a game that looks like this in today’s market is lazy, cheap, and shows a lack of interest on Discovery‘s part.
Deadliest Catch: The Game – Gameplay
“But graphics aren’t everything”, I can almost hear you collectively shout, “it’s all about the gameplay”. While this is a completely accurate statement, Deadliest Catch: The Game also falls short on delivering an even slightly enjoyable gameplay experience.
The tutorial starts you off in the dockyard, where the typically bustling fishing community goes about its business. However, for some reason unknown to man, the hub of the fishing trade is here completely devoid of any other person but yourself. This conjures a lonely and desolate atmosphere that could have been easily avoided by throwing a few other faces into the mixture.
Tasked with visiting the store to pick up some supplies, we eventually found the storefront where we could buy the required items: buoys, grappling hooks, and a block of herring bait. Here we only ran into more confusion as the items weren’t correctly labeled. Buying the bhoys and the grappling hooks was relatively plain sailing (no pun intended) and the lack of labels wasn’t really an issue. To find the bait, however, we had to open the descriptions to ensure we had the right type. While this doesn’t sound like too much of an issue, it’s yet another lazy oversight from the developers.
Ships Ahoy – Fishing in Deadliest Catch: The Game
After checking the map and navigating the painstaking system to choose a spot in which to fish, we were ready to set sail and plunder the seas for king crabs. A glimmer of hope manifested in our bored minds, it finally looked like the game was about to pick up as we set out on our treacherous voyage. However, we were sadly mistaken.
Our first job aboard was to pick a crab pot up using the onboard crane and place it on the launcher platform. This seemingly simple task was made nigh-on impossible by a clumsy control system with a mind of its own and camera angles that will turn your hair gray.
Despite our hopes that the experience would become more enjoyable as the game opened up, Deadliest Catch: The Game only continued to disappoint.
Deadliest Catch: The Game – Summary
As much as we have tried to find any positives in this game, we have failed to find anything that even the biggest of Deadliest Catch fans would enjoy. If the nauseatingly slow FPS and early PlayStation 2 graphics don’t put you off within the first five minutes, operating the crane and fishing at sea will soon have you throwing yourself overboard. Sadly, there is nothing about Deadliest Catch the game that’s in ship shape.