Sewer Shark

"“Maybe you’re good enough Dog Meat, let’s find out.”"

Ah, Sewer Shark (SS), the Sega CD's pack in offering and the quintessential example of everything that developers were doing wrong with its hardware. It was pretty innovative as one of the earliest FMV titles and the first to use it as a key component of its game play. But bad graphics, bad acting, and bad game play make it a classic for all the wrong reasons. SS has a certain novel appeal to it kind of like Shaq-Fu or Superman 64 where the game's crappiness is so funny that it becomes endearing in its own morbid little way. Let's dig in.

Game Play
A large chunk of the SS experience involves watching really cheesy low budget full motion videos. Once the FMVs let up and you're actually given the chance to play the game you'll find that SS is a flight sim/first person shooter type deal. You fly through a complex labyrinth of tunnels shooting various sewer critters such as the dreaded “Ratigator” by lining up a cross hair and blasting away. Four arrows appear at the upper right of the screen pointing up, down, right, and left. These will flash different colours during the game to indicate which direction you're supposed to go in order to the reach the end of the level. If you make too many wrong turns you'll hit the wall and have to retry.

The biggest problem with SS's game play is that it's just plain boring. There's no variety in the levels, enemies are bland and generic, and trying to navigate the tunnels, which all look exactly the same, is confusing and tedious. It's all just a bland endless string of grayness. I have no idea where I am or where I'm going most of the time because nothing is differentiated. What's the point of even playing this? The fun factor is zero after the first five minutes and you get no worthwhile reward for toughing it out.

The load times in this game are horrendous. The Sega CD was a very early CD based console, that's true, but when the load times are as bad as this you'll have a hard time telling whether or not the thing is frozen. It gives me even less incentive to play this junk than I had to begin with.

Graphics
SS's graphics are terrible. For starters the game isn't even full screen! Instead you get a square in the center of your television where the game actually plays, surrounded by a black border of dead space. This is pretty bad even on a 20” TV; I can only imagine how annoying it must be on one of those little 13” screens. I'm aware that this stems from the Sega CD's limited processing power and is the reason a lot of its FMV games only take up a portion of the screen. But this only reinforces my point that these kinds of games were the wrong stuff to be putting on the system in the first place.

Since the Sega CD utilizes the Genesis's rather meager colour palette (only cable of displaying 64 colours at once) everything looks really low tech even for the time period. This is fine for 2D sprite games where realism isn't essential, but hopeless when trying to display live action video like those used in SS. The level of pixilation in this game has to be seen to be believed. Enemies are indistinguishable blobs of orange and black pixels that if not for their sharp contrast in colour would be impossible to make out against the gray monotony of the sewers.

Sound
SS is loaded with voice acting both in game and in the numerous FMV cut scenes. The clarity of the sound is fairly good for the time, definitely CD quality, but the dialogue and music is a hilarious train wreck.

The highlight of SS's sound and the game in general, is the dialogue. Your co-pilot (aka: The Ghost) is played by some D-list actor who delivers a never ending series of cheesy overacted one liners that will have you bawling your eyes out with laughter. Here are some of my personal favorites.

“I always come back for more!”
“Don't you love the smell of sewers in the morning? Smells like victory!”
“Just pretend it's a game, it might even be fun”
“Wrong way butt-brain”

Plus the big jerk constantly insults you for your rookiness by calling you *snicker* Dog Meat. Yeah I'd rather be Dog Meat than play this crap.

There's also this nervous little hovering robot thing called Catfish who talks like Goofy and spouts some equally hilarious lines like; “I'm Ratigator bait!” and “Here we go again” whenever you retry a level.

Story
Basically you're a delivery guy who has to get a package through the sewers to its eventual destination in the Solar City Resort. You'll be piloting a hover craft type device along with The Ghost and Catfish and blasting up the sewer's inhabitants along the way. It's pretty stupid but it does give some purpose to the cut scenes so I guess it's not too bad.

Replay Ability
Not really any point in replaying this once you've beaten it. I'm doubtful that many gamers would have the patience to suffer through SS once let alone replay it.

Buy?
If you own a Sega CD you've likely had the misfortune of playing SS already. If not its best left in the dust laden bargain bin it came from. Unless you can find it for $2 or less and are eager to see its awesome badness for yourself, than stick to Sonic CD and other descent Sega CD titles. You've been warned, Dog Meat!

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/16/07

Game Release: Sewer Shark (US, 10/15/92)