The Scoreboard #14

Because we were too lazy to do it ourselves, we had guest writer Ross Arbour tackle (get it?) the crab-fishin’ extravaganza, Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm, and boy did it work out in our favor. For real, this thing is friggin’ spectacular. There’s nothing for us to say but “this is a hell of a send-off” for this week’s reviews. If you want in on this submission hotness, fire us your own Scoreboard review!

Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm

Trawling the Bering Strait at a dead slow 11 knots and hauling in buckets of soon-to-be seafood doesn’t exactly resonate with riveting action adventure. Deadliest Catch is based on the hit Discovery Channel show, and doesn’t stray too far from the common sentiment surrounding other licensed games; it’s craptacular (or should we say crabtacular?). You’ll be trapped with lackluster graphics, a less-than-stellar frame-rate, but the abundance of shallow Achievements early on certainly won’t leave you feeling crabby. Where we come from, Achievements never go out of season!

Best Achievement: Northwestern Scholar (15 points) Watch all Videos in the Virtual Tour – This Achievement involves surprisingly little gameplay, with the exception of moving through a vessel fully recreated from the TV show. Along the way, simply interactin’ with the question mark icons triggers a short and highly informative educational video on the significance of that part on the vessel. Exploratory, enlightening, Achievement inducing.

Worst Achievement: Strung Along (15 points) Drop 50 Pots in a Season – There’s something vicariously unclear and downright fishy about this Achievement. We loaded 50 pots onto the ship and trawled through the seas, gruellingly dropping them into the digitized water one-by-one until the “pots left” counter said “0” – in the same season o’ course! Unfortunately, no Achievement was awarded… did we miss something?

Easiest Achievement: Helping Hand (45 points) Rescue Another Ship at Sea – Everyone digs freebies earned in training, as there’s no way to progress through the game without netting these brutally easy 45 points. It entails finding a ship in distress, which happens to be generously positioned directly in front of your boat and conveniently firing bright red flares. It’s one of the easiest 45 points you’ll ever earn, and it only requires 10 minutes of playing.

Hardest Achievement: Jack of All Trades (75 points) Complete all Missions – There’s a meaty mission lineup awaiting you in Deadliest Catch, consisting of: crowded harbor missions, where you must guide a ship into a tight spot and avoid obstacle collisions; training missions; and various other missions such as fish-offs and coast guard rescues. You’ll also have to master timed harbor dashes, which require putting pedal to the… err... propeller to the water to skillfully navigate through narrow gaps using a speedy powerboat that outperforms any trawler (comparable to the difference between a shopping cart with a lawnmower engine and a Lamborghini). Stand up and take a bow upon accomplishing this formidable feat – it takes some seriously stern patience.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 7 (out of ten) – There are some tasty achievements to snack on early on, but unless you plan to stick with dropping crab pots from egregiously slow trawlers, you won’t likely surpass the neighborhood of 200 Gamerscore. It takes a daring mate to conquer the Bering Strait, especially given the lack of excitement.

Overall: 6 (out of ten) – Turns out Niko Bellic isn’t the only thing fresh-off-the-boat these days in gaming, but only diehard fans of the reality television show could appreciate this game. The rest of the score-mongerin’ population can appreciate fishing for Achievements – if you want to grab 200 points in a short amount of time, this is a suitable venue, but the other 800 will only show up on the most patient of Gamercards. Remember folks: crab fishing is second in deadliness only to rampant achievement addiction.

Thanks for stopping by this week, lads and ladies. Your comments, as always, are appreciated, and we are anxious to see what kind of reader reviews you can cook up. Feel free to e-mail those to us for a chance at Scoreboard-stardom. We will catch you all in the next two weeks after we surface from beneath our mountain of games for air. Until next week, heroes, get Achieving!

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