Deadliest Catch: The Game Review

I’ve made many mistakes in my life, too numerous to detail here, but probably my most significant was deciding to help out on Xbox Tavern’s backlog of reviews and tackling one of the games that was overlooked. (thanks AJ – ed)

As someone that has worked on games and seen the amount of effort that goes into them, the things that can go wrong, the unexpected missteps, etc; I am sympathetic towards any developer placed in a situation where they have the thankless task of creating a TV tie-in video game. That said, Deadliest Catch: The Game is a wet fart of an experience almost from the moment of boot-up.

I’ve never watched the show (it has been running for 19 seasons, which is a wild thing to write out) but if the experience of the game is remotely representative of the show, I can only imagine that the episodes were created specifically as a cure for insomnia.

The premise of the game is that you are a young, up and coming, crab fisher. Played in first person perspective, the player is expected to buy supplies for their boat at the hub area and then go out to a spot and catch and sort crabs. This involves dropping cages, setting bait, and pulling up and sorting through the catch.

That’s kind of it.

I got a bit further in the campaign and the stakes do get raised, by there being more time pressure to get tasks done, and it being important to win wagers against other crab catchers. It is just delivered with an impact so devoid of meaning that I felt like I was reading the ingredients off the side of a cereal box.

Deadliest Catch is not the first game to post unrealistic screenshots on its store page, but it is shocking how much worse the game looks in comparison to the pampered publicity shots. In-game the textures are flat and lifeless, looking like early X360 games rather than anything current or last gen, something that would be forgivable if the game had any charm, but it is devoid of personality. I would have hoped that this meant that it was a smooth experience, but even then the choppy framerate was bad enough to give me motion sickness.

I tip my hat to the development team. To make something this bad and get paid for it is kind of living the dream.

I would try and talk about the dynamics of moving from cage to sorting bay, flipping crabs, re-using fish as bait for more crabs, or a few of the other, incredibly rote mechanics in this game. I might even make some lack lustre attempt at squinting at the game to try and see what they were attempting to do and then make up some mealy-mouthed excuse that ‘if this were a student project I would be really impressed’ or something.

But there is nothing here. This game is really bad. Don’t play this, not even as a joke.

Conclusion

I appreciate that the devs/publishers have a steam bundle called ‘Deadly Bakery’ that just about justifies this game’s existence. Utterly woeful at every turn, and best avoided.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox Series S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

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