"Hungry Shark World" Review

"Hungry Shark Evolution" bared its teeth and tore through the sea of unsuspecting free-to-play mobile games, using the Ubisoft marketing machine to get a fin up on similar shark attack titles to draw the most attention. Now swimming onto the Switch as "Hungry Shark World," the spirit of the original remains.

Making for hours of sea life-stalking fun, the setup has you chase down smaller fish while avoiding larger ones, the reward loop tasks you to strive for incremental upgrades, gradually working your way up the food chain by unlocking larger, faster and more vicious beasts.

Those who wanted to plug in funds to cut down the wait times for unlocking the good stuff could turn the game into a costly pay-to-win affair. Frugal gamers could plug their way through without spending a penny, using their skills and patience to inch their way through the progression path.

What works as a free-to-play lark doesn't necessarily translate to a $10 console/handheld entry. It would have sweetened the deal had developers unlocked -- if not all the sharks -- at least enough of the higher-level creatures to justify the cost. There is little you can do in the Switch version that you can't in the free mobile version, and although the look and controls are better, that hardly justifies the $10 ante.

"Hungry Shark World" makes for a dive into plenty of seafaring fun, but a full-scale remake rather than a simplified port would have given the game a chance of being more than a small fish in a big sea.
Publisher provided review code.