[REVIEW] Derrick the Deathfin

Blaine Arcade

(PlayStation 3 [REVIEWED])

Derrick the Deathfin is a small downloadable game for the Playstation Network from developer Different Tuna. Every good game has to have a hook, something to reel in customers that nothing else is offering. With Derrick, the bait is the art style. Everything, from the enemy models, to the environment, is paper craft. The titular shark Derrick, and the other inhabitants of his aquatic world, all swim around with their delightfully angular bodies, completely unaware of what water might actually do to paper. The environments themselves are a tad more… well, let’s just call it South Park.

The story is simple: Derrick’s family was killed and canned by the M.E.A.N. corporation, which also has a branch specializing in polluting the ocean. Your goal is to destroy their facilities, in order to avenge your parents. This goal is displayed rather counterintuitively, as each time one of their oil derricks or barges is destroyed, it pollutes the surrounding waters horribly, even marking your overworld map with oil spill and aerosol poison splotches.

The gameplay is something of a cross between Ecco the Dolphin, Feeding Frenzy, and Trials Evolution, with enough hiccups and aggravating moments to give even the hungriest license plate-eating tiger shark nausea. There are a few varieties of level, but the most common sees you simply trying to reach the finish line with a high score while preventing your shark from starving to death. This starvation takes the form of a quickly draining meter at the top of the screen. If you fail to chow down on a passing fish, or ingest a collectible gem (rock candy maybe?) in time, Derrick will go belly up and the level will reload.

Several design choices weaken the experience considerably. The controls are a tad floaty and, despite how appropriate that word may seem, it only adds frustration. At first, you think they want you to race through the levels with the quickest time, but once you realize that you need to collect many of the gems to unlock new levels, and that the gems refill your draining health, the easiest thing to do is swim very slowly and perfectly follow a trail of collectibles for half the level. It turns the game into a dotted line tracing simulator, even less fun than it sounds.

Power-ups like sprigs of broccoli, that fully restore your health, and chili peppers that increase your speed will often bob out of the way of your character when you try to eat them, wasting precious time and causing you to lose your momentum. Also, these power-ups respawn almost instantly in some places, indicating the developers were aware that you would be attempting the same jumps over and over again. In some places during the final levels, you’re stuck swimming in circles, picking up a piece of broccoli each time to make sure you don’t starve between failed attempts to leap over a mountain of cardboard.

Where Derrick wastes its potential most is in its thinness. The game is flatter than its admittedly quirky and fun inspiration. There are few enemy types and they repeat across the various oceans even if they would never live there. Really, guys? Crocodiles in Alaskan waters? I guess the paper ones aren’t cold blooded. It is also baffling why they chose gems as underwater collectibles. Why not sand dollars or pearls? With seven seas of inspiration out there, it’s a mystery as to why the artists involved did not try to interpret more exotic and interesting animals in paper.

This makes me think the game itself would have been better off as a submerged side-scroller/platformer like Ecco the Dolphin. Instead of racing through the levels, players would actually be able to take the time to enjoy Derrick’s main draw: the art style.

Even as an arcade game, the features are far too minimal. There are no unlockable skins for Derrick, no levels that become available beyond campaign completion, no level editor, no unlockable music or concept art, no multiplayer, and nothing to encourage players to top each other’s scores other than, “Hey, look! My name’s at the top!”

I hate to say this about a game that should’ve had me hook, line, and sinker, but Derrick the Deathfin should be recycled. Perhaps he’ll perform more admirably as a cardboard sleeve for someone’s latte.