Feeding Frenzy (Xbox 360)

Eat-and-grow games seem to have a heavy link with fish, one that makes quite a bit of sense considering the common cultural understanding that smaller fish are eaten by bigger fish who are, in turn, eaten by even larger fish. Eat-and-grow titles simply allow you to grow from that small fish up to the biggest fish by eating your way up the aquatic food chain. There may be another reason that many games in this tiny subgenre use fish as their food though, because even though Feeding Frenzy may not be the originator of the idea or even the first to use fish for it, its original PC release certainly caught fire with casual gamers. Released a few years later on the Xbox 360, Feeding Frenzy has its easily understood gameplay now under the command of a controller, and the joysticks are a natural fit for weaving around freely underwater to find your meals.

Feeding Frenzy features two modes that structure the eat-and-grow levels, one of which is referred to as Time Attack and simply adds a ticking clock to each stage whereas the regular game has no such time pressure to get to the level’s required size. Stages in Feeding Frenzy are pretty short and all follow a similar form of progression: you enter the stage a small fry and must gobble up fish smaller than you, your fish expanding to a larger size after having consumed a certain amount of food that makes eating new types of fish possible. Once you’re big enough to eat most things in the stage, the level will wrap-up, and if you were quick enough in achieving the target size, a mermaid will swim by to drop some high scoring starfish for you to chomp on. Feeding Frenzy has a scoring system on top of the levels to beat, with the game’s name being lent to a fever mode where if you eat enough fish in a short period of time, you’ll start earning extra points, the player even able to enter a Double Frenzy if they can keep up the pace for an even higher score.

Chasing down smaller fish and eating them isn’t a very difficult goal, and even as the game starts introducing larger and more aggressive fish, the Xbox 360 controller provides a degree of control perfect for weaving around hungry foes like you’re dancing underwater. Surviving a level is not much of a challenge and the game dishes out extra lives liberally to further make the game incredibly easy, but the process of growing is still somewhat satisfying, your fish’s increasing size visualizing your progress fairly well. The fish you play as during the game actually changes over the course of it, play starting off with an angelfish but later levels having you play as an anglerfish, lionfish, John Dory, and even an orca. However, these underwater animals all change shape with little regard to how big they should be, starting levels very small and growing to sometimes absurd sizes before they wrap up. The only difference beyond their appearance would be that all but the angelfish have an extra ability. While you only need to swim into a smaller fish to eat it, there is an ability that will allow the later playable animals to suck in nearby fish all at once, this power great for pulling in a school of fish for a small point bonus. On top of having a dash to close the distance with flighty prey, your abilities are definitely limited but not to the point you feel like you’re lacking, the five playable undersea creatures all up to the task of chowing down on whatever swims their way.

However, great control doesn’t make the core gameplay loop great, and in fact, things can start to get a bit repetitive. To offset this, the game does have a gradual rollout of new enemy types, hazards, and mechanics. Clams appear on the seabed with pearls you can grab for bonus points, some even having black pearls that give a huge food bonus, but if they clamp down on you, that’s a life lost. Jellyfish begin to swim by, the player unable to eat them but anything that gets caught in their tentacles will be briefly stunned, player and enemy alike susceptible to this danger. Pufferfish will repel you and dock points by inflating, creatures much larger than the end of level size like sharks patrol about, and radioactive fish will mess with your controls if consumed.  Some levels even have explosive mines, but none of these shakeups are big enough to alter the way you play all that much. The game does have the wisdom to rotate them out so there are new gimmicks appearing to replace ones you’ve gotten used to, but on the other hand it gives you power-ups like one that lets you eat anything you can eat on screen instantly and another that dazes the other fish for a short period. Having this extra edge is entirely unnecessary, but it is at least something to swim towards besides the nearest small fish.

Another valiant attempt is made to inject some variety into the game in the form of bonus stages where losing won’t rob you of a life, but it will wrap up the stage as soon as it happens. Many of these involve eating every single creature that appears within the time limit, and while it is just trying to light a fire under players who might otherwise just be taking their time on chowing down on other fish, it does at least ensure that on the whole, Feeding Frenzy does shift its design elements around just enough that it doesn’t wear out its welcome. The levels do culminate in one boss battle where you and the Shark King compete in an eating contest where the end goal is to eat the other fish. It is pretty much a gimmick level in that it doesn’t change up your actions much but adds a new wrinkle to the process, and introducing small wrinkles is all Feeding Frenzy ever really does. The background continues to shift to new underwater locations to make sure things don’t grow visually stale as well, but since it’s another area where Feeding Frenzy relies on simple variation rather than large changes, levels are often only technically different without feeling all that different. The game knows it can rely on a simple, satisfying, easily understood premise, to the point where it doesn’t even create enough between-level Fun Facts about undersea life to fill the entire game, repeating its small selection quite a bit before you face the game’s final and only boss.

THE VERDICT: Feeding Frenzy has the basics of an eat-and-grow game down pat, there being no question that you have a good sense of control over you fish and that the smaller fish you need to eat are paced well and spaced out enough that you do feel involved enough in the growth process. However, even as the game introduces new mechanics, fish types, and even minigame levels, it feels like it’s comfortably settled into a mold it refuses to break. Your play has new elements introduced but never feels too different, the added ideas keeping things from growing stale but never pushing Feeding Frenzy beyond a consistent but somewhat enjoyable repeated gameplay style.

And so, I give Feeding Frenzy for Xbox 360…

An OKAY rating. Feeding Frenzy’s small efforts to shake things up without ever going too far in altering the gameplay loop lead to a game that fills its run time nicely enough, but it doesn’t have much strength outside of casual play. Time Attack is a weak attempt to introduce difficulty when the game should have been focusing on making its hazards more engaging or fellow predators more aggressive. It could even just have the game alter your play style more often like it briefly does for the minigames. Feeding Frenzy is unambitious but not unenjoyable, the eat-and-grow game formula well represented here and making the game fun to play even if it’s not really asking much from the player. It’s an action game you can relax with and not have to worry about things being too difficult, but it still feels somewhat shallow since it doesn’t really grow much with the new elements it introduces.

Feeding Frenzy does its simple concept well, but not well enough that it ends up compelling or addicting. A few other games would iterate on the design featured here or try to copy it and similarly hope the easy satisfaction the concept has built-in would buoy their enjoyability, but this most popular execution of eat-and-grow gameplay doesn’t feel antiquated or too basic because of it. It knows it has to do a bit to keep its levels interesting and does just enough that it can slip by on its slightly altered fundamentals, but it takes more than a few new mean fish to make this more than an acceptable time waster.