Thank you Ultimate Games for providing us with a review code!

This is certainly a surprise. I didn’t even know Deadliest Catch was still airing, let alone they made another game based on the show in 2020. And the game is partially funded by Discovery themselves. (Interesting that Discovery is interested in games based on their IP considering they helped convince Warner Bros to gut their animation department.) Anyways, three years later, Deadliest Catch: The Game was released on Xbox platforms and the Nintendo Switch. I vaguely remember the first season nearly 20 years ago, but I did have a little excitement in me when I was given the chance to review this. All the fun of crab fishing without any of the stuff I am allergic to, such as crabs—and dying.

For Deadliest Catch, after booting up the game, you‘re either given a choice to go straight into career mode or follow the tutorial. The tutorial is text-based with a manual demonstration after. There are a lot of things to keep in mind such as the entire process of fishing for crabs. Just to get the crabs, you need enough cages, then you need to move the cage to the dock-off point. Then fit it with a buoy, fasten some bait to the cage after grinding it up, and wait some hours. After enough time passes, you collect the fish, separate them by gender and size, put all the stuff away, and then take your haul back to earn money. Unlike some modern simulator games where you just press a button automatically and that specific task is instantly finished, you’re doing all of this mostly manually. Fortunately, after earning some money, you can relegate some of the tasks to crew members you hire.

Unfortunately, it took me nearly half a dozen tries just to get through the tutorial. With the original 2013 Xbox One model, it runs at an average of 15 frames per second. The console is showing its age a decade later, but I’d at least expect it to run at a more “stable” 30FPS. It’s not like Deadliest Catch is graphically impressive, with its low poly textures that look like the game is still loading in. On top of the sluggish framerate, there are also numerous bugs, many of which lead to softlocks. One particular bug I found during the tutorial was simply climbing a ladder on the upper deck area of the boat. It just puts me in the air without any way of getting down without loading a previous save file. Other glitches for me included getting stuck in the store when purchasing an upgrade, or seemingly random teleportation.

After the unintentionally lengthy tutorial, you’re free to do whatever you want. Despite the stormy weather 99% of the time, the weather seems to have no effect on your expedition whatsoever. Isn’t the entire reason Deadliest Catch is called the way it is called because of the intense and dangerous conditions at sea? Why is there no danger? You would think that would be the feature with the highest amount of priority to implement. That would be like making a survival game in the jungle, but you’re in zero danger of being attacked by wildlife.

Dealing with all the minor and major annoyances, I did somewhat enjoy the progression as you start from essentially a one-man crew doing every task, to becoming the captain of your ship with a crew to do all the tedious stuff. Like counting crabs, for example. You gotta turn them around slowly, one at a time to check the crabs. In the later expeditions, you’ll have hundreds of crabs to count. Wouldn’t it be better to relegate that task to someone else so you can focus your time on more efficient tasks?

Deadliest Catch: The Game might have something to offer, just not from this console port. The controls feel sluggish, the framerate is unacceptable, and the glitches for what is essentially a 3+ year old product really shouldn’t exist. If you must buy a console version, it might be better to choose the Switch port if available and you can't brute force performance with the Xbox Series. It might be possible with an Xbox One X, but there is no known recorded footage that I am aware of. In an ironic twist, the weak Switch hardware actually works in its favor. That port is so downgraded that it manages to run and control a little bit better. Morally, the only thing of concern is killing crabs. If you’re still interested and have a decent enough PC, I would attempt to get it for that platform first.