Maneater

When I started playing Maneater, I drew some comparisons to Biomutant - in the sense it is open world, very colourful (heavily saturated), has commentary from a narrator, looks quite post-apocalyptic (but actually it's just a polluted sea). You grind for resources but instead of crafting, you select a perk and upgrade it many times.

The narration is humorous, but sometimes gives shark facts. If they are true or not though - I don't know. The general presentation is that it’s a TV show about shark hunters.

In the prelude to the story (which acts as the tutorial), you play as a full-grown shark, but eventually get captured by the game’s antagonist Scaly Pete, a shark hunter, who kills her, then slices a baby shark out of her womb, scars it and throws it back. He wants the baby to grow up to get the satisfaction of killing them as an adult.

The baby shark is who you play as, with the aim of becoming strong enough to get your revenge on Scaly Pete.

Eating gives you nutrients which levels you up, and you spend those nutrients on upgrades. You age from the baby shark to teen, to adult, then mega. The upgrades involve stange augmentations, and collecting the full set results in a very sci-fi shark. Initially, you eat small animals like turtles and groupers, but will move onto larger creatures over time, eating seals and taking down sperm whales. In each area, there is at least one hostile creature, and alligators pose an initial, stronger threat.

Eating humans gives you infamy which triggers hunters to come after you. Take so many of them out and the boss appears, of which there are 10. Standard humans can be swimming, on boats (pedalo, jet ski, pirate ships, cruise ship etc), or on land. You can survive for several seconds out of water, so you can beach yourself and thrash about.

The combat takes a fair amount of button presses if you are up against a group of shark hunters shooting at you. You need to move and dodge, leaping out to bite or swipe them. Often you need to retreat and find some creatures to munch on to restore your health. The final couple of shark hunters are extremely challenging to take down, but are weirdly way more difficult than Scaly Pete is.

When you battle the aggressive sea-life, you generally wait until they charge, you dodge out of the way, then charge in yourself when they are vulnerable. If you manage to hold them in your jaws, you can thrash about for more damage. You also have a tail-whip attack which can be used when you have them in your jaws to launch them. Tail-whipping normally is a stun attack.

The upgrades, known as “evolutions” can be changed when you are in your grotto (there’s one per area, and can quick-travel between them). I found the electric upgrades were best against sea-creatures which stuns them, then the bone ones were the best when you want to fight the shark hunters in their ships (does extra ship damage). There’s some upgrades giving you bonuses to the different types of nutrients, then the usual health upgrades.

The game does a good job of making the locales feel different. From shallow rivers, swamps, resorts, and deep water. You start in a swamp maze, then it opens up more as you progress. The deeper sea is naturally ominous, but you are a predator so it’s not as unsettling as a game like Subnautica.

The game seemed quite restrictive at first, but I think it was partially down to me thinking I had gone as far west as I could, but I was mistaken. I had found other potential exits which were restricted, but the exit really was to go west. You can actually venture into most areas without hindrance if you generally follow the path around the map anti-clockwise. You will probably need to get to around level 10 before venturing far, otherwise some threats could easily take you out. It’s also a good idea to focus on the story missions, because there’s lots of them, and it does a good job guiding you through the map. A lot of the “story” missions just involve eating certain types of fish, killing humans, defeating the apex predator, then checking in on Scaly Pete.

The basic open-world objectives are here: find chests, registration plates, landmarks, and defeating certain animal targets. It's easy to find these because your shark has a sonar ability which highlights nearby creatures and objectives. The sonar can be levelled up for increased range. Completing sets often rewards you with the upgrades so are worthwhile to do.

I encountered a few crashes to the desktop, and a few moments of frame rate drops. It generally performs well though and looks good.

I find open world games quite simplistic and repetitive, and this falls into that category. The difference is that you play as a shark which makes a huge difference; shark games are rare so this feels really refreshing. It is well made and well-presented, and at around 12 hours, it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

The idea of playing as a shark is not an entirely new one, but it probably has never been executed as well as this, with the movement being very satisfying, and there is an initial thrill to swerving through the water in pursuit of your prey or leaping onto land to chomp on some terrified humans. But the novelty wears off faster than you'd expect as the game settles into a rote pattern of the same mission types over and over upon entering each new area with precious little in the way of variety. For a game that's pretty short, it's damn disappointing how quickly it overstays its welcome. I'll give a shout out to the darkly satirical reality show parodies that make up the story of the game though as they're consistently fun at least.

funny i guess

Maneater is possibly one of the best shark simulators to exist, it really makes you feel like you are playing as a shark, and there are no other games this generation that give you that shark feeling. Okay, who are we kidding, this is the only shark game to come out this shark generation, and probably the only real shark game since Jaws Unleased back on PS2. Maneater tries to be a lighthearted shark simulator where you swim around through various swamps and waters eating different fish and tourists, and it follows a repetitive formula that most generic open World games have, but the only difference you play as a shark.

Now Maneater could have been a fun game, even with its repetition and lack of variety if the controls were good, but really the controls and mechanics are what hold this back. The concept is pretty simple, your mother gets killed by a shark hunter, you start off as a baby shark and work your way up eating fish and fighting off various sea creatures like other sharks and whales in order to grow into a bigger shark and ultimately get revenge on the man who killed your mother. You are given a few different skins and abilities you can use, but they really are more for cosmetic and most of the skins are unlocked through grinding and exploring. The two things that hold this back are you move way too slow and the lock on is very awkward and often times just refuses to work right. Often times I'd be fighting a boss and I'd try to lock on, and then when the boss swims past me the lock on just disappears. Often times I just had to get close to an enemy and just mash the bite button and hold it auto locks on, and this just feels so clunky and unsatisfying, which is really sad because if this was done well, it could have been fun, but it ultimately is one of the major frustrations.

The other thing is so many enemies in this game are damage sponges, even with fully upgraded abilities it takes too long to kill some of the games enemies and enemy boats. This is the kind of game where it would have felt very satisfying to become super overpowered once you reach max level, but I hardly felt much different at level 15 than I did at 30. The only thing leveling up really felt like it did was increase how much you can jump out of water to help get collectibles.

Now the problem with the story and gameplay is the repetition, the game just consists of 2 things, eating and collectibles. The combat just consists of swimming up to an enemy and mashing the bite button until its dead, lock on doesn't really do much. Thats it, its simple but repetitive and with the poor lock on its kind of bland. The exploring is a little more exciting because often it gives you some fun commentary from the narrator and it gives you a change of gameplay, but most collectibles are just use your radar, than either jump out of the water or find it at the bottom of the water, the collectibles are really pointless and mainly useful for giving you points to level up your abilities.

Now there is some good, I mean I did give this game a somewhat passable score, and thats really the narration, the game is narrated by the guy who voices Cyril from Archer,or Jerry from Rick and Morty for the less cultured. Often he'll make sarcastic commentary throughout about sharks and your journey, and you can find different collectibles that make references to other games or things in pop culture like Subnautica or Spongebob. Plus Maneater does benefit from not taking itself too serious, and overall, it does get some points for being the only current game you can play as a shark thats not some cheap free phone game. And it is an okay game to dick around in for an hour or so, but it just feels like a few small things hold it back from being decent enough, I mean it could have been a 3.5 if it had a decent lock on system, less damage sponge enemies, and made you swim faster. The problem is these issues add a little too much tedium to an already tedious game. I mean it is free on PS+ this month, so I can't really say I wasted money, and I enjoyed it enough to complete it and get all the unlockables, but its not really a game I will ever play again, and I'm someone that loves sharks and had shark books growing up as a kid. Maybe if they ever did a Maneater 2 they could take notes from Jaws Unleashed, and make more satisfying gameplay, and a lot less repetition and a richer open World instead of everything looking copy paste. This is best enjoyed as a game to dick around with one night with a group of friends then forget about the next day and delete off your hard drive when you realize Horizon Forbidden West is coming soon and the PS5 only has a 800 GB hard drive.