I find open-world action games are at their best in the midst of chaos. I’ve been attacking people on this dock for about twenty minutes now. Boats full of bounty hunters have been coming in swarms as I attack the helpless swimmers, sunbathers, and surfers. Oh, by the way, I’m a shark.
In Tripwire’s new action RPG Maneater you take on the role of a Bullshark hellbent on getting revenge on the Cajun fisherman who killed your mother. You eat, fight, swim, and on occasion launch yourself into a pool to feast on some unsuspecting tourists. It’s stupid, over the top fun, even if it starts to feel a bit repetitive before finishing the roughly seven-hour story mode.
Maneater (PC [reviewed], PS4, Switch, Xbox One)
Developer: Tripwire Interactive, Blindside Interactive
Publisher: Tripwire Interactive, Deep Silver (retail release)
Released: May 22, 2020
MSRP: $39.99
Maneater puts you in the role of a newborn Bullshark. After your mother is killed by a Cajun shark hunter called Scaly Pete, the hunter marks you and throws you off into the bayou vowing to find and take you down once you’re grown. From here, the game lays on a surprising amount of narrative through the framing device of Pete’s TV show, also called Maneater. The show is hosted, and subsequently, the entire game berated by one Chris Parnell. Chris Parnell’s brand of humor made for a sort of Marine Biologist take on Dr. Leo Spaceman, which adds a lot to the overall tone.
The gameplay is simple but engaging; as a pup shark, you start pretty small, but feeding on fish and even some bigger prey like turtles or even alligators nets you experience points to level up, which subsequently increases your size. You can also complete quests and find collectibles like location markers or license plates to gain experience. At certain milestones, your shark will evolve from pup to teen to adult and so on. Areas are gated off by barriers that you can only destroy at specific sizes, but leveling increases far more than just your size.
Experience can be spent in safe zones called grotto’s to upgrade your shark. They start simple, like improving vitality or increasing the range on a sonar ability that helps you to spot enemies and objectives. Still, eventually, you’ll be adding stone armor and bio-electric glands to your shark.
It’s the sort of zany upgrade system you would expect from the developers of the Killing Floor series,
Combat is strongest when you’re squaring off against other sea predators. The lock-on system is flawed and can make focusing on targets pretty irritating so it’s best ignored entirely. Instead it’s better put to use when trying to find hunters firing at you from boats in the far less engaging human encounters. It’s fun to dodge charge and take a bite out of other sharks, whales, and barracudas, but encounters with humans feel pretty boring and repetitive. Swim jump out of the water, grab a human, rinse, and repeat. Flopping around on a boat thrashing like a mad man is great fun but it loses its luster after the first few hours.Most of these missions feel like they were pasted in to help grind out late-game experience.
While the main story i is short there are a ton of side activities to complete. The location markers are fun and referential ( including a great Arrested Development gag), but the objective-based side missions are incredibly repetitive. I enjoy leaping onto a golf course and ripping the pro-tour to shreds as much as the next guy, but killing ten humans or feeding on ten of the same fish type loses any allure after a few short hours.
On PC Maneater looks pretty great; precisely, your shark does. Draw distance was an issue, as evidenced by the overly murky waters, but apart from a few rough textures, there isn’t much to take you out of the game. Though unfortunately, at the time of writing this, the Xbox version seems to be riddled with performance issues.
Maneater is mindless good fun. I wasted an entire day beating the game in a single sitting. It isn’t groundbreaking in the open-world RPG genre, but how many shark games have you ever played over the years? The sharp-toothed adventure was a pleasant surprise.
Verdict: Maneater is damn good fun. It’s far from perfect, and the repetitive content can be a bot much in later hours, but it doesn’t take too much time overstaying its welcome. Some pretty massive bugs seem to be plaguing console ports, so if PC isn’t an option, I would probably wait for a patch. Otherwise, it’s an afternoon well spent.
Wait for a sale