As a bit of a companion piece to my last article, I decided to take a look at the newest title in the “animal shenanigans” subgenre of games, Maneater. If Untitled Goose Game is a lighthearted British farce, the Maneater is, well, Shark Week. If Shark Week were a Syfy Channel production. And I mean that as a compliment.
Maneater is a self-proclaimed ShaRkPG (shark RPG, you see), that I feel like I can describe most succinctly as Crackdown but sharks. It’s a third person, open world, action-adventure, collect-a-thon, at its core. You’ll chomp up different sea life to gain various types of nutrients, which are each used to level up special evolutionary tools to make your shark stronger. You’ll use this ever-growing strength to fight other predators and attack human boats. Attacking humans gains you basically a wanted level that will cause shark hunters to flock after you. The combat is very quickly paced and takes some getting used to, though. When you’re taking on other animals, you must dodge their oncoming attacks, turn quickly to lock on, and counter-attack with your jaws or a tail swipe. The “lock-on” is more like a “line up,” if I’m being honest. It does not maintain a lock on your opponent, but rather allows you to turn on a dime to face your opponent without having to manually turn your giant shark butt. It can be clunky at first, but after a while, I found that it worked well enough. As long as you play by standard RPG rules, and don’t go after enemies way over your current level, you’ll be fine.
Fighting humans however is a bit more chaotic, or at least it is when I do it. You can easily jump out of the water, line up and grab a hunter off his boat and chomp him no problem. You can also attack the boat itself until it sinks, which will be considered a defeat on the hunters aboard. Hunters will shoot harpoons at you, and you must dodge them all while still fighting. Each boat has about three hunters, and all of them can attack at once. It can be nuts when you get surrounded, especially as you kill hunters and become more Infamous. It’s not overly difficult, but it can be a mess. Which is to be expected when you're a swimming lawnmower that can't turn off, I guess.
There are three different major biological trait sets you can use to give you an edge, adding bonuses to your jaws, tail, and even organs. Seeking out special tourist locations will grant you a set for adding poison attacks and health-siphoning vampire teeth. Hunting down and defeating apex predators allows you access to a set that makes you tougher and more damaging to boats. And in a very Crackdown-like Infamy system, you’ll fight off shark hunters until you lure out their bosses, weeding out “famous” shark hunters through a bounty checklist, until you gain tools to make you electrified and move faster. Each part can be mixed and matched and leveled up to be more effective. It offers some fun options for tackling different types of opponents, and even offers bonuses like sonar and the ability to survive for longer periods of time on land. Oh yeah, you can hop onto the beach and continue the carnage all down the boardwalk by the way.
This game is certainly longer than six hours, with me getting about 40% through the story with some decent collecting and exploring happening, but it’s not overly long either with some folks completing it in around 10 hours or so. Though it is a game that can be played in pretty short bursts, depending on what you want to get done. If you like exploring maps, this one is quite pretty and full of collectibles to check off lists if that's your thing, as well. The combat is simple but can be challenging when taking on bigger bosses, though it will be a bit repetitive. I mean, there really are only so many ways to eat a person. You’re an actual shark, so you’re not going to be hacking computers King Shark style or anything. There is a story too, and though it's very simple, it’s done delightfully.
All of this rapid evolution is being done to seek revenge on the foul hunter who killed your mother, Scaly Pete. The set up is very fun, with the backdrop of the game’s narrative being a reality show about sharks and the jerks that hunt them. Since your character can’t speak and the only motivation is that you’re a living garbage disposal with a hunger for vengeance and different sized turtles, the reality show’s narrator, played by Chris Parnell (SNL, 30 Rock, Rick & Morty), offers up delightful observations of your actions, the events going on in the story, and even fun tidbits of information about the wildlife and society in this fictional bay area of Port Clovis. It’s functional and doesn’t bog its gameplay rhythm down, and I personally find Parnell to always be a treat.
Maneater has a visual style I quite enjoy too. The wildlife is fairly realistic looking, while the people and the gore are cartoonish. The underwater bits are captivating and full of fun little touches distinct to each area, from muddy swamps full of bones to the golf course with sunken yachts and clear water, every area is visually distinct. They also use visual cues quite well, having yellow lights always leading out of caves and the usage of cues in combat to signify counter attack capability. Hunter laser-sights can be quite obnoxious when you’re overwhelmed, but they are very clear visually when timingthe need for you to dodge. The world outside the water could lead you to believe that Deep Silver Games had more to do with Maneater than retail distribution, as the city is full of purples and neons very reminiscent of Saints Row and Agents of Mayhem’s color palettes. It gives a nice duality to the serine and sometimes oppressive seafloor and the loud bright world above. Makes it’s so much more satisfying to slather the latter in fresh blood and then duck back to the former for a little respite.
I must mention however that I have encountered a couple of bugs. There would be some serious graphical tearing at times either when I swam too close to the bottom in the swamp, or simply when I would pause the game. It never lasted long or really effected anything, but it happened. More stressful though was a weird bug I only encountered one time, where I was still able to move my shark forward and to the sides, but the lunge button, attack button, and jump button would not respond. It caused me to be eaten by a gator, which was annoying, however you are not punished too much for dying, and the bug corrected itself when I respawned. It was over quick enough, and only happened once. Finally, during a seriously heated boss fight, I at one point knocked the enemy into some weird gravity glitch and she flew across the map. By the time we met back up, her health had reset. Again, only ever happened once, but the ragdoll effects seem to go wacky every now and again.
While it is brand new, Maneater is only $39.99, which for the amount of content and the fun I had with it, and have to look forward to, I can say is a decent value for me. If you want something for a bit of mindless fun and power fantasy, Maneater can do the trick. It can get repetitive, but the repetition is exactly right for certain players, especially in short bursts. Personally, I’m a fan of sharks, and there haven’t been many titles that scratch the itch of being one. If you enjoyed Jaws Unleashed back in the day, or you have always wanted to chomp a turtle in two bites, you really can’t find anything else quite like this title right now. It’s a megalodon of a good time.