Developer: Tripwire Interactive
Publisher: Tripwire Interactive
Rrp: £34.99 (Humblebundle, Steam and Epic)
Released: May 22nd 2020
Available on: Humblebundle, Steam and Epic
Played Using: An Xbox One Control Pad
Approximate game length: 10 Hours
In the words of Hall and Oates;
“Oh, here she comes.
She’s a man eater.
Watch out boy she’ll chew you up.”
Have you ever heard of an elevator pitch? It’s where you try to sell an idea to someone in a very short space of time, such as the time it takes to ride in an elevator. Well this game feels like it started out as one of those ‘An open world RPG where you play as a shark avenging the death of their mother’.
The game has the aesthetic of a reality TV show called ‘Maneater’ which is narrated by the shows host voiced by Chris Parnell (the voice of Jerry from Rick and Morty or Cyril Figis from Archer). The narrator will comment on almost everything you do as you play which at first is quite charming but after you’ve heard the same lines multiple times it starts to grate somewhat. Still its interesting to hear what he has to say when you uncover a new landmark, that being said this game features a lot of references, some of which were very obviously included because of Chris Parnell’s involvement.
You start the game as a pup, well actually no that’s not true, you start the game as a fully grown shark but that’s only for the tutorial and to introduce the games main antagonist Scaly Pete. Once the main tutorial is over you’ll start off as a pup. Over the course of the game you’ll grow in size as you gain levels and attain evolutions. You’re level increases by completing quests, killing hunters, eating other marine life and discovering (and completing) all the various things on the map.
As you consume fish (among other things) and complete quests you’ll gain resources. There are four to gather up; protein, minerals, fat and mutagen. These resources are used to upgrade the evolutions you acquire making them potent. Equipping and upgrading your evolutions can only be done while within a grotto.
A grotto is a safe area where you respawn to when you die or load into the game. Each zone has one.
Evolutions are earned through various means such as killing a specific hunter and completing specific quests.
Speaking of evolutions you start the game off with sonar which is not something sharks have, but I’m not claiming that this game is scientifically accurate (it definitely isn’t), you can make your shark emit lightning as it jumps so I’m not going to quibble about it having sonar.
Sonar is used to scan the area near to you for events and to highlight other aquatic life.
Maneater is a strange game for me when it comes to the story because there are actually two at play. The first is just the basic revenge story your shark has, the bad fisherman (Scaly Pete) killed your mum so you want to get revenge. Pretty cut and dry as stories go. It’s the other story that I found much more interesting, the story of Scaly Pete and his son. I’m not saying that this story is akin to Shakespeare but it was more heartfelt than I expected to get from a game like this.
Thing is the story (or at least the more interesting one) and the gameplay are kept very separate. In order to progress with the story you have to complete certain missions, but some of the story missions are a bit… nonsensical. I can’t see any reason why I had to kill ten parrot fish and then an ‘apex’ alligator in order to see a cutscene to progress the story they had literally nothing to do with.
Combat is a bit of a clusterfuck in part due to the fast paced action but also because the AI will ignore other threats to focus solely on you. This can mean that at times you may be dealing with a couple of annoying weak enemies, while also trying to avoid hunters and dodging alligators (or other aggressive marine life). All the while all those enemies solely aim at you. That isn’t to say that it isn’t fun it really is most of the time but a run of bad luck like that can get you killed extremely quickly.
As open world games go this one is actually quite small, though that hasn’t stopped the developers from filling the world to the brim with all sorts of collectibles, secrets and missions. Of course that does mean that this game is guilty of what pretty much what every open world does, tons busy work. Sure there are no bandit camps to empty or radio towers to climb but you do have to kill ‘x’ number of humans or fish etc.
As is to be expected by a game created in the Unreal engine 4 Maneater looks great. It’s clear the developers chose not to go for a lifelike look but instead have a stylised and somewhat cartoony aesthetic, which works well for this game and the frankly insane amount of gore and violence that can be shown on screen at once. I think what I’m most impressed with is the way the world looks when transitioning from underwater to above.
Honestly this game is dumb and I kinda’ love it. Sure the gameplay loop does get old after the first six hours but there’s still enough to discover that it makes up for that in a small way. If you fancy a game that is fairly short, action packed and a bit stupid you can do much worse than this.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Mad Max
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Dying Light
