«Maneater»: become the apex predator
25.5.2020
Translation: Eva Francis
You're a shark that'll eat anything it comes across in the water. Or even shore, at times. From baby fish to the orca whales, you don’t shy away from anything. The gameplay might be repetitive, but it’s still bucketloads of fun.
When I saw the first trailer a year ago, I knew this was a game for me. In «Maneater», you’re an insatiable shark that eats its way up the food chain and evolves from a shark pup to a mega shark. It’s part of a reality TV show of the same name, which follows the heinous shark hunter Scaly Pete. Not only did he kill your mum, but now he's after you. How convenient, as Scaly Pete’s on your menu, too.
Simple but catchy
«Maneater» is a simple game. You start as a bull shark pup and eat everything you possibly can: that’s catfish and turtles to start off with and later seals and even other sharks. Each animal provides you with resources that you can use for upgrades such as armour. Your shark hunts its way through various phases and can gradually be equipped with new fins, jaws and organs. You can improve these with resources.
Of course, you don’t only hunt sea creatures. Humans are special treats. Pull them off their pedal boats or even catch them ashore – a bit like in «Sharknado». However, you’ll run out of air pretty fast once you leave the water.
Eating too many humans isn’t bad for your stomach, but it means there’s more threat and hunters with harpoons and rifles will appear. In the style of «GTA». If you attack them for long enough, a particularly murderous predator will appear. There are ten of them in total, each waiting for you with a special reward.
Your shark moves incredibly gracefully. Whether you're tearing up a swordfish, doing pirouettes in the air or crawling after screaming beachgoers on land, you always look elegant. Developer Tripwire has done a great job on the design. The open game world is divided into several areas. From murky swamp to water park and deep sea with drilling platforms, there’s a lot of variety. Only the limited sight is a bit disturbing. This is probably related to the hardware requirements, but I would have liked to set the slider a bit higher.
Apart from that, it’s a wonderful world that’s great fun to discover, offering sunken ships, winding caves, blue shining craters and new sights to unlock at every corner. Most new sights are some kind of pop culture tribute. Food boxes and number plates are other collectibles. That’s not very original, but they’re limited enough to be bearable.
On top of that, there are top predators to deal with. The ultimate predators dominate a territory and are particularly difficult to bet. If you do, you’ll get an upgrade as a reward.
Repetitive and camera problems
«Maneater» has its flaws. My main point of criticism is undoubtedly the lack of variety. Apart from hunting and eating, there’s not much for you to do. The storyline is simple and even the quests that help you advance always follow the same pattern: eat ten parrot fish, eat ten humans or destroy this boat. As you’re also doing exactly this without quests, it can get a bit boring after a while.
The camera also annoyed me at times. When you’re fighting something or someone close to the water surface, it usually changes from underwater view to above water view. In this perspective, you can’t see what’s happening under water any more and have to dive down to regain an underwater view. This is annoying when you’re in the middle of a hectic fight. Speaking of fighting: it would be helpful to have a function that allows you to target enemies permanently. Unfortunately, this is only possible for a short time and every time an enemy swims past you, you have to re-target them. On top of this, you’re hammering the shoulder button on the controller non-stop to bite. I'm surprised I didn't get carpal tunnel syndrome.
Conclusion: simple but motivating
Despite the criticisms, «Maneater» captivated me from start to finish. This is also related to the relatively short game length: after nine hours, I was done. What remained was collecting a few predators and collectibles. But the game should definitely not be longer, as it offers too little variety to keep people entertained for more than that. «Maneater» is an undemanding, but thoroughly enjoyable open world action game, which allows you to go hog shark wild.
«Maneater» is available for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch.
Philipp Rüegg
Senior Editor
Philipp.Rueegg@digitecgalaxus.chBeing the game and gadget geek that I am, working at digitec and Galaxus makes me feel like a kid in a candy shop – but it does take its toll on my wallet. I enjoy tinkering with my PC in Tim Taylor fashion and talking about games on my podcast http://www.onemorelevel.ch. To satisfy my need for speed, I get on my full suspension mountain bike and set out to find some nice trails. My thirst for culture is quenched by deep conversations over a couple of cold ones at the mostly frustrating games of FC Winterthur.
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