Tripwire Interactive’s Maneater really does have itself a pretty killer premise. Letting players loose on its open world setting of Port Clovis as a deeply scarred bull shark in search of revenge, it’s an unashamedly silly, hyper violent and completely throwaway experience that should make for a pretty great videogame. It delivers in giving you the motivation, the tools and the playground with which to exact your bloody retribution, gets the tone and the setting of its shark vendetta just right, but then fumbles its execution, delivering a procession of dull missions, janky combat and an ever-increasing laundry list of the very worst kind of open world busywork. In the end, what should have been a riotous revenge fantasy ends up feeling rather toothless.
Kicking off with the murder of your mother at the hands of celebrity shark hunter Scaly Pete (who’s hand you bite off in the opening scenes) Maneater wastes no time in flinging you into the fins of a newly orphaned baby shark (please don’t sing it) [Sing what? - Ed] who you must now commandeer through the eight regions that make up the game’s open world map. Here you’ll eat everything you see, be it man, woman or seal, in order to evolve into a flipping mega-shark — an apex killer with the skills and abilities to face off against your hook-handed nemesis and avenge your momma once and for all.
It’s the framing of the narrative here that’s really Maneater’s strongest element, with Scaly Pete the star of a wonderfully grotty reality TV show that follows him and his rebellious son, Kyle, as they search the waterways of Port Clovis for the bull shark that chomped his hand off. This allows for a constant narration of not just every plot point and ludicrous cutscene, but pretty much every action you take as you swim around the lakes, beaches and bayous of Port Clovis. With Chris Parnell (of Rick and Morty and SNL fame) on narration duties here, the game is instantly lifted out of the mire that is its actual gameplay, with plenty of laughs to be had, movie and TV references to knowingly jab your finger at and a playful B-movie feel to the whole thing that it’s really quite hard to dislike.
If only the gameplay wasn’t quite so lacking though, eh. As much as evolving your shark here is fun enough in and of itself (adding tiger skin, advanced sonar, electric teeth, shadow fins, armoured plating and so on to a body which continues to grow as you move from childhood into adult shark life), the actual threats you take on and missions you’re tasked with are just very disappointing overall. Besides the boring filler side quests that never mix things up even once across the entire duration of the game — constantly tasking you with eating ten of a certain type of fish or killing a fixed number of super dumb humans — the apex predator fights, hunter boss battles and various face-offs that further the story along also suffer on account of the game’s rather weak and janky combat.
In terms of abilities during a battle, your bull shark can whip its tail, bite, jump out of the water and dodge incoming attacks... and that’s about it. While peaceful traversal throughout Maneater’s world is always pretty satisfying and just swimming around and gobbling up fish for their nutrients is almost therapeutic at times, once a proper scrap starts — once you’ve got the attention of a worthy adversary — the frustration starts to kick in. As there’s no lock-on during fights here, with a press of the right stick only recentring your focus on an enemy momentarily, you’re constantly in a struggle with the game’s camera when things get hectic, especially in small areas where you’ll likely be tempted to smash your controller.
Dodging is almost impossible to time well, too, especially when you can rarely get a good sight of your foe due to those camera issues, and in the end most face-offs very quickly degenerate into unsatisfying button-mashing, getting a few bites in then swimming away to regenerate health by munching some nearby fishies before getting back to slowly whittling your enemy down. It’s all a bit tiresome and disappointing.
Human foes aren’t much better, either. As much fun as it is to tear them from their jet-skis and yachts, ripping them to bloody shreds as they scream out in terror, when you’re up against hunters it’s a similarly disappointing story of janky controls ruining the party. Escaping the red line that indicates a hunter’s incoming gunshots is a real hit or miss affair here, destroying their boats a button-mashing chore, and no matter who they are — the game features a host of celebrity hunter bosses to take out — they all die in exactly the same manner; so much so that we didn’t realise we’d even killed the big name hunters most of the time.
Maneater also has a very weird, and very bad, habit of making you go on dry land in order to attack human enemies; one upgrade path actually increases the time you can spend out of the water. It’s such a terrible activity from a gameplay point of view, flopping miserably around as you attempt to chow down on some golfers or Hampton types. We get that it’s meant to be funny, perhaps it was the first dozen times, but it grows so tiresome and exacerbates everything we dislike about the combat here, it seems like keeping the shark in the water at all times really would have been a better way to go.
Even with a rather short running time of around about ten hours, by game’s end we were well and truly done with most of what Maneater has to offer. We’d collected enough car licence plates, eaten our fill of fish and humans alike and chomped through more than our fair share of secret caches and points of interest – although at least Chris Parnell makes those points of interest pretty amusing.
Not everything here is bad, of course. Indeed, when left to your own devices there's a decent amount of fun to be had in just evolving your shark and role-playing the classic beach terror, emerging from the depths to swallow swimmers whole or flying out of the water to snatch some toff from the bow of his super yacht. We even developed a worrying habit of lurking around beneath groups of unaware swimmers, taking our time and deliberating over which one of them was going to get dragged screaming to the depths. It's just a shame the actual combat is so dull and open world mission structure so dated.
On a much more positive note, for those who are interested in taking this one for a swim regardless of its weaknesses, this Switch port is surprisingly solid stuff. Maneater originally launched back in 2020 with its fair share of bugs and problems — most notably a bug that wiped entire save files from existence — but here we’ve been treated to a smooth and visually impressive experience. Whether you’re sharking it up in docked or portable mode, beyond the now expected graphical downgrade on Nintendo’s hybrid console, this one performs pretty much perfectly, with a single instance of a glitchy Mako shark the only bug we encountered during our playthrough.
Maneater is such a good idea for an open world RPG. Evolving your shark from fragile orphan to mega-death bringer is a solid backbone for the game's action, tearing humans to shreds is never not hilarious and Chris Parnell knocks it out of the park as the ever-present narrator. It’s just a real shame, then, that the core gameplay here isn’t up to scratch. With a few tweaks to the janky, repetitive combat and the addition of side missions that actually provided a little variety once in a while, this one could have been a real good time. As it stands, it’s a pretty average action-RPG that’s a little closer to Jersey Shore: Shark Attack than Jaws.
Conclusion
Maneater is a great idea for a video game, a ridiculous shark revenge fantasy in an open world setting with plenty of humour injected through its unique narrative framing and the vocal talents of Chris Parnell. However, as much as terrorising beach goers and snatching hunters from the bows of their fishing boats is a pretty good time, and as much as we enjoyed watching our orphaned bull shark grow from helpless pup to apex predator, the whole thing is let down by poor combat and the very worst kind of busywork side quests. With a little more variety in missions and a few refinements made to combat, this could have been a killer action-RPG. As things stand, however, it's all a little toothless.
Comments 25
So it's Hungry Shark World. But on consoles.
Looks like they took the concept and idea of Hungry Shark World (also on Switch) and turn it into a 3D game. Looks fun though so I will definitely buy it once it goes on sale.
*Person Eater
It's 2021
Better than LJNs JAWS I would say.
@LaytonPuzzle27
That game actually isn't that bad - one of the better LJN games.
At least this sounds more entertaining than Biomutant, lol.
Didn't like what I saw of it. No subtlety. Pass.
"Calamity Island".... As a JAWS uber-fan I applaud you sirs!
I had a lot of fun with this game while it lasted. While repetitive, I was always motivated to keep playing to level up my shark and see what kind of cool evolutions you'd unlock next. I want them to make a prequel set in the Jurassic era where you can evolve a Mosasaurus.
@HotGoomba
I enjoyed that game for what it was, but Maneater is rather enjoyable. It has its quirks, but its far from a bad game.
I have this on PS4 but haven't played much of it yet. From what I've played though it seems like a pretty good game.
mmmm different I guess, however, never mind bull shark, looks like bull sh*t to me. PS what has happened to TMNT Shredders Revenge?? PPS and at that price, you're gonna need a bigger wallet!
EDITED for grammar
I'm seeing a lot of distaste for Maneater, its not a masterpiece, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it.
I had originally purchased Maneater on the PS4 and it had just been pushed to my ever growing backlog.
I was fortunate enough to procure a PS5 around December, and when a PS5 upgrade was announced and even better, free, I decided to give it a try.
I beat Maneater with a 100% completion earning a Platinum trophy in the course of a weekend, I was having so much fun I couldn't put it down. It's definitely been years since I've last done that.
I dont recall exactly, but I believe my 100% completion time took about 18 hours. I thoroughly explored and took my time with the game though along with spending a good amount of time just enjoying the scenery beneath the waves.
The story and level design is interesting, and (on PS5) the game plays well. The narration was oftentimes genuinely funny, but equally cringey. Sometimes I miss that about games.
Combat isn't a game changer, but it's mostly serviceable. Underwater combat against other marine life is easily the most rewarding, and jumping on land to munch on human flesh is both fun and amusing. Amusing in the pure lunacy of seeing a shark flop around on land like a mudskipper while chowing down on panicked and screaming snack food. It's hard not to have an evil grin on your face when terrorizing land dwellers. 😈
The one part of combat I am not crazy about involves fighting fishing boats. It's the clunkiest part of the game, and it's far too easy to get damaged and it can happen severely quick. I stuck with a quick attack pattern of jumping out to eat a boats occupants, submerge, jump out to tail whip the boat, submerge, jump out and repeat. Progressing further into the game and upgrading your creature of death and destruction helps, but I can't say I was ever excited to have to fight boats.
I am a bit concerned that the upcoming DLC seems to have a larger emphasis on above sea level ship combat, and even looks like helicopters are thrown in to the mix.
Overall, I found the game to be highly enjoyable and a fresh of breath air in the never ending amount of shooters and melee focused action games of the past decade.
I also want to point out that Maneater has a bit of Metroidvania to it in that you need certain upgrades to be able to access new areas or to find hidden areas or shortcuts between areas. The game can get a bit repetitive, but I'd say that's more due to the fact that I played it straight through in one weekend.
I have no idea how this will perform on the Switch since I played it on PS5 with smooth 60fps gameplay and bright colorful and detailed graphics. I'm pretty sure it was 30fps on PS4/XB1, so I imagine it will hopefully hit a stable 30fps on Switch, but with a hit to the graphics.
If it looks interesting to you, I'd say give it a try, wait for a sale if your cautious. It's a fun game, different from the repetition in games today, and I'd like to see more games like this.
I'd give Maneater an 8/10.
It's a fun game that doesn't take itself seriously or require 30+ hours to complete. It reminds me of the good old days of gaming when you played games because they were fun, not trying to tell an emotional story or be all serious.
@Kang81 get on, you nearly typed more than PJ O'Reilly..... good review
@KillerBOB What about all the perdaughters out there?!?!?!?
@karatekid1612
Thanks!
Maneater definitely won't be for everyone, but I thought I'd share my opinion on it because I thought about passing on it at first and I'm really glad I didn't.
I have a soft spot for AA games. I'd definitely consider Maneater to be placed in that category. Not everything has to be the next big AAA masterpiece in storytelling, design, or gameplay. I love those too, but I definitely want to see studios and publishers try more risk with AA games.
Don't even get me started on how Microsoft wants to create AAAA games. 🤦♂️ That's not going to be good in the long run for anyone.
Well for me - it's a masterpiece! Seriously, dunno why but I honestly find this game so utterly brilliant and just pure old school fun. I don't find the combat side janky at all oddly? Have it on XSX and PS5 I love it so much!
@Kang81 yep, I might not go for this game, but I do agree with you on AA, AAA games and as for Microsoft's AAAA games we'll agree not to get both of us started on these!!
I've been keen on this since it was announced, and while I usually pick up physical games at launch, I'll wait for a sale on this one.
It also looks a lot gorier than I was expecting, to the extent that I was a touch squeamish about it.
Being that this was published by Tripwire Interactive I'm hoping this makes a few bucks so that encourages them to bring over Killing Floor 2 to Switch.
Whoa-oh, here she comes.
I really enjoyed this on the Xbox but then again it's one of those games where I seemed to quickly lose interest after a while, I think it's the grindy upgrade/leveling system and the repetitive tasks. Still very cool concept. Don't think I will double dip though, I'm a bit disappointed by the way this game looks on the Switch and it isn't the kind of game I feel a need to play all the time.
I've had a lot of fun with this on PC and should be great on switch. Needs to be a lot cheaper though. I got it for about $10 on PC and the PS5 version was free on PS plus not long ago.
Half the price and throw in the dlc and I could be tempted.
its my favourite game now, please patch it, its freeze or glitch alot in the game
Played this on PS5 this game isn’t bad I enjoyed it but to each it own
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