I think of all the animals on this planet, Sharks are the ones that tend to be the most misunderstood, thanks to the many cheesy killer shark movies out there. According to a study by the Florida Museum of Natural History in 2023, in the States alone, even though there were 36 unprovoked attacks, there was only 1 fatality. In fact, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to be bit by Jaws himself. Yet, that hasn’t stopped film makers from making such “classics” like Sharknado, Deep Blue Sea, 5-Headed Shark Attack, The Meg series, and Planet Of The Sharks. However, one area that this hasn’t penetrated was video games. Sure, there was Jaws on the NES and the Xbox’s Jaws: Unleashed, but, most of the time, sharks are relegated to being just either an obstacle or a random enemy to kill. Enter TripWire with their 2021 game Maneater, where you finally control a shark and do what Hollywood thinks it does best: Eat, Kill, and Destroy. While the game does those three well, it kinda falters in the other areas and has a few design choices that, I have to say, I’m not a real fan of, but it wasn’t enough to make me hate this title.
I do, however, want to start this review off with a word of warning and it’s one of my main issues with the game: At some points throughout the game and especially with the end-game content, which leads into the DLC ‘Truth Quest’, the narrator makes mentions of various conspiracies and I was feeling really uncomfortable playing the game then. Now, yes, said conspiracies are all fictional in-game ones, but they still did some negative triggering for me. So, if you are easily triggered by the mere mention of conspiracy theories in any way, then I strongly suggest you not play this game. With that being said, how is the game on a whole? It’s OK. Nothing special, just OK. For starters, the plot is very much like a B-Movie, bringing to mind such films like the ‘77 film Orca which surprisingly shares a similar plot though lacking the messed up intro. What it boils down to is you play a shark whose mother was killed by shark hunter Scaly Pete and you’re now on a hunt for revenge, killing and eating everything you can get your teeth around. On paper, the plot really isn’t anything to write home about and, storywise, it really comes off as forgettable, but what actually helps elevate it is the presentation. Instead of the usual way to tell a story, the game presents it as an in-universe Reality TV show, complete with the aforementioned narrator giving various quips and describing what’s ever on screen in the usual reality show kind of way. Admittedly, at times, some of his lines do get a bit on the not-funny side, especially near the end, but when they hit, they do bring out some good chuckles and laughs from me. It’s too bad the main villain of the story isn’t that interesting of a character and, really, just comes off as a stereotypical villain you’d see in, say, a Disney Direct-To-Video sequel from back in the day. Sure, there are some moments of levity with him, like his relationship with his son, but those are few and far between. Truth be told, the human element is the weakest element of the game.
The graphical presentation, on that note, is OK as well, with the underwater areas themselves having the best artstyle while the above water areas come off as just a bit uninspired. That is, however, if I was able to see anything. Yeah, this is one of the main issues I have and that is the game is just too dark at times, so much so I had to turn up the brightness all the way just to see where I was going. It’s worse in the swamp areas and when you’re in pipes, the latter being a shame as most of the game do take place in those crowded swampy areas where navigation is poor and trying to find where you need to go is a chore. Though, oddly, they are also the best looking areas above the water. But, once you get to the golf and main ocean area, the lighting and maneuverability surprisingly improves while the above-water areas go down in quality. I know there’s only so much you can do to make a beach or golf course stand out, but these areas really feel uninspired at best and bland at its worst.
One area I do really want to give praise to is the sound, starting with the music. The soundtrack is this, admittedly, cheesy metal music and, honestly, I flippin’ love it as it really helps the cheesy vibe of this in-game show you’re in. While some songs do get slightly repetitive, like the ones whenever they activate a skin’s powers, it wasn’t enough to make me want to turn the music off completely and replace it with my own playlist. Same goes with the, well, eating sounds. They have the right amount of crunchiness to them and hearing your human victims scream is satisfying, though how they can scream underwater without gurgling raises a few eyebrows. Which leads to the voice acting and, for there only being a scant few talking characters, they do a darn good job. Despite him not being that interesting and despite me calling the human element the weakest stuff of the game, the voice actor for Scaly Pete at least does a good job of going from somewhat sane at the beginning to slowly losing his sanity as the game progresses and the narrator is, like I said, pretty funny and quippy up until the end game.
But a weak story can be excused if the gameplay is good, right? Once again, it’s really nothing too special, outside of the main premise of being a shark and eating everything in sight to level up your shark. Yeah, this game has a leveling up system like a RPG but, unlike those games, you don’t unlock new abilities when you level up. Instead, all leveling up does is grow you from a baby shark to teen to adult to elder to, finally, a mega shark, which is the be all, end all evolution, seeing as the game caps you at Level 30, which can easily be reached before the final level. You don’t get any new abilities, outside of your basic ones like eating, tail thrashing, and ramming, but you can tweak them by changing your body type and each one, I noticed, does give advantages during select situations. The Bone body, for example, can help with destroying boats faster and can soak up more damage while the Electro body can stun apex predators for easy hits. To get these new bodies, though, you need to do various side-quests, which basically are either ‘Find An Item’ or ‘Kill Something’, the former being the slightly easiest and the latter being the trickiest, depending on what body you have and what level you are, for the most part as the Electro Body can make many Apex predator fights stupidly easy thanks to it’s stun ability. I do like how you can upgrade each body part to become a better superbeast and obtaining said upgrades is easy as you, well, need to eat the various animals and humans you see as each one has a different thing required for leveling up your body and/or powers. In fact, way before I got to the end game, I was already max level on various body parts, so late game fights were a breeze. Outside of eating, there are also cache boxes you can find but I noticed, even once you collect them all, you still won’t have enough to fully upgrade your shark so you’ll need to rely on eating everything and this is one of the areas where the narrator’s quips can become repetitive. There are also license plates you can get and these are either hidden underwater or on land, meaning you’ll have to jump out onto land to snag them or use the clunky jumping mechanics to get them as some are floating high in the sky. Lastly, there are landmarks you can uncover and these are, basically, pop cultural references, from what I can tell (a few of them I couldn’t recognize), and ranging from the humorous to the, like I said, confusing if you don’t know what they are referencing.
Which brings me to my biggest issue with the game: The Controls. While they aren’t broken in any way and are functionable, there were times where they just didn’t cooperate with what I needed to do, which led to a rather frustrating experience. The jumping, for example, never seemed to work as it should as I would find myself hitting the jump button, only to either not reach the jump apex I needed or it just wouldn’t register I hit it. Though, I will admit, it’s hilarious seeing a shark double and triple jump out of the water. The eating can be finicky as well as, most of the time, I couldn’t tell if my shark was actually eating someone, even though I was hearing a crunching sound effect, which is a problem when it comes to attacking humans. There are times where I swear I got a human in the shark’s mouth, only to see it completely missed, despite being right up close to them. Speaking of which, outside of the apex predators which are specially named critters you fight, if you eat enough humans, you bring shark hunters to you and, if you eat and/or kill enough, you’ll get the attention of an named elite hunter which, once killed, also grants you a new upgrade. Good idea but it does get tiresome to where I was just going through the motions and honestly became slightly bored with the game. Doesn’t help that the so-called ‘elite hunters’, who are supposed to be these more dangerous shark hunters, can easily be killed if you jump onto their ship and focus on grabbing them, which I will admit is a fun thing to do. Even the final hunter, whose ship comes equipped with electric coils while he throws explosives at you, is a pushover if you have the Bone Body. On that note, the camera didn’t help much as it was just a bit too zoomed in to properly gauge various things. When it comes to actually moving, I’m 50/50 on it. On the one hand, it feels smooth and gliding through the ocean is fun for the most part but, on the other hand, your shark does move a bit too slowly, even when holding the ram button, which doubles as a sprint button. Now, I did notice a slight speed change when I was near the surface and one skin did have a speed power, but the former I only noticed a slight change and the later really isn’t worth the effort to unlock as the Bone Body is, admittedly, the best one to use in the entire game.
Now, I do want to stress that I did have fun playing Maneater at times as there are some cool ideas. For starters, just being able to play as a shark and not a human is awesome as I’m tired of playing as boring humans in every game as of late. I also do like the presentation up until the end-game content as it does come off as something you’d see on the Discovery Channel if it had an unrestricted rating to it. Lastly, again, the music is really good and there are some amazingly good headbangers throughout the game that I found myself wanting to headbang to. Still, those positives aren’t really enough to make me want to give it a super-high score as the negatives do really outweigh them by just a few pounds, but the negatives aren’t that negative to make me want to score it super-low, either. Would I recommend you sink your teeth into it? Maybe. If you got Game Pass, it’s, as of this review, still on the service so I recommend downloading it from there first and checking it out. As for everyone else, I’d say at least wait for a decent sale.
