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.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/pepsi-super-bowl-liii-halftime-show-1094160376-b52599feddbc4aa294047363bc61c019.jpg "maneater shred video")
It’s all a bit tiresome and disappointing. 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.ĭodging 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.
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. In terms of abilities during a battle, your bull shark can whip its tail, bite, jump out of the water and dodge incoming attacks. 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. 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. If only the gameplay wasn’t quite so lacking though, eh.
MANEATER SHRED VIDEO MOVIE
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. 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. 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. 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.Ĭaptured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
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) who you must now commandeer through the eight regions that make up the game’s open world map. In the end, what should have been a riotous revenge fantasy ends up feeling rather toothless. 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. 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. Tripwire Interactive’s Maneater really does have itself a pretty killer premise.
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