Sharks are awesome. That's not an opinion, just a straight up fact that I've understood after watching movies like Jaws, Sharknado, and Deep Blue Sea and playing the old Xbox game, Jaws Unleashed. Does Maneater keep that fact true, or does it leave us wishing for more? Let's dive in and find out.
Maneater is a pretty simple game at it's heart and that's what I love about it, it's simply a game where you play as a Bull shark that wants to eat, grow, and evolve into the best killing machine you can be. The game starts you out learning the basics of course and chomping on some beach-goers, but this fun quickly attracts the best shark hunter in these waters, Scaly Pete. The hunter bags our shark and cuts out an infantile pup that he scars so he'll be able to identify the pup later once it's grown. But our pup ensures Pete will remember her too as she takes one of his hands and that becomes her first meal and taste for man.
From here, the game opens up to us as we're dropped into the bayou. We're able to eat anything that swims in these water or close enough to the water. Turtles and small fish may sate our appetite for now, but rather quickly you'll want to take a bite out of the bigger predators like the alligators but you'll need more... teeth. After some meals, the pup will be able to grow to it's next stage and be able to take on those gators now and you can start branching out to fresher waters.
Let's take a small detour now and talk about some of the side-activities we can partake in. In each area, there's a set amount of; license plates, landmark markers, apex predators, and nutrient caches to, well... eat. Most of these collectables and activities are doable as they appear but sometimes you'll be literally age-gated. Some grates can only be destroyed by your Elder or Mega, and getting some plates needs greater lunges to reach, but leveling up comes quickly as long as you're keeping up with these side-activities. The landmarks will likely be your favorite as the narrator chimes in with a humorous quip about them and the landmarks themselves are either Easter eggs or just silly like the, 3 sea-shell method.
Besides that, just like your mother before you, chomping on too many people and destroying too many fishing boats will attract shark hunters to you. These hunters can be a small challenge but more importantly, they have some of the better upgrades for your shark. This leads me to talk about the combat and... unfortunately this is where the game really drops the ball.
Despite being this lethal, awesome predator dominating the waters, the bull shark's arsenal leaves you wanting. As expected, your shark can bite and you'll be biting as 90% of your go-to method for ripping apart whatever steps up to you. While your shark does have a tail-whip (more useful than in poke'mon), thrash, and the ability to throw things you're holding in your mouth, these attacks end up being very sub-par in their utility. There are some additional attacks you can gain from other evolutions but the only two I found particularly useful was the full bone set for destroying hunter boats swiftly, and the bio-electric set that will allow you to stun-lock most foes in totality.
Bringing it back to the story before we wrap this up. The game keeps up this feud between you and ol' Scaly Pete but despite our girl continuously getting the better of Pete and taking more and more from him, it only fuels his ire for revenge. The final fight with Pete does try to ramp things up, but unfortunately Pete never comprehends he's not going against your average bull shark.
Overall, the game is a fun time but the fun wears thin after the first few hours. While the narrator helps keep things fun, the gameplay itself can't keep up. Going for the full completion is an easy task, the worst of it comes down to getting all the shark hunters and some of the license plates as lunging can be finicky. Besides that, the game ran alright for me but it did crash multiple times despite playing on the Series X so please know you'll likely run into these issues here and there too.
DLC: Truth Quest You know how it kinda sucked we didn't get to equip our girl with a laser beam? Well this dlc fixes that problem as beyond giving us a whole other set, we also get another area to explore, and enemies to chomp. The narrator is back and has gone off the deep end as he raves about conspiracies, aliens, and other ridiculous things but that's just fun.
The story is almost non-existent and frankly unimportant as this dlc is just more Maneater, but more ridiculous. The long and short of it is some group is doing some shady stuff and their experiments and accidents are causing some of the marine life to mutate as well. Our bull shark doesn't like sharing the mutated gene-pool with anyone else, so we're going to remove them by force.
By far, the biggest boon from this dlc is the new, Atomic set that gives you a new super ability to SHOOT A LASER FROM YOUR MOUTH! This new power is a must for some of the new apex predators that appear and definitely for the new hunter boats and choppers that hunt after you in the new area.
Downside of this DLC though is that beyond the new area, new activities start opening up in the previous map but these activities are all going to be the exact same. Investigate area, eat group of humans, time trials, and routing the new apex. This gets tiresome very quickly, but the good news is it's over nearly just as soon as you're fed up with it.
The final boss is just another big, radiated fish that calls in some back-up when the going gets tough. But that aforementioned MOUTH LASER makes quick work of them too.
This dlc is okay, but I'd wait for a sale unless you really gotta get more shark mutations right this minute. Just like the main game, the achievements are easy to attain and I would absolutely look into the time trial trick on the site to make those easier for you as almost all have a trouble-some lunge ring to get through.
3.0