Sharks are known for their vicious habits and gory confrontations with their prey. Swimming around in the ocean as a sort of strong and untouchable figure, eating or destroying anything in its path. Now take this image and put it into a third-person action RPG in which you control a deadly shark. This is what you get with Tripline Interactive’s Maneater which follows a local TV network documenting a vicious man-eating shark as it traverses the water. Â Maneater is definitely different from anything else out right now and brings some interesting things to the table.
The gameplay in Maneater is just what you think it is: Mass amounts of rampage and destruction completely fueled by your shark. You start off with small tasks such as eating 10 of one specific animal and build up to killing what’s called the apex of the area you are in. This system of progression in Maneater through the different areas of the game offers rewarding gameplay with constant progression. Along the way, the game keeps you preoccupied with packing the less mission-rich areas with collectibles and locations to find. From finding sunken ships to floating license plates, there is never downtime.
On the topic of missions and collectibles, apart from filling time, the Maneater poses a sense of repetitiveness. As you play the game you will realize that a lot of the main missions consist of exclusively eating a specific amount of people or animals. This repetitiveness is prevalent throughout the game and can also be seen with the collectibles.
While this is a problem with Maneater reusing tasks over and over again, it did not completely take away from the enjoyability of the game even though you feel as if you are going in circles at times. The only other problem that I saw with the gameplay is the lack of replayability. Once I was finished with the game, there was no incentive to pick it up again, having no legitimate story or gameplay that differs throughout the game. This lack of diversity within the Maneater leaves it with a one-time playthrough and while this does not take away from how fun the game was it definitely is something to think about.
On the topic of the story, having a shark as the main character of your game poses the question, how do you create an engaging storyline in which the shark is the main character? Well, Maneater takes this head-on with two parallel stories following the shark and human characters. This storyline follows Scaley Pete and his son on a fishing boat on the journey of avenging Pete’s father by killing the shark that killed his father.
The story starts out by showing Pete’s anger towards sharks and his disconnection from life and his family because of this. While Maneater’s way of storytelling is very interesting, it does take away the story from the main character, at times making the player feel disconnected. This disconnection is a problem since it causes the player to feel as if their character isn’t making real character development only seeing the development of a character that only shows up a few times throughout the game.
Maneater takes place in all sorts of beautiful and nasty looking areas but one thing that they all have in common is that they all look mesmerizing. Each area offers a different setting, for example, the area called Prosperity Sand is a clean and wealthy area full of crisp green golf courses full of neatly dressed golfers putting on each hole coinciding with the clean and almost empty ocean floor.
This image is juxtaposed with the grisly and dirty area of Dead Horse Lake, where the oceans have filled all kinds of junk from a statue of a man-made out of old plastic containers all the way to sunken boats. The dirty areas may seem like something you wouldn’t look at but Maneater finds a way to make its ugliness beautiful.
What I found to be the most notable about Maneater’s graphics are the minute details sprinkled out throughout the game. The first detail that I noticed was as you go through the different areas the color of the water and how clear it was changed drastically depending on the area as well as how clean the ocean is.
This is contrasted with the little pieces of trash or other items floating in the water. In the areas where trash rules the waters, little pieces of rubbish float through the air moving out of the way as soon as your shark passes through it. These small details may seem inconsequential and unnoticeable, but I find that they completely change the feel of Maneater and immerse you into the sea.
Maneater also shows you the ruthlessness of a beastly shark and gives you the power to control it seamlessly. The controls in this game are some of the most precise and well put together controls that I have ever seen. Being a game about a man-eating shark you would think swimming around in a 3D space might be a little clunky, but Maneater allows you to move around your shark with as much ease as a shark has with eating its prey. My only complaint would be that on occasion when your shark is battling an enemy on a shallow part of the ocean, it sometimes puts the shark above water.
The Verdict
Playing Maneater, I personally had a lot of fun going around playing as a huge shark controlling the ocean despite being repetitive. The repetitiveness along with the lack of a worthwhile story did lessen my enjoyment with the game. In the end, though, I did enjoy the game greatly with its stunning visuals and fun game mechanics.
