"Maneater" Review - Good White, not Great White

Available for: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

I'm going to start this off bluntly: Maneater is by far one of the most objectively flawed games I've ever played, and yet it's a game that I actually really loved. It's an absolute mess with several bad design choices, but I 100%-ed it twice because I ended up liking it that much. I say this as a way of explaining why my final score ended up where it did. On this blog, I try to balance the subjective and objective as much as I can, so in cases like this, the final result can sometimes seem odd given the commentary leading up to it. With that little introduction out of the way, let's get right to it.

In the fictional city of Port Clovis, Georgia (it seems more like Louisiana to me, but the state of Georgia is in the opening credits), a shark hunter by the name of Scaly Pete is the star of a hit reality show called "Maneater," which follows his journey to find the shark that killed his father and seek revenge. One day a bull shark with his father's spear sticking out of her side gets captured by this reality show's cajun central character, and Pete slices her gut open only to find a baby bull shark inside. After Pete mutilates one of this baby's fins, the shark bites his arm off and is cast into the bayou. In Maneater, you play as this orphaned-from-before-birth bull shark, and it's your quest to grow up big and strong so that you can one day wreak glorious carnivorous vengeance on Scaly Pete. In case it isn't obvious, the whole reality show thing is merely a framing device for the narrative of this young bull shark, so your exploits are treated almost like a documentary. In terms of plot, there's basically nothing to see here. You start in one region of the city completing tasks usually involving eating a certain amount of people or fish, then move on to the next region to do the same thing, then sometimes there are cutaways to the reality show where you get to see a little bit more of what Scaly Pete is up to, and then you rinse and repeat. That's what makes the documentary feature so important. Almost every little thing you do (whether it's eating something, finding a collectable, or sometimes just swimming a certain way) is narrated by Chris Parnell, who you may know as Jerry from Rick and Morty. The narrator has an unprecedented amount of lines recorded so that you can go a long time without hearing repeats, and even though you will begin hearing repeats eventually, I heard some lines in my second playthrough that I didn't get the first time around, so extensive is the amount of narration recorded to keep the moment-to-moment action from getting stale. And while the narrator's lines are never pee-your-pants funny, they're always worthy of a grin, or sometimes, a chuckle (for example "once spotted, a hammerhead shark is seldom mistaken for any other kind of shark," or "by adulthood, [fish species] will have shed almost all its childhood scales, along with its dreams of being an astronaut"). In case the parenthetical examples I gave didn't make it clear, most of the "facts" that the narrator offers about the marine world are markedly false, and that makes sense, given that the whole thing is a reality show and not actually a documentary. So yeah, that's basically what Maneater has on the story and character front.

When it comes to gameplay, the best high-level way I can think to describe Maneater is that it's like an airplane dogfighting game. Since you're in the water, you move in entirely 3D space and at any point, an enemy could be above or below you. Unlike an airplane game, however, all combat is up close and personal, not ranged. This admittedly does take some getting used to, and that fact is further exacerbated by the lack of lock-on functionality. But we'll get to that. With any killable in-game entity (whether it be other predators or harmless prey), your primary attack is biting and you also have the ability to use a tail whip or trap your target in your jaws then launch them into the distance with your tail. You know....shark stuff. How gameplay looks at any given moment will depend on what kind of target you have. For non-hostile prey, it's usually just a matter of swimming up to them, waiting for the lock-on indicator to come up, then biting them until they're eaten. For hostile marine life it's a bit more involved. By that I don't mean it's any deeper or all that more complicated; it's just that you have to do things like dodging and timing your bites for when your target is vulnerable (which is indicated by a faint yellow glow). Now, you may recall that I mentioned there was a lock-on indicator, but not lock-on functionality. When you get close enough to any attackable thing, a little icon will appear on it indicating that you're locked on and can attack it reliably....only that isn't always actually the case. With prey it's usually successful since they don't move around too much, but even then there are times when biting will launch you just past your target. This is especially noticeable when you're flopping around on land trying to eat humans. But it's even worse when you're engaged in combat with hostile targets. Because hostile targets are quite mobile, your chances of missing when the lock-on indicator is up are higher, plus you'll spend most of the time chasing your opponent down. The closest thing to lock-on "functionality" as we know it from sagas such as Dark Souls or The Legend of Zelda is a button that automatically turns the camera to the nearest threat. If you manage to remain pretty close to your target, this button really does help, but most of the time that won't be the case. Most of the time you'll just need to hammer that button to make sure you're lined up with your target for your entire approach, and if there's more than one target around, then it's all up to chance what the button focuses on. All-in-all, a dedicated lock-on would've been nothing but a solid improvement, so it's puzzling that they went with such an odd workaround.
Unfortunately, that's not where the bizarre design decisions end in regards to gameplay. One of the mechanics at play in Maneater is an infamy/threat level a-la Grand Theft Auto or early Assassin's Creed games. If you kill too many humans, shark hunters get sent after you (along with narration tending to imply that shark hunters are white trash). These hunters are armed with guns, and their aim is visualized by a shrinking circle. In order to avoid being shot, you have to dodge before the circle shrinks to a certain point...but a lot of the time this doesn't actually work (are you noticing a pattern yet?). If you dodge the second you see the circle, chances are good you'll be in the clear, but at any given moment there will be so many guns pointed at you that if you want to avoid damage, you can't do anything other than dodging every second. Your goal when being pursued by these hunters is to destroy enough of their boats and kill enough of their personnel to draw out a named bounty hunter, but as I've already mentioned, you're going to have to dodge pretty often. Now, as you progress, you unlock body parts that make it so that you can dodge into boats to deal damage (at which point you become practically an anime shark, jumping and flipping above the surface leaving destruction in your wake), but until you unlock these, boat battles can be pretty frustrating.

With that, I'd like to take a moment to discuss progression itself. This is an RPG, so the focus in on gaining levels, but unlike other RPGs, you gain more than just improved stats when you level up. You start out as a freshly-born baby shark, and with each level you gain, you grow slightly in size. In this way, your level doesn't just show you how hard a fight with an enemy might be, it also lets you know how big you are compared to them. Now, that might sound silly given that you can look and tell that a sperm whale is bigger than you, but with prey that is your size or smaller, you can actually trap them in your jaws and thrash them about, so in cases where you can't exactly tell the size difference by looking, you have a clear indicator in your level. You raise your level by eating everything you come across, completing quests, and finding collectibles in the environment. Each of these activities gives you different "nutrients" which serve both as the experience that gets you to the next level and the currency with which you upgrade "mutations" (it isn't like Dark Souls, it's not a choice between leveling up and upgrading). Eating everything and completing quests is pretty self-explanatory, so I'm only going to elaborate on the collectibles. In just about every part of Port Clovis, there are a number of nutrient caches, license plates, and landmarks. Nutrient caches are exactly what they sound like: boxes filled with more nutrients than you'd get from eating wildlife. License plates serve as tests of your maneuvering skill, as many of them are suspended high above the water's surface, causing you to try and leap up as high from the water as you can. Finally, landmarks (the best of the collectibles) are indicated by yellow signs that you attack. When you destroy the sign in front of the landmark, the narrator will explain the significance of this area/statue/sunken thing, and this is where a lot of the game's charm comes from. Maneater references a lot of other properties with these landmarks: everything from Arrested Development to Spongebob Squarepants, and much like the rest of the narration, it's never going to make you laugh out loud, but a lot of the time it's worthy of a finger-gun point and an "ahhhh!" Finding collectibles, killing bounty hunters, and overall just engaging with the world unlocks the aforementioned mutations. At first, these mutations are little organ enhancements like an enhanced sonar system or the ability to get more of a certain type of nutrient from prey. However, as the game progresses, you start to unlock sets of exterior body parts (fins, tails, teeth, etc), and this is where progression gets truly interesting. There are three body sets: bone, shadow, and bio-electric. The bone set emphasizes defense and makes you into a marine tank. The shadow set gives you poison abilities to deal damage to enemies even when you aren't physically attacking them. Finally, the bio-electric set gives you electric abilities to stun enemies. You gain added bonuses from wearing multiple body parts from the same set, but you can mix and match however you like! In case it wasn't already obvious that Maneater wants to be as ridiculous a shark game as it can be, the fact that you can turn into a shark with literal lightning power ought to be the last bit of proof you need. The specific benefits you get from a certain body part from a certain set vary: the shadow teeth restore your health as you bite, meaning you don't have the finish eating something in order to heal. The bio-electric fins turn your dodge into a blink of electricity. The bone body turns you into a battering ram when you lunge. The list goes on, and in addition to these benefits, each body part from each set adds a cosmetic touch to the shark. As you upgrade these body parts, not only do the benefits get increased, the cosmetic touches also get expanded upon, so no matter what motivates you, there's incentive to hunt down nutrients to upgrade yourself! So, that's gameplay and progression covered, and if you're still scratching your head as to why I claim to like this game, I'm not surprised. This whole review I've been struggling to nail down in words why it is that I enjoyed Maneater enough to go through it twice, but I don't believe I've been successful. Suffice it to say that there's just something about the incremental growth, the gradual evolution from baby shark to mega shark, and the eventual power fantasy of being the terror of the deep that makes it enjoyable in spite of some baffling design choices and gameplay that doesn't always work. Unfortunately, those aren't the only things that Maneater is enjoyable in spite of.

Maneater is without a doubt the most technically unstable game of this year thus far. How technically flawed is it? Well, I 100%-ed the game twice....and even after patches that were specifically made to fix the bugs with completion, I'm still missing about 4 trophies and a platinum trophy that I've earned twice. In the case of my first playthrough, one of the landmarks that I discovered became un-discovered and couldn't be discovered again. In the case of my second playthrough...I got everything and confirmed 100% in all areas and 100% of all collectibles found and 100% of all gates opened and still didn't get the resulting trophies. This same issue has popped up for countless others with different landmarks being responsible for the glitch. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones: many folks have consistently reported save file corruptions that basically ensure that all progress they've made is lost. But even beneath the surface (hehehe) of these massive glitches, the picture isn't much prettier. The most glaring of the remaining technical issues, by far, is the framerate. I don't think the game held a stable 30fps for more than a couple seconds even once in my two playthroughs. Whether it's the frequent dips down to, say, 29 or 28fps, or the fewer-but-still-frequent dips all the way down to something resembling all of 6fps when things go haywire, the framerate in Maneater is almost always faltering in some way. As if that weren't enough, there are times where full buttons will stop working until you restart the game. There was a full night or two where I simply wasn't able to use L2 to lunge, and this resulted in me only being able to move at the standard speed, which is unbearably slow. I've also heard other reports of other buttons breaking from other folks. I mean, really, the fact that so many people experienced the same types of glitches with entirely different points of origin or affected areas is a testament to how un-tested Maneater was before release. Beyond that, there are plenty of audio glitches and AI shortcomings to be found. For an example of the latter issue, there was one mission I had where I needed to kill a certain Alligator, and I was vastly under-leveled. Eventually, I discovered that its AI would only let it go to a certain point before it turned back. Once I realized that, I was able to overcome this considerable challenge by luring the Alligator to the end of its aggro-zone, letting it turn around, attacking it as many times as possible, then getting out the aggro-zone again, rinse and repeat. It would've been one thing if it couldn't get through a doorway like some enemies in Dark Souls, but we're talking about mostly open water here! Beyond even that, there are sometimes glitches with the bosses. I remember going up against the final Apex Predator, the second-to-last boss of the game, the Apex Sperm Whale, and I was able to kill it without taking any damage because it got stuck on a nearby reef. Hopefully at this point I've made it clear that Maneater is kind of a technical disaster, so now let's move on to the things it does right in this department. For starters, the shark itself is beautifully animated, moving elegantly even in those 6fps sections. That might seem like a small thing, but you're literally watching this shark move 100% of the time, so that beautiful animation goes a long way. Furthermore, while the graphics in this game aren't incredible, in the open ocean segments the sense of being underwater is pretty great. I'm not thalassophobic by any stretch of the imagination, but when I was swimming down into the deep sections of Sapphire Bay for the first time, I found myself physically curling my toes up and feeling anxious. That's basically all the technical positives. Not a lot, but credit where it's due.

Folks, Maneater is, from an objective standpoint, almost indefensible as a game. It's riddled with bad design choices that could easily have been avoided. You can't go five minutes in it without running into a potentially game-breaking bug. Any other game with these kinds of flaws would be laughed out of existence, and it certainly wouldn't have a solid cult following. But the fact of the matter is that, like I've made a point of hammering home, this is a game that I 100%-ed twice. Furthermore, it's a game that I often find myself wanting to jump back into for a short burst or two. For all its flaws, Maneater is just good dumb fun that will likely put a smile on your face, and in this year of misery containing games featuring nonstop misery without fun anywhere in sight (with names rhyming with "Schmuh Schmast of Schmus Schmart Schmoo"), I think a bit of good dumb fun is something everyone needs. If I were a critic, videogamedunkey would play a particular IGN review clip over my final verdict, but I rest my case.

Let us review:
-Bizarre design choices - 1.0
-Gameplay doesn't always work - 1.0
-Technical flaws - 1.0

The final score for Maneater is...



7.0/10 - Good
Acceptable work, Tripwire, acceptable work.