A personal favourite of mine became the electrified teeth, because they made short work of any smaller ocean prey. Maneater has a lot of fun with these different special abilities. Confident in your dodging skills? You may wish to forgo bone armour in favour of tiger skin, which offers its own gamut of survival perks and bonuses. Unlocking bone armour, for instance, may offer better protection the next time you go head-to-head with a barracuda or alligator, but it also looks pretty badass as your flesh is suddenly caked in piercing enamel. Watching your bull shark grow from pup to teen to adult and all the way up to Megashark is genuinely thrilling, especially since most of the enhancements you acquire are depicted visually on your shark’s model. Most of your time may be spent underwater, but you’re actively encouraged to stalk above sea level when hunting humans and boats. Before you know it, the shark hunter is suddenly the shark hunted. This paves the way for a different kind of revenge story where visiting multiple domains to become the dominant alpha sees you gain new attacks, abilities and upgrades. Inspiring you to reach this goal is an early cataclysmic event: you are maimed as a pup after your mother gets gutted, shortly before being thrown back in the ocean by the shark hunter Scaly Pete. Most of your time in Maneater is spent roaming the open sea, chomping down on wildlife and gradually evolving into a more refined ocean predator.
Luckily, Rick and Morty’s own Chris Parnell does a great job as cheesy narrator. Such a premise also helps fill airtime, seeing as having your bull shark protagonist speak would be a step too far – even for Maneater.
This is an open-world RPG made by a tiny team, after all, so rather than try to be taken seriously, Blindside Interactive leans into its B-movie sensibilities using this quite campy framing device. Presented through the lens of a fictional reality show clearly inspired by the likes of Gold Rush, Deadliest Catch and other over-the-top docuseries you might find on Dave, Maneater isn’t coy about how rough it is around the edges.
#MANEATER REVIEW TV#
Scaly Pete is your main antagonist and the star of the Maneater TV show. Overall, it mostly succeeds in letting players live out the ultimate sea creature fantasy, even if objectives get repetitive fast. The life of a man-eating shark takes place just as much below the ocean as above, you see, and that’s one huge way this self-described “ShaRkPG” stands out.
#MANEATER REVIEW FULL#
How will it cope with rendering such a large setting? What concessions have been made to get it running smoothly? And, perhaps most importantly, does the full experience remain intact despite it running on lesser-powered hardware? It’s particularly interesting in the case of Maneater, because it’s not just one world you can explore but two. Whenever a meaty open-world game gets ported to the Nintendo Switch it’s always worth paying attention.
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