They can turn you into lunch even when you’re evolved to the gills.Sapphire Souvenirs Maneater Licence Plates Eating is life, and it gives you life.Īnd even when you’re an Elder shark, bulked up on turtle shells and human blood, the sea still throws you some challenges. Fish do more than help you evolve - think of them as health potions whenever you’re fighting a gator or a hunter and need to heal up a bit. Grouper, catfish, muskie, mahi-mahi, king mackerel, seals, turtles, sharks, alligators - everything you’d expect to find in these waters besides rays (which I miss). And as you grow, you find going back to the older areas is a good idea if you want to. Dotted all over these are grottoes for exploring and evolving and sewer systems with tasty fish and “shark loot” (containers of nutrients and mutagens). You can explore several different environments - a bayou, lake-as-toxic waste dump, a planned community around that most natural of shark environs (a golf course), bays, and the Gulf. The shark can glide through the water, and clicking the mouse to chomp with your jaws feels natural (and cooler than just hitting a button on a controller). I think this is what it feels like to be a shark?Įxploring is cool. It’s all corny, and even the easy dumb laughs made me smile. Sure, you can hang out in a sewer pipe or find a hard-to-reach cay while your foes blast shotguns at you, or you can dive into the pool at a McMansion or hang-10 in a … skate park. The environments offer plenty of places to hide from hunters as you feast on humans, and a few made me chuckle. At this point, the shark looks more like a beast from The Abyss in a Dungeons & Dragons monster book than it does a terrestrial predator. Mutations have heightened its swim speed, digestion (so it gets more resources from what it eats), sonar, and health. You can upgrade these as well with resources you obtain from eating fish, turtles, nutrient boxes (the “shark loot”), and people.Īs I write this, my shark has bony jaws, armor, and fins, with a bio-electric head. Bony jaws and plates help you rip through boats, fishing vessels, and Coast Guard command skiffs. One gives you bio-electric fins, which stun and damage prey (or humans). As you grow and devour victims (be they apex predators like Rosie the Alligator or shark hunters such as Mama Maybelle), you obtain mutations. Yet nothing’s as absurd as playing a shark who mutates and eats everything in sight. You find shrines to elder elemental evils as well. One of the shark hunters chasing you is a mob queen with a supercar of a speedboat. Someone, it appears, decided to build an outdoor museum … underwater. In the Gulf, you find some great statues and Greek buildings. You also visit landmarks, signs that point you to some hilarious areas. You collect license plate-like signs that can be in some odd places, like the third-story deck of a yacht or on the performance stage inside an abandoned SeaWorld-like park. Many quest names are puns (such as “Hungry, Hungry for Hobos”). You have a mission to eat mafia members, and under the water, you swim along their victims wearing concrete shoes. Maneater is funny and doesn’t take itself seriously. But you have to buy into the joke to get the most out of it. I played on PC (Tripwire recommends a gamepad, but I found the controls to be more responsive with a mouse-and-keyboard setup), and over 20 hours, I found a game that made me smile from beginning to end. It results in a most unexpected denouement that pits man vs. These interactions take a dark turn, sending poor Pete down the path of Captain Ahab and Quint from Jaws. As you gain infamy while you chow down on the Gulf of Mexico’s finest fish and folk, you encounter Pete. Tripwire casts the story through the lens of Maneater, a reality show following noted shark hunter Scaly Pete. Environments and creatures show a distinct care when it comes to their designs and appearances. It has a great deal of humor, and Tripwire and Blindside Interactive (the studio who sold the idea to Tripwire) have pulled off a game that engages your curiosity as well as your funny bone. How is this relevant to a review about a shark RPG? Well, all of this was in the back of my mind as I played Maneater, which debuts today for PC (Epic Games Store exclusive for now), PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Many shark species are endangered thanks to overfishing (sharks get caught up in nets and discarded), finning, environmental encroachment and destruction, and our fear of these creatures.
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