--Narrator, Maneater
Maneater is a game that exemplifies how a project can be very excellent when it comes to a few points while still hindering itself by extreme repetition, a lack of anything more than a very minimal story, and a lack of deeper themes even as pertains to scientific matters the game very loosely references (science being about perceptions of the natural world and not about absolute certainty or the necessary truths of logical axioms as it is). This "ShaRkPG," as the case puts it, has the protagonist shark level up and evolve to become a powerful predator that can defeat human vessels and other aquatic creatures like barracudas, alligators, and different kinds of sharks as it waits to eat the fisherman who killed its mother. It is the side quests and collectibles that make this game last beyond around around 3-5 hours, and the monotonous mechanics and missions illustrate how uniqueness in one area like the premise of a gameplay setup as a growing, evolving shark does not elevate everything else in a game.
Production Values
It might be far from having the absolute best graphics on the PS4, but Maneater does have diverse colors across the multiple regions of the map, does run smoothly for most of the game, and does not have terrible graphics by any means. The human character models have the least amount of detail out of all the living creatures one will encounter. In a game where you play as a shark, it would be a wasted opportunity if the shark did not have more effort put into its aesthetic than the humans of Maneater, and as she grows and gains the capacity for evolutions that alter her appearance (and abilities), including bioelectric jaws and bony fins, she is very well animated. The shark and the environments around her are far better than the story, though. Not every game needs a particularly abstract or complex story, but the plot here is so minimal and all but one of the human characters so undeveloped that they are just an excuse for an open world shark RPG. The clever parodies in the names of missions, like "Third Cave Feminism" and "Cave New World," and the persistent, sarcastic, somewhat-educational comments of the narrator help make Maneater somewhat unique in this regard as well and provide something to look forward to.
Gameplay
A very simple and only sometimes effective control scheme gives the shark a small range of attacks. It can smack things with its tail, charge them and grip them with its jaws, trash some enemies around for major damage, speedily swim forward, and dodge. Each of these actions can be enhanced with evolutions, some of which you obtain by defeating apex predators for the story and some of which you obtain by optional measures like baiting in and overpowering special bounty hunters. Among them is the aforementioned bioelectric body part set that allows for electricity damage. Mutation-promoting substances can also be found in some fish or underwater containers that allows certain evolutions to be upgraded immensely. All evolutions can be upgraded, to clarify, but mutagens are not necessary to upgrade every single one of them.
However, you can only equip or upgrade evolutions at the grotto for each region, a cave that also serves as a fast travel point when not engaged in combat. There is very little guidance provided by the game for environmental navigation except to pinpoint where a new grotto is on the map. In fact, the map shows each touching region without showing where you can actually cross from one to the other through sewage tunnels or by hopping out of the water over select barriers. The game shows you a map icon for the next grotto to find when it it time to advance the story to a new region without doing anything to show you where natural pathways are or where you have to leap over man-made structures to proceed.
The swimming and biting and thrashing has little to distinguish it throughout the game besides a few optional shark evolutions that affect these mechanics. Completing side objectives in some cases even unlocks new evolutions that can change the attributes for attacks. Identifying underwater landmarks, collecting license plates (the reported commonality of sharks eating license plates is of course utilized sarcastically in this game), and opening chests full of mutagens also significantly adds to the time one could spend genuinely progressing in this game, with the echolocation mechanic being the fastest way to put these on the world map. Apart from intentional but unecessary exploration, the core game is not especially lengthy.
Story
Some spoilers are below, not that there is much to spoil.
An adult shark with a baby inside is caught and opened up by a Louisiana bayou fisherman, who cuts the baby to mark it before it bites his right arm off and swims away to mature before it finds him. The baby slowly grows, challenging other underwear creatures and overpowering crews of special shark hunters (if the player optionally draws out the hunters) to evolve before she does eventually confront the fisherman who killed her mom.
Intellectual Content
The evolutionary abilities gradually unlocked by story or bonus tasks could have been used in a less lighthearted game to at least try to explore science, survival, and even ethics in a weightier manner, but Maneater has its jaws set on casual exploration, the challenge of finding all collectibles, and a mostly empty story of an animal's revenge to bother with anything more substantial. That Maneater lightly appeals to philosophically charged concepts like evolution--though ones that are completely secondary to logical axioms, core metaphysics, general epistemology, justice, friendship, and the like--in more playful than deep way is not inherently a problem. When a game has extremely repetitive gameplay and a lack of anything but the bare minimum type of story, the absence of any deeper themes just hurts it even more.
Conclusion
As a low budget indie game with a very unique playable character and the chance to encounter bayou and ocean creatures in an RPG setting, Maneater has plenty to offer, just plenty of repetition as well. Few other games have this approach to an open world RPG and feature an aging shark as the protagonist, and with the Truth Quest DLC delving into stranger waters, though I have yet to play it, Maneater does have more after the main game for those eager to play a different story with similar mechanics in the form of this paid add-on. This is not a game for people who want variety and storytelling depth, to be sure but its strengths and gameplay originality are indeed firm. Again, this is an example of how to succeed in one or a handful of areas while having glaring flaws or drawbacks. Perhaps in a sequel or spiritual successor to this game, a greater diversity of gameplay mechanics, a larger virtual world, and a more personal story could be included.
Content:
1. Violence: The ocean fills with blood in small areas when the shark kills or consumes various creatures, including humans. It can attack or kill other animals by seizing them in its jaws and throwing them, smacking them with its tail, or just repeatedly biting them.
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