It’s not every day you come across a game where you play as a shark. And while it certainly isn’t the first game with that distinction nor is it breaking ground of any kind, “Maneater” is at least an amusing game that is perfect for rental. “Maneater” works for what it is which is a casual vehicle for carnage against anything that so much as crosses your path, much like a typical “Grand Theft Auto” game or even “Katamari Damacy” and “Untitled Goose Game”. The basic objective of this game, if you couldn’t tell by the title, is self-explanatory. As the shark you play grows from a baby to a mean lean eating machine, you chow down any sea creatures (mainly fish) and humans to further evolve the shark and enhance its abilities when navigating the ocean and beach. You’ll be taking down boats of all kinds (from floaties to motorboats) with your jaws and mow down other creatures you wouldn’t think a shark could take on. I’m personally surprised they would be able to digest turtles considering their hard shells.
Depending on the target audience, if you want a game that is simple to get into and play, “Maneater” is very user friendly on that front. You don’t have to worry about being bombarded with too much information to understand the basic concept behind the gameplay. You can just battle everything in the sea and beach with your combat maneuvers, especially your ferocious bite, and that’s basically all you really have to worry about. Even when your opponents put up a fight and land a hit on your health meter, you can very easily regenerate health by defeating your opponents and using what’s left of them to refuel your health points. You don’t have to worry about looking for hard to find health packs or anything like that, meaning there’s more purpose to munching on other fish and humans. Plenty of terrain to explore within the open bodies of water you navigate and enough task variety to keep the game from being more of the same thing, even if that’s sort of going to be the case no matter what.
The replay value on this title is a bit on the limited side, however. Like I implied already, once you’ve played this for an hour or so, you’ve arguably seen most of what the game has on offer. The controls aren’t the tightest for this type of experience. Usually, games that take place mostly underwater rarely are, but the game could’ve benefited from further tuning on the controls. That way, it becomes a little less cumbersome when you’re dealing with human hunters shooting at you and other vicious creatures attacking you at the same time. Though there is plenty of gore and carnage, “Maneater” has a more cartoony aesthetic behind its graphics, which is fine for the nature of this game. So don’t expect the most realistic experience with a great white shark in that regard. As a piece of mindless fun to hold you over for a little bit of time, “Maneater” fulfills its end of the bargain, even if the game itself doesn’t do anything more than that.