As anyone with a soul will tell you, the PC Gaming Show at E3 has very few good moments. This year was almost as bad as 2015, though we do not speak of 2015. That said, Frankie’s “I can’t believe they named a game after my favorite weekend activity” at E3 2019 and the following groan from the already dejected audience was pitch-perfect! That alone not only made me like her but also the game from the off-set. Though it is hard to name a game after a Hall and Oates song and make me hate it. Tripwire got points for that.

Maneater, aside from being a fantastic song, is a shark-based RPG about a shark growing up and terrorizing everyone and everything with a heartbeat. It is a ShaRk-PG, if you will. This sounds like an odd concept in the first place, and that’s because it is. However, it is the type of thing that you’d see commonly back on the PS2. If you have the bingo cards of my common phrases on hand, that just gave you a full house in one and a half paragraphs. I usually talk about something only tangentially related, make a music reference, talk about killing everything, and compare a game I’ve been playing to the PS2-era. Ding, ding, ding, you’ve got yourself a winner!

As you might guess by that description, you spend a lot of time trying to progress, level up, and become a bigger baby shark. Basically, the story is that you start life as a pup shaking your little fin in anger after (I believe) your parent shark gets murdered and you vow to take your revenge on the shark hunters/all that lives. Growing with every bite, you chomp your way through the factory of Captain Birdseye, gaining one or more of the four available upgrade points based on the species of the fish, their level, and if they are albino or not. The latter is the rarest type of them all.

Considering most RPGs ask you to go talk to someone about their pain issues since they took a harpoon to the knee, you might be thinking: how does Maneater handle that? Are we Finding Nemo-ing the whole thing? No! If it has a heartbeat, it is food and my electro teeth are going to need some strong flossing to get those tasty bones out. Yes there is a story, and yes there is dialogue, but the missions are just gentle reminders that there is structure to this stupidity. You’ll have more fun not setting quests one by one like a checklist. Instead, just point at a thing on the map, set a waypoint, and go bash, eat, or discover whatever is there.

The story, for all that this insanity happens to be, is a somewhat satirical play on Deadliest Catch, Wicked Tuna, or whatever else your 50+-year-old male relatives watch. The cast consists of a catalog of over-the-top caricatures including those of the American (US) south who appear as your hunters, 10 bosses of varying degrees of stupidity and difficulty. Though it is not every word, a majority of your big actions and interactions prompt narration by Chris Parnell doing his best attempts to play a silly version of Mike Rowe’s style. At least one or two lines are humorous enough to get a smirk.

The thing about Maneater that I think is somewhat missed by the early game, at least on normal difficulty, is the fact you want to be the all-powerful god of sharks. Yet in those early bayou areas, there are some vicious ‘gators and you are told, “go fight that thing!” This brings me to another issue, one that might be fixable on PC but not PS4: Fighting with something that is going to bite you back is a little tricky with a camera so close. It is very easy to lose track of where you are being attacked from if it is something small like a Barracuda, which is fast, vicious, small, and takes a good few bites before you get to bite its head off. As you level up later on, you start to feel a bit more powerful, allowing you to easily take on even the most basic alligators with relative ease.

Nonetheless, on PS4 (at least the base model), you will have some issues that are more than noticeable. If you try to be quick and get through areas with your little speed boost too often, chances are you’ll encounter at least some frame-rate problems. That becomes most noticeable by the time you hit Golden Shores. Less often, you’ll have hard crashes that will send you back to the home screen of the PS4. I’ve had it multiple times in random locations, sometimes without warning or with a second or two of heavy frame losses, straight into the PS4 asking if I want to send reports, screenshots, and/or videos of the preceding incident. So yes, performance can be an issue, but generally, the game is not all-out unplayable despite those crashes.

Beyond the ridiculous ideas and the gore-y substance of the game, there is just nothing hidden behind that initial concept that is everlasting. After a while, you’ll probably find yourself wanting to go play something else because as fun as the idea is, Maneater isn’t one of those more-ish games. It is a toy you play with for a few hours, play the Jaws theme in your head several hundred times, provide a jump-scare to people on paddle boats, and move on. It may be a small lack in all-out power fantasy from the get-go, but progression itself may not even keep you within the clutches of its many teeth.

Ultimately, I do enjoy Maneater for its ludicrous name, the concept, the on-the-nose Deadliest Catch moments that I see mirrored in memories of my dad watching the show, and the entire game as a whole. However, the PS4 version has enough problems with frame rates and subsequent crashes that I could see why some may avoid it. Though I do liken it to the PS2-era of games for its absurd nature, in that comparison comes the overall slowness and what feels like downtime the size of the ocean blue. It may be fun and bitey, but sometimes I feel like I am in the aquarium smashing my head up against the glass as a 4-year-old giggles at me.

A PS4 copy of Maneater was provided by Deep Silver for the purposes of this review.

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Maneater

$39.99 USD

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• ShaRk-PG.
• The all-out stupidity of a PS2-era game.

Cons

• Fighting fast fish/multiples can be clunky with such a tight camera.
• Shakey performance, even occasional crashes.