Maneater

Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
Genre: Action/Adventure
Publisher: Tripwire Interactive
Developer: Tripwire Interactive
Release Date: May 22, 2020

About Tony "OUberLord" Mitera

I've been entrenched in the world of game reviews for almost a decade, and I've been playing them for even longer. I'm primarily a PC gamer, though I own and play pretty much all modern platforms. When I'm not shooting up the place in the online arena, I can be found working in the IT field, which has just as many computers but far less shooting. Usually.

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PC Preview - 'ManEater'

by Tony "OUberLord" Mitera on June 27, 2019 @ 12:00 a.m. PDT

Maneater is an open-world, single-player action-RPG where players take on the role of a shark.

Occasionally, I come across a game that I was previously unaware of that both entertains me greatly and makes me question the mental state of the people behind it. ManEater is a game in which you play as a bull shark, taking it from a baby to a mammoth monster of the coastline. Along the way, you'll eat swimmers, sink boats, and become the star of a reality TV series while pissing off bounty hunters in this SharkPG game.

ManEater follows your life cycle as the shark through five stages: baby, teen, adult, elder, and finally becoming a mega shark. Along the way, you must consume nutrients to survive the open-world RPG, such as fat, protein, and the rare Mutagen X to go beyond what nature intended. Doing so allows you to also evolve your shark in different ways, so you're in a better position to become the true apex predator of the game's seven regions. Of course, each region has its own current apex predator, such as the improbably large crocodile over in Dead Horse Lake, so bulking up first is a necessity.


A lot of the game is based on risk versus reward. You must feed to gain health, grow and evolve. However, doing so will raise your infamy, and higher levels of infamy attracts attention. This attention manifests itself in two ways: a starring role in the Chris Parnell-voiced "Shark hunters vs. Maneaters" reality TV show and the ire of the titular shark hunters. These bounty hunters, such as "Bayou Willy," "Two-ton Trish," and the infamous "Scaly Pete" will come at you with mere boats at first. With successive levels of infamy, you must fend off proper ships containing dudes with shotguns and assault rifles. You can hide to lose them, but where's the fun in that?

Your shark is perfectly capable of dealing with a variety of threats. You can gain speed below the surface and leap out of the water, slamming into smaller boats and possibly dislodging their occupants. You can bite people either in the water or as you leap over boats, returning underwater with them still in your teeth so you can consume them at your leisure. Of course, you can also leap straight out of the water and use the shark's whip-shot to fling the poor guy like a projectile at another target. Even beachgoers on land aren't safe, since you can come out of the water and chomp them in what the presenters called "floppy fish mode."

ManEater is certainly a game with a unique angle. It's comedic at times, gory at other times, and it seems to revel in the spectacle of being a man-eating shark. The only information that I couldn't get out of the developers was a release date, other than that it will come out "sometime before the next E3." I'm hoping we get more details and a more definite release date soon, as the presentation made the game seem like a lot of fun.



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