4/5 ★ – JudgeDredd35's review of Maneater.

Playtime: 16 Hours (100% Completion) Score: 8/10 I remember seeing Jaws: Unleashed on the PS2, at the video store back when I was a kid and I always wanted to play it but never got a chance to. Maneater is basically the spiritual sequel to that game, and I'm glad I checked this one out! The story has you play as a shark, who's mother is killed by a shark hunter, which puts you on the path of revenge. The story is pretty basic, but good enough to keep you going and I liked the reality TV/documentary style they told the story through. It also helps that this game is narrated by Chris Parnell who voices Jerry on Rick and Morty! He adds a lot of funny quips and he definitely made the game a lot more enjoyable for me! Maneater builds on the concepts of Jaws: Unleashed, where you start as a baby shark, and have to evolve your shark eventually to a megalodon level shark, by eating everything you can and battling other apex predators! It also throws in RPG mechanics where you level your shark, and equip different evolutions (in place of typical gear) that buff your shark in different ways. I like that this game had a very Arcady nature to it, in that you can just cause so much mayhem and destruction. You even get an evolution that allows your shark to jump onto land, and eat people for an extended period of time. Its stuff like that just adds to the fun factor of this game! Music as well was also really good with my favorite track being the track that plays in the grotto, which is your sharks lair, where you can save, fast travel and upgrade your evolutions. I also just enjoyed that the map was small, being split into different zones. It made the world not feel bloated that so many other open world/RPG games can feel at times, and with it taking me only 16 hours to complete everything (though some I heard have done it a shorter time) it felt like a nice pallet cleanser, in between bigger games. There is also the infamy system which is basically like the wanted level system in Grand Theft Auto, where when you caused enough chaos, you get shark hunters after you, which are like this games police. This also unlocks special bounty hunter bosses for you to fight, however its pretty easy to beat them as all you have to do is pull them into the water and eat them, and they have no real defense against you. Its fun to fight them and easy to escape them which I like, since many of the more recent GTA games made it hard to escape the police, to the point of it not being fun anymore for me at least. Combat is fairly decent as you pretty much just have a bite attack and tail whip to knock enemies away. It would have been nice to have a lock on feature, specifically when going up against other apex predators. But at the end of the day, it didn't bug me so much to the point of the combat being frustrating or anything like that. Some negatives, the enemy A.I. can be a bit dumb at times, particularly with the shark hunters, but like I said earlier, I prefer it being easier to escape them and then come back later to cause more chaos. The game can also be a bit too easy at times, as I wish there were different difficulty modes to pick from, as there is only one default difficulty. While performance was smooth with no major bugs, there were some humans enemies that would float in mid air, doing T poses, as well as on glitch, where I would break open a grate to get into hidden areas, only the grate would stay in place and not let me progress. It happen to me a few times and I had to quit to the main menu and reload to fix it. Otherwise, I really enjoyed my time with this game and I recommend it to anyone who wants a shorter, less bloated game or if you just want something different to play, compared to most other games on the market.