So far, the PS4 games I've reviewed have been quiet, contemplative experiences. Even Flow, which was about eating other things and trying to avoid being eaten, was presented in a simplified, bloodless aesthetic, with chirps and other simple musical tones to indicate something happening.
Maneater, is absolutely nothing like that. It's basically Grand Theft Auto: Shark.
The tutorial level puts you in control of a bull shark hanging out in a coastal bay. It's ultimately captured and killed by Salty Pete, a bayou boob who stars on a basic cable show called Maneater. Pete cuts open the adult shark and pulls out a wriggling, live baby shark, then marks its fin so he'll recognize it when its grown. Before he can chuck it into the bayou, the baby bites off his hand.
From that point on, you play as that baby bull shark, trying to survive and grow when practically everything wants to eat you. The game assists by having the waterways you inhabit be pretty polluted, so in addition to whatever fats, proteins or other minerals you gain from eating, most animals have a certain amount of mutagen in their tissues, which lets you evolve a variety of handy tricks or features (some of which aren't unlocked until completing a certain challenge or defeating an enemy.)
These might include an adaptation allowing you to flop about on land like a giant, vicious mudskipper for long periods of time before you actively begin to suffocate. Or you might gain bony plates on your body that increase resistance to damage.
There is the barest thread of a plot, in that as you grow and progress from one water body to another, Pete is out there, planning to bring you down and talking about his life. His college-boy son, or how his pappy was killed by a big mega shark, possibly a gubmint experiment. "#GubmintExperiment" appears in the lower right corner of the screen during this.
But the game operates on two-thirds of the premise Richard Dreyfuss laid out for the mayor in Jaws: All you do is eat and swim. The game does not have a sequence where you make little sharks, although you will eventually begin turning big sharks into little shark pieces, before you eat those pieces. If you want. You don't have to, but it's more nutrients to prime evolutions, so why waste 'em?
The game is littered with hide n' seek quests. Find all the various landmarks, most of which are jokey references (like the water hazard of a golf course with a pile of bent clubs at the bottom, or an undersea base out of James Bond), or license plates randomly floating around (many of them in the air, so you have to pull of some serious jumps), or find the nutrient cases that provide extra mutagen or minerals to level up your various evolutions and, as the narrator puts it, help the shark reach her full potentiality.
Does it make sense you locate these things with the shark's sonar? No, but neither does being able to switch between an evolution that offers bony armor plates and one that lets the shark emit bursts of electricity to stun enemies when evading. And some of the designs, when you equip everything from a particular set, look pretty cool.
Mostly, you eat. You can attack anything that swims within range, though whether you can kill it is another matter. Early on, I was consistently getting my ass kicked by alligators, which was embarrassing. Very enjoyable to go back to those waters once the shark's grown and tear the gators apart in seconds.
Once you reach the second water body, there start being missions to attack and eat humans. These are mostly notable for increasing your infamy and getting bounties posted on you. You can escape and they'll eventually give up looking, but if you fight and do enough damage, eventually named bounty hunters will come to play. Kill one and you not only unlock some upgrade, but increase your Infamy so you can eventually face the next one on the list (10 in total.)
I waited until near the end to really get into that, and the Bone Set was extremely useful. Just tearing apart their ships by ramming them or doing a leaping spin onto the deck and devouring any poor sucker in reach. Unfortunately, it also starts to take a lot of destruction to get from one Infamy Level to the next. To the point I lost track of how many boats I wrecked and hunters I ate because it seemed to go forever. Or you could be smart and pace yourself. The Infamy Level won't drop, so you could cause some mayhem, then escape and do something else.
I had more fun with the Apex Predator missions. Each water body has several missions about eating a bunch of a particular prey. Complete them all and piss off the Apex Predator of the area, triggering a showdown. The game differentiates the Apex from the standard versions of its species, so that the Apex Mako that hangs out around the golf course has a golf ball lodged in one eye.
Oddly, the first three Apex Predators didn't give me much trouble. Odd, because the first one was an alligator and I couldn't figure out why I could kill it but kept losing to all the regular gators in the bayou. The Apex Hammerhead was were I had to think about which evolutions I was equipping to win. Then it was the Apex Orca (who is basically a Sea World orca that now has free reign of an abandoned waterpark), that kicked my ass repeatedly. Then I figured out temporarily paralyzing it with electricity so I could bite it worked pretty well. When I could get the camera to cooperate.
Which is an issue, the controls aren't great. Especially if you're trying to deal with a quick opponent, it's difficult to keep them in view without accidentally setting it up where your controls are now doing the opposite of what you intended. Sometimes when I couldn't see my enemy, I'd just start spamming evade until it rushed past into view, then attack. Likewise, when I'd get my jaws on some undersea hunter (crazy that I'm tearing apart fishing trawlers and these guys think it's a good idea to get in the water with me), I'd swim towards the camera while chomping them up, so any other divers would be behind me and the targeting reticule would select them. Then I could just immediately whip around and chomp down on them. Crude, but mostly effective.
It's a game better suited for short bursts. I did that initially, but by the end, was playing a few hours at a time. It gets more like a chore, trying to complete basic missions so you can fight the Apex or take a run at Scaly Pete.
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