This game is ridiculous and stupid and I love it.

It's one of those games that I adore in large part because the game knows exactly what it is and doesn't try to be anything else. It never takes it's self too seriously. It knows it's over the top and just leeeeans right into it.

What is Maneater? Well you play as a shark and your goal is to grow and eat, eat and grow, and kill loooots of people in increasingly hilarious ways. And it's one of those games that's a kill fest but you will feel 0 sympathy for the npc's you murder. Why? Because frankly... if someone looks up and sees a shark the size of an orca, glowing purple with bones on it's face... just casually hopping across the green before lunging towards your golfing buddy... eating them whole next to you... and your response is to just stand there waving your arms and screaming?... at that point it's natural selection and it's me... I'm the natural selection.

But for a better picture. Maneater is Spore mixed with the mobile game Hungry Shark. All wrapped in a package that looks like a Discovery Channel show like Deadliest Catch. Eat things to gain points of various kinds. Use points to upgrade things to become stronger and weirder looking (the bone stuff is nightmare fuel... mostly the teeth).

As such the first bit of the game is... admittedly rough. Surviving against the alligators in the swamp as a baby shark is really difficult. I died to those damn gators more than anything else in the whole game. Once you get a handle on things though, and if you do EVERYTHING in an area that you can before moving on to the next area, you'll find the game easier and easier to progress through.

There is a story here, and as part of the story and to get various upgrades, you'll be trying to become more notorious causing various hilarious hunters to come after you on your quest to chew the face off a guy named Scaly Pete. Not gonna lie... I actually got into the story in a way I wasn't expecting to. I got VINDICTIVE at a certain point because I was all team shark. If you've ever watched Jaws 2.... this game has HIGH Jaws 2 vibes.

As for graphics and performance I gotta say this game is prettier than it has any right to be. I never had any performance issues. The water graphics and physicals is freaking amazing. It took me till like half way through my play through to realize that I could fast travel between grottos (the little underwater safety caves in each area). I just swam everywhere. It got kinda tiring but honestly I never got so tired of it that it was annoying because the game was just so damn pretty to look at. Plus swimming around so much gave me plenty of opportunity to just eat everything I passed which got me more points to level stuff up. Which I think is in part what kept me ahead of stuff a fair bit.

I ate so much stuff and made very sure to leave only stuff behind in an area that I couldn't physically do yet. That I'd get into a new area and very few things could do anything against me and missions were a breeze. I beat all Alpha's on the first tries. I beat all hunters on the first tries. The only struggle I had was the end battle with Scaly Pete.

I didn't have a problem with it though. I wasn't here for difficulty. I was here for the over the top ridiculousness of the game and the game kept that up to a point that I never stopped having fun. I've 100% the base game and upon finishing picked up the dlc and am starting that now.

With all that praise being said.... I do have some issues with the game.

The primary one being that the price tag is egregious at best. I got the game in a humble bundle forever ago, but if I had paid $40 for it I think I would have been kinda disappointed. I feel like $30 is as much as I would pay for it, especially since the dlc tacks on another $15. Because again... I've started the DLC. My play time says 19 hours, but I finished the base game in like... 18 I think? Then when you take into account that I swam EVERYWHERE for half that play time. I probably could have finished the game in like 13 hours had I known I could fast travel. Because at a certain point a lot of my play time is backtracking to areas to get things I couldn't before getting whatever upgrade I needed.

The other thing that's frustrating is the grates in each area. You'll find grates you can break to go into underwater caves or old sewer systems. Usually with goodies inside. I have no problem with that. If you pass one on the map and don't break it, it stays marked on the map for you to get back to. If you break it though? The marker is gone and that's SUPER frustrating. There were a few areas where I couldn't figure out how to get to something so I'd make a note to come back later and try, but then couldn't find the entrance. It's not bad with the sewer caves, but once you are in the ocean and finding openings to underwater caves it becomes REALLY hard to find an entrance that you broke before. I spent a solid 30 minutes trying to find ONE supply crate I was missing for 100% because I couldn't find the entrance I broke at some point but didn't go inside.

Another annoyance is the controls for the jump on pc. It took me FOREVER to get some of the collectables you had to jump out of the water for because if you don't aim juuuuust right you won't get them, and if you pull back on the mouse the tiniest bit your shark does a backflip. I feel like there HAS to be a better way to do this.

Other than those few issues I"d say pick up the game when it's on a decent sale. It's humor is great and it's the kind of stupid fun you can sit down with and have a blast. It's also a decent "I'm angry and just wanna murder things" kind of game. Like this game is gonna be my anger relief game for a while.

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