Maneater Reviews
Maneater's sluggish start soon makes way for a ridiculous and extremely fun shark 'em up gaming experience that homes in on its B-movie roots.
Maneater is a game that could have been good but was too obsessed with forcing players to interact with its low points to make its high points shine.
Maneater is a weirdly entertaining game that gets boring too fast before it can achieve true fun.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Fun open world snack for in between, but lacking the last bite
Review in German | Read full review
There simply isn’t anything else like it, even if it does follow some of the more rote open-world playbook rules when it comes to progression and collectibles. A choppy framerate in intense sequences is really one of the only things holding the experience back, but like a fisherman without a hand—or a leg—it doesn’t stop me from heading back to the open water for more.
Maneater is a delirious and fun experience for the first few hours. But quickly you'll get a bit bored repeating the same thing over and over again.
Review in French | Read full review
Maneater is an enjoyable open-world romp that is just a bit too straightforward and contains more than a handful of bugs and performance issues.
If you’re after a big dumb shark game, Maneater will scratch that itch. The quality of the gameplay and some of its RPG mechanics might make you wish there was some more depth and variety to it all though.
Maneater plays its hand early, as the novelty of being an almost unstoppable apex predator thrown into an unforgiving ocean doesn't have much depth to it. What Maneater does have though, is a meaty world worth exploring, a fascinating system of evolution and whip-smart writing that adds colour to your deep blue killing spree.
The game's campiness doesn't extend to the shark combat, which flounders as a result of it mostly hinging on button-mashing.
Maneater constantly blurs the line between sadistic mass murder simulator and clever satire, while also managing to be as fun as any human-based open-world game. Chris Parnell's narration can get a little repetitive, as can the missions, and the camera could use a little work, but it's all a matter of context. It's a wild reversal of ego, an experience that is both completely freeing and oppressive at the same time. Stare into the dead eyes of the shark, and the shark stares into you.
Although it's hindered by performance issues, Maneater allows you to gleefully live out your wildest (and perhaps bloodiest) killer shark revenge fantasies. What's more, the game's dark sense of humor means you don't have to feel guilty about the carnage that ensues.
Manic marine mayhem, Maneater is a one-of-a-kind shaRkPG that can feel a little one-note at times, but it's never anything less than an unhinged, knowingly daft piece of entertainment. You get to be a shark and eat people, for crying out loud. It's fun and guaranteed to make you smile, (you son of a bitch).
It's not a bad game, but is best played in small doses.
If there’s anything Maneater will be remembered for, it’s the fun and wacky nature that comes with it.
Maneater may delight some with its appeal to the player's schadenfreude and the quirkiness of playing as a shark, but its simplicity and antiquated nature will leave many wishing for a game that was more evolved.
Maneater is a fantastic central concept around which an intermittently enjoyable game has been built. It might not be a classic, but it'll be hard to forget, and that's the kind of game that typically seems better as time goes by. Expect to see this absurd bit of bloody, barbaric business pop up on lists of cult favorites for years to come, and deservedly so.
While Maneater is certainly a title that works for me in terms of its humour and an engaging core gameplay loop, its graphic nature means it’s not going to be for everyone. If you don’t mine a little gore — okay, make that a lot of gore — this unique experience should be right up your alley.
Maneater is not a perfect game. It can be just a bit unbalanced, and you can start to see the gameplay seams on extended play sessions, but that doesn’t stop it from being a hell of a lot of fun. Maneater is simply worth your time, blemishes and all.