#maneater

Baby shark do do do do do do

Maneater was a campy, gory, bloody comedy with a great atmosphere and smooth controls that played perfectly whenever I wanted something a little more relaxed in the past month or so.

I mean, what can I even say? You’re a giant man eating shark hellbent on vengeance for your mama, it’s awesome.

It feels like there’s so few games where you get to actively BE the big scary monster nowadays, and getting to scale from this tiny shark pup all the way to a borderline megalodon was satisfying as hell.

It was silly, and nonsensical and pushed its story too the extremes so often that everything just felt right. Nothing is too much if everything is too much.

The side quests were easy and approachable, and while there were a lot of them to get through, the collectables didn’t really feel like much of a slog like they do in a lot of other games. Partly, I believe this is due to the narrator throughout the course of the game.

He talks like you’re in his documentary (which you are) describing your actions and locations you find with comedic twists often enough that there’s gonna be at least something you’ll laugh at at least once.

The boss fights aren’t necessarily difficult, once you’ve upgraded yourself and your abilities you’re borderline unstoppable even by enemies almost double your level.

This is seem especially in the Truth Quest DLC. You reach a max level cap of 40 throughout the DLC, up from 30 in the base game, but the bosses are almost all levels 60-100 depending on their size and importance.

Regardless of this, if you just equip the bone armour set, you basically take no damage. Place that alongside any kind of health ability and you’re completely set for the whole of the game.

The environment is full of Easter eggs and little POIs to explore alongside a variety of enemies of all different shapes and sizes. As you grow, places that were once far too treacherous to explore become easy, you can swim through and swallow whole enemies that once harassed and chewed you up themselves. As such, the endgame state of collecting is satisfying. You’re big and tough enough that nothing will dare get in your way anymore.

You ARE the apex shark.

My partner gifted me a copy of this during the Ocean Fest event on Steam and it was just so fun all around. A little glitchy here and there and it crashed a LOT when I tried to run it on my ROG Ally and Laptop whilst I was away from my PC. But, on my main rig, I only experienced one crash in the entire experience.

I’m not sure whether I just got unlucky on my other devices or not, but I’d keep it in mind :)

Overall though, Maneater is an incredibly fun time, and I’d highly recommend it.

Date of completion: 03/06/2026

Genre: Action RPG / Simulator

Time to beat: 13hrs 48 mins

Level of completion: Main story + All side content + DLC

Trophies/Gamerscore: 44/44 Steam Perfect

1-100 Rating: 80%

Platform: PC