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Maneater received its first DLC pack in Truth Quest late last month, which brought fans back into the game. It’s been over a year since the shark-focused RPG was released, but the journey players go on in the game is tough to forget. Maneater took the player along on the story of a baby bull shark intent on avenging its mother’s death, while the new DLC pits the player against the Atomic Leviathan.
Maneater invented an all-new genre of ShaRkPGs, where players could live the life of a rage-fueled bull shark. For fans of movies like Jaws, where the antagonist shark is portrayed as a bloodthirsty killing machine, there are few other games that offer the same appeal. Maneater may not present the first shark in a video game, but it is a must-play for Jaws fans.
Is Maneater the Best Shark Game?
Maneater is an open-world role-playing game where the player takes the role of a shark, killing fishermen and people enjoying a sunny day at the beach. It wears its Jaws inspirations on its sleeve as players can overturn and destroy boats in a similar fashion to the ending of the original movie. The entire point of Maneater is to kill, evolve, and, eventually, take revenge. A shark game that allows the players to go wild, exploring and attacking anything that breathes is a difficult game to improve upon. Add to that the revenge plot and players have a fun and unique experience ahead of them.
In addition to this, Maneater players can take the battle to the land, removing the last bastion of hope for terrified beachgoers. When watching the Jaws movies, what stands out is that even in a relatively large fishing boat, the characters are not safe. It emphasizes the threat the shark holds and gives a reason as to why simply avoiding swimming isn’t an option. Maneater takes this to another level by allowing players to attack on land, recapturing the horror the boat scene created in the original Jaws movie. Maneater offers the player uncapped freedom to explore and attack as they please, which adds to the already unique concept of an action RPG shark game.
Maneater is Inspired by Jaws
While a great white shark can be found in a boss fight in Maneater, the player can’t actually take control of one. Instead, the player actually takes the role of the deadliest shark species for beachgoers, the bull shark. The antagonist of the Jaws series of movies is an iconic bloodhungry great white shark, but players do not take on the role of one in Maneater. Still, as gamers work their way through Maneater they can evolve their shark, eventually reaching 30 feet long, which is bigger than the shark from the Jaws movie. It seems obvious that the mammoth size of the fully evolved shark is paying homage to the Jaws movies, but in a less obvious way, the shark’s species may also be referencing the classic movie series.
The Maneater shark species could be disappointing to Jaws fans, but it may be more true to the origins of Jaws than the movie itself. The Jaws movies were inspired by the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, in which four people were killed by a shark before it was eventually caught. The shark that took the blame for the attacks was a juvenile great white that had human remains in its stomach. However, some scientists have argued that the perpetrator must have been a bull shark, as two of the attacks occurred in Matawan Creek, a freshwater body of water 11 miles inland. So for fans of the Jaws movies, Maneater's bull shark may be the closest representation of the story that inspired the franchise.
Maneater is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
