Maneater

[smilodon]

Had a crack at the new Shark Sim Maneater which is currently an Epic exclusive. I had a voucher so got it for £24 yesterday (launch day).

Basically you start out as a baby bull shark swimming around a bayou full of weeds muck and discarded Redneck junk, eating catfish and hiding from gators. You level up a bit and move up through the food chain and into new 'biomes' with the ultimate goal of becoming an apex predator that snacks or Orcas and whales. You also quickly start scoffing people which gives you a GTA style wanted status and makes you a target of shark hunters which you can also scoff on but who try to shoot you first. The game is styled a bit like a Discovery Channel Shark Week Show with a narrator that guides you along through the levels.

It's a short game of about 8 hours but there are loads of side missions and things to discover than can add hours to the game. One example is that (because Hooper pulled a licence plate out of a sharks stomach in Jaws) you need to find and eat all the licence plates that are hovering magic like in the air. To do this you need to breach and snatch them out of the air.

The underwater scenery is amazing, different to - but the equal of Subnautica. Cruising around just below the water listening to the muffled shouts and splashes from nearby swimmers and seeing their electromagnetic silhouettes through the murky water is delightful in a wicked I'm going to rip you apart kind of way.

Sadly that is about it. Other than those plus points the game is all negative. It's  incredibly repetitive and basically one huge shopping list. Kill ten Grouper fish, now kill ten more, now kill ten humans, now find a new zone, now kill ten groupers. Apart from hiding from what ever creature is is one step up on the food chain than you and dealing with shark hunters as and when they show up, you're stuck with your shopping list. it's very dull and clearly shows the Devs didn't or couldn't come up with any really clever ideas to break the monotony.

Also the AI is really poor. I think some of this may be by design and due to poor level design. As an example:

You are tasked with killing humans who have congregated together for a beach party and decide to have some fun shooting defenceless flamingos which are nesting nearby. The *******s. You can drag down a few people who are messing about on pedalo's to get your required ten kills. But to kill the rest you have to launch yourself out of the water and up the beach where you wriggle across the sand and grab a human. Then you wriggle back to the water before you suffocate (or whatever sharks do when out of the water). Amazingly the humans who have just seen their pal get ripped apart in front of them do nothing more than cower and beg for mercy. All you do is wriggle back up the beach and grab another human. Repeat till you have your ten and then on to the next mission to kill ten of something else. At no point does any human actually think to run up the beach away from the water. Of course if they did you would never be able to complete the mission. So terrible AI is required to fix a task that was broken by design. I imagine there is all kinds of alternatives to this nonsense quest. Maybe you need only grab one person off the beach but add a stealth element where you have to get to the shore undetected using various skills such as moving through weeds or timing your attack with an incoming wave. Otherwise the humans spot you and run away thwarting your attempt. I'm not a game designer but that took me about ten seconds to think of, so how hard could it be for a professional developer? Regardless that seems too much effort for them so it's dumb AI to the rescue.

This repetitive dumbness was the norm right up until the one hour and fifty seventh minute when I grabbed my 2 hour refund. If this game ever comes down to about a fiver at some point it might be worth a punt but for £35 it's not remotely worth the money. PC Gamer gave it a 65/100 and I think than was a bit generous to be honest. More like a 50/100.

[Benny]

Cheers Smilo, saved me a pretty penny!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9Ev4UuYbpU

[albert]

Appreciate the usual candid nature of your review, avoidance tactics engaged.

On the other hand, with all these £10 off vouchers, Ashen is down to about a fiver. and then they gave another voucher after the purchase so Vampyr was about a fiver. Both get pretty good reviews.

I have been playing Ashen for several hours now and I like it so far, very Nordic style RPG, with story, quite easy to learn melee and plenty content for that price.

[smilodon]

Ashen is certainly on my wish list. I do have a load of stuff I'm working through first though.... damn you Humble Bundle & Epic Free Game of the Month!

One thing about Maneater that I did think about. While it plays a bit like one of those button mashing, beachside arcade games that existed before consoles and PC's it's is a collectors wet dream. If you are one of those odd folks that has to find every hidden cache, work out how to reach every collectable, every number plate, landmark, rare item and shiny trinket then Maneater might be a better buy. There's an absolute mass of 'stuff' to find all over the map, so if you just want swim about, level up and hunt shiny's then this is more 70/100 than 50. Just a thought.