Maneater takes the dream of being a shark and turns it into a TV reality show starring you!
The entire game is framed around this nostalgic late 90’s early 2000’s tone, featuring an exuberant announcer and lots of ocean fare trivia.
Playing Maneater is one of the worst ways to learn about aquatic life, mainly because it takes a lot of patience to sit through its terrible humor. There are some cringe moments.
Zipping through the ocean as an unstoppable killing machine should be a good time, but the game does everything it can to try and stop you. While adding challenge into the gameplay makes most games exciting, the attributes in Maneater just feel like annoying hindrances.
Maneater Video Time Stamps
- 0:00 Hunter Armada Welcomes You to the Show!
- 4:00 The Humans… They Must Be Stopped!
- 15:47 Down into the Sewers We Go
- 19:30 Pro Tip with Hunter Armada
- 20:22 Swimming Around Dead Horse Lake
- 22:55 Leveling up at the Grotto
- 24:33 Is Maneater Amazing?
Table of Contents
- Maneaters Gameplay
- It’s a TV Show From the Early 2000s That You Get to Play!
- Pro Tip with Hunter Armada
- Is Maneater Amazing?
Maneater at a Glance
Let’s dive into the action, kill some humans and see if Maneater is amazing.
Maneater’s Gameplay

At Maneater’s core, the intent is to eat everything in sight… and then go eat some more!
In the span of this video, I did several quests and they all boiled down to going to a location and eating a certain amount of prey (consisting of both fish and humans).

There is little to no variety in Maneater, unfortunately. You have seen the game in its entirety within just the first 15 minutes of playing.
Sure, you can upgrade your shark, but the sense of progression is fairly bareboned when you pull back the mechanics and overall scope.
The shark has a tailwhip that you can use to whack fish into each other, as well as stun to get some extra damage in.

Adding onto this, you also have a dodge movement to get out of any tight encounters, which I find pretty fascinating for a shark.

To take it one step further, you have access to Sonar. This allows you to see mission objectives and what kind of prey is in the vicinity.

The teeth of the shark are your main weapons for the journey but it boils down to smashing the trigger until you win.
Sure, you can dodge and get fancy but there’s no real point when you just chomp everything until the health bar goes down. The humans don’t put up much of a fight. Just make sure to watch your oxygen meter when going up on land.

After eating a bunch of humans your wanted meter goes up. That’s when the hunters come to try and take you down.

At 10:40 we see Bayou Willy attack, but he thankfully isn’t much of a challenge.
It boils down to knocking him off his jetski and then chomp him until you win.

As you take down the hunters and level up, you get more powers for your shark.
For example, at 11:01 I get Bioelectric Teeth for taking down Bayou Willy, which can then be upgraded at the grotto.

To wrap up the gameplay aspect of things–going to 22:55 as a reference–we enter the Grotto and look into how to upgrade the shark.
There is a lot to see in the Evolutions section. Upgrades ranging from the Jaw to even the internal organs of the shark.
This all comes together for you to make a shark all your own as well as a total killing machine.
The issue comes in with all the currency. You get currency by killing fish and humans, which makes sense. But the amount you get from eating isn’t enough and the upgrades feel hollow in terms of what they add on from the initial upgrade.
In the video, I give my shark electric teeth which are cool but the upgrade on top of it isn’t anything special, especially when you look at the amount it costs.
Now, to be fair, you can get the entire electric set to get a major buff.
It’s a TV Show From the Early 2000s That You Get to Play!
Maneater wears its style like a badge of honor.

The entire game is framed like a TV show that would air during Shark Week and I think that’s pretty cool.
The announcer is full of interesting fish facts and gives a clear insight into what you need to do during the missions.
The biggest part that causes this all to come crashing down to earth in a glorious fireball is the writing.
It’s just so bad and I’m not going to mince words or hide it, I don’t like the writing in Maneater whatsoever.
It strives too hard to be funny and sadly falls short. It should tow that line of cleverness and cringe but it just goes fully into unbearable levels. Even dad jokes are more bearable.
Every time the announcer deviates from fish facts it makes me just groan and consider muting the dialog entirely.

The entire game feels like it’s trying way too hard to be funny, rather than focus on solid gameplay and interesting mission variety.
It wants you so badly to like the jokes to distract from the fact that the quests are monotonous and overly repetitive.
I can’t stress enough that playing the first 15 minutes is the entire game. If that sounds enjoyable then you’re going to have a great time!
But good luck getting through the jokes. Maybe you are stronger than I am, but I just can’t look past it.
Pro Tip with Hunter Armada

Before we wrap this up let’s take a moment for a Hunter Armada Pro Tip to help you leave with something useful!
At 9:30 I get hit with the most intense Snack Attack you’ve ever seen!
Only one thing can quench this Snack need and that’s pretzels!
One thing I like to do so I can eat and play video games is to eat shovable food with a cup.

Grabbing a cup, filling it with any food you want, and then simply drinking that food keeps your hands clean and your gaming gear in tip-top shape!
I hope you learned something!
Is Maneater Amazing?

Maneater is a game where you play as a shark in the frame of a terrible TV show fit to air during Shark Week.
The humor isn’t funny, the mission design is boring/repetitive, and uninteresting.
Changing the location to do the same thing over and over isn’t enough to make Maneater fun, no matter how badly the game wants you to laugh at its jokes.
The gameplay is boilerplate and doesn’t make being a shark as fun as one would hope for it to be.
I’m glad I gave Maneater a shot but I’m ready for this TV show to be canceled.
