Maneater: Assassin's Creed with shark

Two fish meet. Says one: "Hi!" Says the other: "Where?" Almost inevitably one bad joke after the other whispers like a swarm of mackerel through the head every few seconds while playing maneater, from Shark Five to Hai Noon, from "Sharky Shark and the munchy bunch ”to“ Have you got a shark? ”. The supposed trash festival turns out to be far less silly than you might think. Basically, Maneater is a (reasonably) serious open-world (or rather open-water) game, an assassin's creed under water. With a shark in the role of the assassin.

At first glance, maneater sounds like the typical crazy idea, which sounds like a stroke of genius when the alcohol level is high, but about which the next morning in a sober state, one only shakes one's head embarrassingly. A game. With a shark in the lead role. The man eats. Well, we live in a time when a game with a goose in the leading role that annoys people is voted the best of the year. So why not?

When the world first heard of Maneater, it was at E3 2018, during the PC Gaming Show – probably the most comatose event in human history that is so sleepy that I just invented the superlative "most comatose" just for it , Just to classify: Games like Morning Star, Noita and Overwhelm were also announced at the same event. Never heard? Well, that's probably because there were only two brief moments during the show when the average viewer was briefly awake: as a guy in the duck costume standing on the stage that the world is still wondering about: did this really happen? , or was that a dream? And the moment when Maneater was announced.

The trailer first conjures up a holiday idyll. Beach, palm trees, people bathing. But then this shark appears and eats them all. And as if that weren't bizarre enough, the developer explains shortly afterwards on the same stage where the duck will be standing a few minutes later that this is an "open world action RPG" in which the Shark games. A “Shark-PG”, he adds, and thus delivers the first bad word joke in the history of Maneater. "A Shark PG?" Asks the moderator, "really with skill tree and all that?" And with this idea even he can't help but laugh, it sounds so absurd (but he didn't know that yet) exactly one year later on the exact same stage instead of the duck a woman in a shark costume would open the door to new dimensions of absurdity).

"Yes, really with skill trees and everything," replies the developer, and even then summarizes the game in a nutshell, which nobody in the hall really knows because everyone is already laughing under the chair. You can play through a complete story campaign, so to speak "eat through", he immediately pushes the next joke. You can level up your shark and give it, for example, larger teeth. The game gives you all the freedom to do what you do as a shark all day long. Explore the open game world, for example. But mostly everything would have to do with eating.

Maneater – E3 2018 Reveal Trailer

Tripwire has announced Maneater, a new open-world action RPG for PC.

After that, the game Bravery Network Online will be announced, by the way, but frankly we can't remember that either. So let's see what happened to the Shark PG two years later. Because now we could play it for an hour …

What is maneater now?

For a preliminary, but quite comprehensive answer to this question, close your eyes for a moment and imagine an Assassin's Creed of your choice. But under water. And with a shark as an assassin. With this picture in front of you, you get pretty close to a first impression of maneater: an open world that you c an travel freely, a lot of collectibles that you need to acquire new skills, and an overwhelming combat system – after all, you play the greatest predator of the oceans , Your opponents are just little fish, not just figuratively. At least they are at the beginning, but we have no idea about Rosie, the alligator, who will make us as boss boss at the end of the level pretty hard.

Of course you only climb towers. But you take cave hideaways that serve as spawn and quick travel points. And you will need them, because, as befits an open world game, the game world is huge and is made up of several varied areas: an idyllic sandy beach for example, a dirty harbor and the starting area in which we are in The following can be let off steam: a bayou, i.e. a standing, swamp-like body of water full of moss-covered trees and aggressive alligators.

Sections that play underwater have always been notorious for video gamers. Developing a control system for an entire game that only takes place under water is therefore the first and probably the greatest challenge for its developers. And it looks like this has been mastered properly in the case of maneaters. Opponents in the immediate vicinity are automatically targeted and attacked at the push of a button, without having to laboriously rotate around all three spatial axes. Thanks to natural sonar (quasi the Eagle vision from Assassin's Creed), you always keep the orientation by briefly highlighting relevant objects such as fish, collectibles and mission objectives.

Speaking of fish: these naturally do not pose a threat to your shark, but instead serve as food to refresh the health bar – after all, such a shark usually does not carry pockets with medicinal potions. The playful idea behind it is downright clever: Because this allows you to heal yourself in the game at any time without having to laboriously manage healing ingredients in the inventory, but you have to withdraw a few steps from the fight and look for schools of fish nearby.

Furthermore, you eat the DNA of other sea creatures by eating in order to climb higher rungs of the evolution ladder. In video game spoken: You get experience points that give you new equipment and perks when leveling. In the starting area we played, the improvements were still quite obvious, such as a longer range of sonar or larger teeth for more attack damage. Later, however, there will be nicely trashy-coated properties such as metal skin armor or electric shock flashes.

And what about the story? As is well known, the animal characters from maneaters are naturally rather dumb and therefore do not fill you with their life story in sprawling dialogues. What a real RPG wants to be, of course, also needs an epic story, and for this Maneater was inspired by no less than two representatives of world literature: Moby Dick and Peter Pan. Well, actually it just puts an antagonist on you as an end boss who, like Captain Hook, lost his arm to your shark years ago and since then has been obsessively seeking revenge like Captain Ahab. Until the big clash in the showdown, the way there is paved with inter-boss contemporaries like from the illustrious pool of dime novels. For example Rosie, the alligator lady with the teasing pink bow around her neck …