Maneater PS5 Review
Summary: As it is, Maneater is still a fairly fun game if roleplaying as an aquatic killing machine is your thing, FPS dips and all… I just wish that my brain would stop playing that damn Nelly Furtado song of the same name over and over every time I settle in for a quick sharky session, especially as the OTHER “Maneater” song by Hall & Oates is a much better fit contextually.
4
Watch out boy, She'll chew you up!
If you’re the type of person who rooted for Jaws instead of the Brody family and devours Shark Week content as voraciously as the titular beast does its prey, then developer Tripwire’s Maneater should be right in your wheelhouse.
With the advent of the newest generation of gaming consoles, many games have been given cross-platform upgrades, meaning that you can purchase them on the PS4 and then move them across to your shiny new PS5 with all the extra whistles and bells like 4k resolution and ray tracing included.
Some of these upgrades have been offered for free whereas other developers have elected to charge an additional fee on top of the PS4 game’s price in order to move things into the next generation.
Thankfully, Maneater is one of the titles that give players the upgrade for free, meaning that anyone who has previously purchased the game can now play across both consoles and reap the benefits of the new refinements without any of the additional cost.
We previously reviewed the PC version of Maneater here, giving the shark pup’s quest for revenge a respectable final score of 4.4; obviously, as this is just technically an upgrade patch, the content between the two versions are pretty much identical, aside from performance and visual elements.
So what does the jump to next gen bring for Maneater? Well, firstly there’s the aforementioned increased resolution and the game is now ostensibly locked at a steady 60 frames per second.
Unfortunately, during more frenetic moments in the game where I was being besieged by multiple hunters in boats and scuba gear the frame rate dipped quite noticeably as the game struggled to keep up with the action. Other times you can just be swimming through an area and the FPS will just bottom out and chug along desperately as it buckles under the pressure.
As someone who skipped Maneater last gen I’m not too sure if this was an issue previously evident but here it really puts a dampener on things and shows that maybe this quirky little Shark simulator isn’t quite ready to take a bit out of the newest generation of hardware.
In terms of the boosts to the graphics, watching comparison videos clearly show a difference in the visual quality, with Maneater on PS5 looking clearer and more defined, with much more vibrant colours. The addition of ray tracing, which has become a little bit of a buzzword meme, actually makes a discernible difference here, with wavering light filter effects really serving to present the ocean, swamps and other environments in all of their resplendent glory.
Final Thought
Maneater gets a fairly rudimentary upgrade to PS5, and although the flashy lighting and other additions are welcome, some more quality of life and performance changes wouldn’t have gone astray. The inability to transfer save files may also be a bit of a pain for those who previously played through, as there isn’t too much incentive to dive back in again.
The goofy Reality TV inspired storyline elicited a few giggles here and there, although it’s rather short, and the game itself makes for a great time just switching your brain off and revelling in causing chaos along the coast.
As it is, Maneater is still a fairly fun game if roleplaying as an aquatic killing machine is your thing, FPS dips and all… I just wish that my brain would stop playing that damn Nelly Furtado song of the same name over and over every time I settle in for a quick sharky session, especially as the OTHER “Maneater” song by Hall & Oates is a much better fit contextually.
* Maneater, make you work hard, make you spend hard, make you want all of her love…*
Game Details
Primary Format – PlayStation 5 (Reviewed). PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, PC
Game Genre – Adventure/RPG
Rating – MA15+
Game Developer – Tripwire Interactive
Game Publisher – Deep Silver
Reviewer – Sean Warhurst
About the Author
Sean Warhurst Avid gamer. Cinephile. Considerate lover. Neither the word Protractor or Contractor accurately conveys my position on how I feel about Tractors.
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