This October on IGotW we've had ghosts and demons, so how about a creature feature? Maneater is a shark RPG, or a shaRkPG, or a JRPG if the J stood for Jaws, that has you becoming the apex aquatic predator of the Louisianan tourist resort-slash-seedy bayou Port Clovis. A celebrity shark hunter named Scaly Pete fished out a ferocious bullshark and pulled her newborn out of her dying carcass, scarring it in the process so he'd always be able to recognize it, which is ample excuse for said baby shark to doot-doot-doot her way into a bloody tale of revenge and carnage. Essentially an aquatic open-world game of the GTA variety, the player spends their time completing repetitive missions involving eating fish and eating humans, collecting random crap strewn about the environment, and having the occasional stand-off with dubious shark hunters who pop out of the woodwork on skiffs and jetskis whenever you've created too much of a seaside panic.

Though the game isn't enormous in size it's quite ambitious given the simple, misanthropic pleasures of its "you're a shark that eats everybody" mission statement. For one, there's various upgrades you can receive and equip to parts of the shark's body that can help it gain more materials (needed for other upgrades), fight off predators like barracudas and alligators, survive on land longer if you need to take a (not) breather to knock on some doors and trick folks into thinking you're a candygram, or otherwise just look very cool and big and mean like a shark should. The combat too, especially with the keyboard and mouse controls I've been using (I read they make it easier to traverse the 3D space underwater), has been hand-crampingly elaborate with its utilization of the WASDQERF cluster. The usual suspects are used for movement while F centers the camera on attackers, Q and E lets you perform quick dodges to evade predator lunges or humans lining up shots on you, R to hit the sonar (I guess I got bit by a radioactive dolphin) for collectible sweeping and prey detection, Shift to accelerate to prime chomping speed, and Space to breach the water for airborne targets. (Not that I've managed to snatch a seagull in mid-air yet, but it feels like something this game should let me do.) Either way, having to keep all those controls in mind while playing can make for some chaotic encounters, especially when you're having to focus on predators while dodge-rolling their attacks as you move around: that's seven fingers right there, and sadly neither of my hands have been blessed with that many.

In addition to its flight-sim-complexity shark controls the other big unexpected strength of the game is its sense of humor. I was all ready to start flinching at every bad shark week joke but the comedy is overall at a pretty high quality, helped in no small part by the performance of former SNL straight man linchpin Chris Parnell, who takes this Attenborough-vian reality TV show narrator voiceover character and channels the soothingly authoritative if also occasionally batshit insane performance he polished on 30 Rock as Dr. Leo Spaceman. The game's humor isn't so much focused on surreal jokes however as it is on being a sardonically scathing jeremiad concerning mankind's treatment of the natural world and its denizen fauna: make no mistake, for as many people (and cute seals) as you chew down on the shark is never the bad guy here. She's just doing what she needs to do to survive, albeit with a little more enthusiasm than might be warranted. It's the humans polluting the seas and bayous with golf balls, luxury yacht wrecks, processed foods with far too many additives, enough nuclear waste to give my shark a healthy glow, and just any old trash that the locals didn't feel like disposing responsibly: if anything, I'm a hero for fighting that scourge. A hero that deliberately jumps onto land to eat people trying to enjoy their vacations even though it could asphyxiate me, such are my potent feelings of hunger and antipathy.

Progression tends to involve reaching a new region, completing some compulsory missions (which then unlock some thematically similar optional ones), hitting a certain completion percentage, perhaps raising infamy by eating enough bounty hunters to summon one of ten named mini-bosses, and then hitting a cutscene featuring your human nemesis Scaly Pete to move the overarching story along before resetting the loop in a new place. Navigation is often made challenging by how the map only reveals the top layer of the world: there's many places that have underwater cave and sewer pipe networks that you can easily get lost in, and even if you've pinged a chest (full of nutritional foodstuffs, because why else would a shark want to open a chest?) there's sometimes no intuitive means of reaching it unless you find the right set of directions to take through some underwater maze grottos. Speaking of which, the grottos are the "safe" zones (though turns out most places become pretty safe when you're the biggest predator there) and are the only places you're allowed to change your "equipment" loadout. They're also fast travel destinations, but given the size of most regions and the fact there's only one of these safe zone grottos per area you might still find yourself having to cover a lot of ground to reach an outstanding mission or collectible marker.

On the whole, there's much to like about Maneater. I'm playing it in spurts so I don't get RSI from going "claw mode" every time there's a tactical battle I can't just chomp my way through, but I think it's having a serendipitous effect on my enjoyment of the game. The repetitive nature of the mission structure means that it wouldn't be the sort of thing I'd want to play in long stretches regardless, and the simple joys of just swimming around exploring while eating anything edible and plenty more that ain't besides are all the more pronounced if it's been a few hours or days since your last aquatic foray. It's also visually a treat, even if it's one of the few underwater exploration games to not emphasize the beauty of this rarely seen part of our planet; rather, it tends to be filthy and full of debris and mean-looking fish, only some of which is humanity's fault. It's funny, it's brutal, it's challenging in mostly the right ways, and its only real failing is that they took five hours of content and made a 15-20 hour game out of it. I'm sure I'll chip away at what little content remains (I already maxed my level but there's still three more regions to visit, so maybe I'll try to rein in my OCD tendencies) over the next few days.

Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)