Maneater: Truth Quest DLC Review: Same Shark Different Skin

Maneater: Truth Quest is the first DLC for the shark-based action RPG, Maneater. Developed by Tripwire Interactive and published by Deep Silver, Truth Quest continues in the same gameplay and narrative style as the first game. Players will reprise their role as a baby bull shark who, in the base game, pursued vengeance and genetic manipulation after being violently ripped from her mother. Truth Quest doesn’t do anything drastic to shake up the Maneater formula, but fans of the game who wanted a little more will find exactly what they’re looking for in the cryptic heart of this DLC.

Truth Quest continues the narrative where players left it, and follows the bull shark protagonist and her narrator Trip Westhaven, wonderfully voiced by Chris Parnell of Archer fame, as they seek to uncover the tangled web of plots enacted by the New World Order. It’s never very clear why these plots are being pursued, and Sharky and Trip seem to need very little reason to take on this shadowy organization. It’s all an excuse to become an atomic laser shark, which works for the premise. The star of the show is the bits of humour and satire that Trip throws at players every few minutes. As a game that pretty cleverly hid a SpongeBob SquarePants reference in its depths, Maneater: Truth Quest knows what kind of humor to deliver.

Gameplay in Maneaster and Truth Quest is almost exactly the same; The key difference is that Truth Quest acts as post-game content, upping the level cap, introducing new mutations, hunters, and mission types. Ultimately, Maneater can’t escape the constraints of its core gameplay loop. Players will find a target, either a single entity or a group of hapless humans, attack them using a mix of bites, tail whips, dodges, and lasers, and keep up the dance until one or the other party is dead.

It’s entertaining in it’s own way, but Maneater seems to excel when either the player is small and helpless, dodging bigger fish and feeding where possible, or as a gigantic mega shark that can stalk humans before going in for the boat-destroying kill. Being able to spend a good deal of time on land, chasing fleeing humans way further up the beach than reasonable is also worth a chuckle. The horseshark of Truth Quest’s viral marketing wasn’t so far off.

Unfortunately, the additions don’t do very much to extend the life of Maneater’s shallow, if initially entertaining, combat system. Now helicopters, some land-based weapons, and irradiated sea creatures will join the long list of entities that want baby shark dead. While it is definitely fun to build into the atomic body set, complete with “freakin’ laser beams,” there isn’t enough new gameplay to make Truth Quest a must buy.

Some of the same issues that plague the original Maneater are still present in Truth Quest. There simply isn’t a great variety of activities to pursue. Standard missions boil down to the same four core activities: Players will eat an absurd amount of humans, tackle especially dangerous marine life, swim races, and destroy beacons. Between all of this are the same set of exploration and collection missions that allow players to expand their sharky arsenal.

To top it off, there are still some annoying bugs like the odd flying boat, items falling through the world, and rarely, crashes. Players who loved Maneater will surely find more to appreciate in Truth Quest, but it doesn’t do enough to truly expand on what made Maneater so memorable in the first place. The DLC is an obvious choice for those who simply want more of the world of the base game, but anyone looking for some major leaps in either the gameplay loop or its iterations will be left a little wanting.

Maneater: Truth Quest releases on PC, Playstation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on August 31 2021. A Steam Key was provided to Screen Rant for the purposes of this review.

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