Maneater was a surprise action shaRkPG when it emerged from the water last year. It played like an homage to terrible SyFy Channel movies except from the piscine predator's perspective. For a game about a killer shark terrorizing an island it was silly, which added to its overall charm. The ever-evolving bull shark is back for a new adventure in Maneater: Truth Quest which brings a boatload of new features to the coastal waters, along with tin foil hat conspiracies. The original game wasn't very long, so adding more content sounds like a welcome addition, but is the expansion biting off more than the shark can chew?

When discussing the story of Maneater: Truth Quest there's hesitation to use the phrase jump the shark. Not because it's a pun, those are fun to inflict on unsuspecting readers even if they're so obvious its akin to shooting to fish in a barrel. It's because the story of the base game is ridiculous. Maneater's narrative is like someone took the basic premise of Jaws: The Revenge and decided to remake it in the style of the Sharknado sextology so the story is already bizarre. But things get so much weirder in Truth Quest.

Chris Parnell reprises his role as investigative journalist and narrator Trip Westhaven. Trip is an appropriate name for the narrator as some of the tinfoil hat conspiracy ramblings he delivered had to have had some encouragement from love for his sons and daughters. We won't spoil the dialogue but he has rather distorted beliefs about insects, humans and how patriotic and freedom loving sharks really are. Most of his ramblings are entertaining, mixing theories that sound like complete nonsense and some that aren't too far removed from what some people actually believe in real life. Without the shark to provide any real conversation, Westhaven's talking helps provide entertainment while exploring the new location.

Following the events at the ending of Maneater, the titular bull shark has awakened with the inclination to the travel to the waters near Plover Island, which is where the Port Clovis Military Base is located. This new area feels like its under heavy security, like wayward sharks aren't meant to be poking their snouts around within. Inside are many new challenges for the electrified, bone-armored bull shark to encounter such as new challenge missions, dangerous military bounty hunters and new massive uber apex predators that would consider the player's shark a bite-sized morsel. The elite bounty hunters that pursue the shark offer challenges, while shark versus helicopter battles are things players can look forward to in this new content.

Truth Quest introduces a couple new mission types. The first is the Failure to Communicate missions. These require the shark to catch people or explosives in her mouth and use the tail whip to fling that the radio towers to bring them down. These missions are ridiculous and fun but sometimes getting the aim right is tricky when the shark is flopping around on land while taking fire from sailors on the beach and nearby attack boats. The next group of missions are Time Trials and these require the shark to race through a path of rings in a set amount of time. This type of mission is something either players will like or hate depending on how they've felt about this type of challenge in other games. But regardless of whether time trials are something one enjoys, the challenge of these missions feels unbalanced. 90% of these courses are easy enough where they won't provide any challenge for anyone who's held a game a controller, but there are a handful of rings that require precision high jumps overs a bridge to clear or flopping through on land, and these are time trials with zero room for error. But even the tricky jumps were easy to be cleared within a few tries.

The level cap has been raised from 30 to 40, and a new organ slot opens up when the shark hits level 35, allowing players to make their mega shark grow to even larger and more powerful proportions. In addition to this, there are now atomic evolutions that can be collected to either make a completely radioactive shark or it can be mix and matched with the bone and electric body parts. One of the perks about the atomic parts is the shark can shoot a ball of radioactive energy with her tail whip, which is useful in taking down pesky helicopters. The new powers and upgrades help balance out the challenge, since the more powerful uber apex predators and the high-tech military equipment doesn't go down easily against a giant shark even with all the unusual evolutionary enhancements.

Even with these new additions, Truth Quest does feel like more of the same. While the new missions offer variety, they end up falling into the pattern of the base game's missions where the player just has to repeat more of the same type of thing. The time trial missions are essentially all the same, save for a couple slight variations like maybe traversing across land or jumping over a bridge. The Failure to Communicate missions seem fun at first but after doing a couple they're all the same. Some missions require the shark to eat ten sailors, where aside from which part of the island and what pun they use to name the mission are the only differences, though I did like Sailor Trash. Even the uber apex predators got repetitive. They all looked cool and were fun to fight, but they all fell into the pattern of fighting a massive overpowered sea creature, retreat to eat smaller fish to replenish health and finish the job.

Closing Comments:

Maneater: Truth Quest is an enjoyable but unessential expansion for Maneater. Westhaven is an entertaining narrator but his over the top conspiracy theories just aren't as entertaining as his documentary narration in the base game. The new missions end up falling into the same type of repetition the other missions. The new atomic shark powers are actually one of the better parts of the expansion and having a green nuclear energy ball fly from a tail whip attack was a great addition. While taking on the new sea life monstrosities provided an enjoyable challenge, Truth Quest is a necessary reason to return to the water for only the most devoted Maneater fans.