I lost track of how many people I ate. My mission was to eat 10 golfers, but since no one plays golf in the ocean I had to jump out of the water, move to the golf course and start eating. Before I could finish my snack, three patrol boats with gun-toting shark hunters showed up, so they ate too. We still needed to stomach three more golfers to finish our gorging quest, though.

More hunters on patrol boats and jet skis came by, so we ate them too, along with a few divers. Then came the famous shark hunter, flanked by several escort boats. Candyman Curtis. He is so important that he is introduced in a cutscene. This is a boss fight, but he is still just a man. No superpowers, no amor suit, no massive hit points. I jump up out of the water, grab Curtis off the boat, swim over and swallow him in a few bites. Taking down a human in a boss fight is no big deal if you're a shark.

According to Matt Hooper in the 1975 film Jaws, sharks only do three things. Swim, eat, and make little sharks; in Tripwire's action RPG "Maneater," they just swim and eat (and sometimes belly up on the golf course). Unfortunately, that's not the case. Even I, who finished the main storyline in less than eight hours, got pretty bored with the repetition of swimming and eating.

You can't make little sharks in "Maneater," but you start the game as a baby bull shark cut from the belly of its dying mother. Pete scarifies you, bites off his hand, and throws you overboard.

To have a final showdown with Pete, you must become quite the foe, growing from baby shark (Dudu, Dudu, etc.) to teen, adult, and eventually mega-shark, acquiring new abilities and attacks along the way, using nutrients from an endless supply of creatures and humans

The small fish are then upgraded by the endless supply of creatures and humans.

While there is much appeal in growing from a small fish to a giant leviathan, there is not enough variation in what it does in the process. It is fun at first to eat 10 something, be it a human, a turtle, a fish, a seal, or another shark. Humans scream, animals squirm, blood fills the water and covers beaches and boats. If you wiggle the mouse back and forth to stir the shark's head while holding on to your prey, the shark quickly becomes a cloud of cirrus. But repeat this over and over (and over), and the gruesome novelty soon wears off and the mindlessness sets in.

There are quests to kill a single large predator, such as a gator, barracuda, or fellow shark, and more challenging battles in arenas like Sea World with apex predators like killer whales and ancient sperm whales with Moby Dick motifs. But the combat and enemy AI in "Maneater" is pretty sloppy, and I eventually abandoned careful evasion and well-timed attacks, knowing that it was far more effective to just let the attacks rain down on me. The orca boss did not pursue me as I went to eat some fish to regain my strength, so it was easy enough to turn him into a bloody mass. Moby Dick plunged to the bottom of the ocean floor and took him down. Then he just floated there and slowly chewed him to death.

Human shark hunters show up when you start terrorizing other humans. Also, shark hunter bosses only appear when you have killed a large number of common hunters and raised your threat level. Like Curtis, most bosses are just regular humans with big guns, which is kind of nice. When a human boss appears, you can eat him right off the bat, just like any other human. It's exhilarating. A few endgame bosses have armored boats, depth charges, and better weapons, but defeating dozens of standard hunters to make them appear is more tedious than defeating the actual human bosses themselves, and the attack spam is as effective against boats as it is against sea life.

The rest of "Maneater" is all collectible activities: hidden landmarks, crates of sunken drugs (useful for mutations), giant spinning license plates (because sharks ate license plates in "Jaws"). These same activities are repeated each time you visit a new area: eat the various 10/10 creatures as you are told, and swim around looking for collectibles to check off your list. the "Maneater" area itself is a diverse mix of habitats, from shallow, muddy bayous to trash-strewn urban rivers, from sailfish The "Maneater" area itself is wonderfully diverse, from shallow, muddy bayous to trashy urban rivers to vast, glittering oceans teeming with sailfish and giant sperm whales, but the activities there are not.

At the very least, the progress that comes from these repetitive tasks freshens things up a bit. When they acquire evolutionary mutations, they cover their bodies with a bony exoskeleton and are able to use a powerful battering ram attack. Another mutation allows it to shock enemies by growing blue tendrils, or to evade attacks by turning itself into pure electricity. Sure, it looked cool, but it wasn't as effective as wearing bone armor and poking things with your head. You can also tweak your build by upgrading passive abilities. For example, there is an ability that allows them to survive longer on land, which is very useful for eating a bunch of humans without having to jump into the water to breathe.

These upgrades also illustrate the lack of diverse activities in maneater. The Bone Armor set is unlocked by defeating apex predators, and Bioelectric abilities are gained by defeating human hunter bosses like Curtis, but there is also the Shadow Mutation set, which provides vampire-like health reach abilities, time slowing skills, poison attacks The Shadow Mutations set is available in five different regions. The shadow set can only be unlocked by finding all the hidden landmarks in five different regions. The tedious checklist process kept me swimming and searching long after I was ready to leave the area behind and move on.

There is still much to like about "Maneater". The environments are wonderfully detailed and fun to examine in the few quiet moments between doing similar quests on the checklist. The appearance of the sharks is also fantastic. With each incremental upgrade to their bodies, their bony exoskeletons become more horribly jagged, and their electric and shadow mutations are gradually covered in strange sci-fi cosmetics. With a fully upgraded mutation, you really do look like a shark from a horror movie. [The story of your shark life (and Scaly Pete's life) is told by Chris Parnell of "Saturday Night Live" and "Rick and Morty," with smooth narration, one-liners, and a variety of characters from "Waterworld" to "Fyre Festival" to "Arrested Development," to all manner of pop culture references, and even some real shark facts thrown in for fun. I laughed more than once while playing the maneater: Parnell has the supreme talent of sounding regal and informed even when he is spouting utter nonsense.

His growth from newborn baby shark to Meg, not only in ability but also in stature, is truly novel. The hammerhead and alligator sharks that once beat me mercilessly as a child soon became zero-risk food sources that posed no more threat to me than seals and turtles. It is a very satisfying sensation to hold in my mouth the creature that once dwarfed me. Such size gains are rare in RPGs.

It's just a shame that there isn't more variety of activities on the path from infant to mega-shark. As Hooper said, sharks just swim and eat, which is unfortunately not enough to fill a short action RPG like "Maneater."