Tripwire Interactive
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
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Game
House House
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
STEVEN SPIELBERG has a lot to answer for. The murderous shark of his classic film Jaws cemented the great white as a terrifying threat in the minds of millions of people, and marine biologists have been fighting back ever since. Shark attacks are actually about 10 times less deadly than fireworks, according to the International Shark Attack File (yes, such a thing exists), but I have never seen a film about a killer firework.
Even though I think sharks have been given an unfair reputation in the media, I was looking forward to getting my hands on Maneater, a recently released game that places you in the fins of these awesome predators, then sends you on a murderous rampage. The shark in Jaws kills five people over the course of the film, whereas I had eaten double that in the first 15 minutes of Maneater.
The game鈥檚 paper-thin story sees you playing as a shark pup, whose mother was killed by a hunter named Scaly Pete. Pulled from her uterus, you eat his arm before being thrown back into the sea, where you鈥� plot your revenge? It isn鈥檛 quite clear. From there, the game tasks you with swimming around a variety of locales, eating smaller fish (and humans) to grow bigger, while avoiding larger animals like alligators until you are tough enough to take them on.
The open-world structure is loosely based on the Grand Theft Auto series, in which you drive around a city committing crimes, but the trouble is that there just isn鈥檛 much for a shark to do. You can swim, eat and ludicrously jump onto land and flap about until your oxygen runs out, but this isn鈥檛 much to build a game on. After being told to eat yet another group of fish, and wrestling with controls that made me feel more like a beached whale than a great white, I decided my time was better spent elsewhere.
鈥�Maneater鈥榮 controls made me feel more like a beached whale than a great white鈥�
Still in the mood for animal shenanigans, I turned to Untitled Goose Game, which was released last year and instantly filled the internet with delightful memes. You play as a goose causing chaos in a quaint English village, and I was charmed straight away by its unsteady waddle and angry honk.
As with Maneater, control options are limited 鈥� you can walk, honk, flap your wings and grab objects in your beak 鈥� but developer House House cleverly makes the most of this minimalism. You are given a bare-bones list of goals, such as soaking a gardener with water or stealing a man鈥檚 slippers, and left on your own to figure out how to actually achieve them.
Succeeding requires a stealthy approach, distracting the villagers with a well-timed honk while you scarper off in another direction. It is impossible to fail, because if you are caught, the villagers merely chase you away and start rearranging anything you have tried to pilfer, setting you up to try again. Stealth games are a well-worn genre, but ditching spies and silenced pistols in favour of a mischievous goose is a welcome refresh.
The final level, which sees you run through the entire village while avoiding being caught, gave me a much-needed laugh at the absurdity of it all. Let鈥檚 have more games starring silly animals and fewer shark massacres, please.
