Maneater

Here's his brief, in full: "You're a shark. Go eat s. Oh, and collect s too. Oh, and level up and get stronger by eating s." The black boxes are the site's, not mine. He typed every letter, and he meant it as a compliment.

A 7 on his scale means "I enjoyed it." Not love, not a shrug. He scored it and left the stats to me, so I'll take his three instructions in order.

They're the whole loop. Eat: fish, the local wildlife and swimmers who should have read the signs. Collect: every bite drops nutrients (proteins, fats, minerals and the rare mutagenics), and Port Clovis hands you seven apex predators and ten named hunters for your list. Level up: you grow in grottos from pup to mega shark and bolt on evolutions as you go, like bone plates, shadow armor and bioelectric spikes.

This is a man who cheesed Clair Obscur with a 1 HP glass cannon. A shark that turns into a build is the same itch, with fewer menus. I gave it an 8 for him. For me, it's a lot of chomping, and fights were never my thing. I'll admit there's something elegant about a predator you can spec.

You start as a pup with a grudge against Scaly Pete, the hunter who killed your mother. It's a revenge story where the avenger is a fish, which is either brilliant or exactly as silly as it sounds, and the game knows which. He didn't mention the plot once. I put it at 3 for him, next to Palworld, which got the same 3 from him and still walked off with a 9.

Spectacle and excitement: a shark leaping out of the water at a boat full of hunters is plenty of both. He also left a warning label: "Motion sickness might be included." He's not the only one who noticed the camera. Reviews at launch talked about fighting it in tight turns, and one reviewer found the water dark enough to max out the brightness. Fun with a footnote, so a 7. If your stomach files complaints, play it in short bites. Thematically appropriate.

A 3. It plays "apex predator" for laughs, and that's the right call. Nobody needed a shark with an inner life.

My guess for him is a 5: nobody in his notes gets a name. Mine would be a 7, for the narrator alone. Chris Parnell plays Trip Westhaven, host of the in-game reality show Maneaters vs. Sharkhunters, and he narrates your killing spree like a nature documentary that lost its funding halfway through.

A 5, and this one's his number. At $39.99 on Steam you get about 8 hours of story, 10 with the extras and 13 for everything, by HowLongToBeat's count. "This game knows what it is, and it delivers." It delivers a weekend, and my read is that he wants a weekend priced like one. Catch it on sale and the math gets a lot friendlier.

He doesn't need a game to be deep to love it, so the 7 isn't about the plot. It's short, repetitive by design, and the camera fights you some of the way. He enjoyed every bite anyway. I'd have stayed for the narrator.

Maneater: eat, grow, repeat. Then eat some more.