Maneater: Truth Quest — Is it worth it?

Maneater was a little light on content when it launched. What’s more, the content it did have was a bit too repetitive and honestly, mostly filler. Nearly 16 months after release, the game is getting some DLC that expands the title with a new area, new enemies, and new evolutions and mutagens. It adds a few more hours of content and a significant amount of quippy narration from Chris Parnell, so I was hoping to see some content that fans of shark mayhem could really sink their teeth into. This is certainly more Maneater, but the question stands: is the Truth Quest DLC worth it?

Much like the main game, Truth Quest doesn’t have much of a story. The narrator returns, this time overly fixated on a conspiracy theory that states that insectoids are threatening to take over the world. Everything he sees is something he considers to be proof of this. The narration is still amusing, but it has hardly any bearing on anything. The actual plot concerns your shark heading for a new area called Plover Island, where irradiated sea creatures are showing up. It’s up to you to locate the apex irradiated creature that leads the pack and put it down for good.

Creating a new area with new enemies and the like could have been used as an impetus to make Truth Quest at least a bit more compelling than the main game is. Instead, this is just more Maneater, for better or worse. There are new points of interest, license plates, and caches to find. You’ll also find a few new apex sea creatures, along with five new infamy levels. But the structure feels just as empty as it was before. You enter the area, go to a marker, eat ten sailors, break a thing, fight a creature, yada yada yada. Again, there aren’t any actual missions, nor is there any content that feels handcrafted or unique. It’s all just the same stuff as before.

The shark is back to do the same stuff again

Truth Quest initially seems like it may be better paced than it ends up being, but at one point in the “campaign,” you’re simply tasked with getting your infamy up to five and killing all of the big hunters. The good news is that there’s a new evolution that makes this take like 30-45 minutes. Each of the shark’s body parts gets a new atomic variation, which is irradiated. Stacked, these give a damage boost. Most of these parts aren’t notably different from the others.

What is different is the body evolution, which gives the shark a new active that lets it literally charge up and fire radiation projectiles. Once you get this, Maneater is completely stripped of anything you could feasibly call challenge. You swim up to the surface, get the hunters onto you, blow everything to hell, dive deep and eat ’til your active is ready again, and then blast more stuff. Even the hunters and Truth Quest’s final boss crumble before the might of this busted ability. Honestly, I appreciated it, as the wanton destruction and complete lack of regard for balance or challenge was amusing to me.

On top of that, you do get a new mutagen slot and some new mutagens, such as one that lets you regenerate health. However, things get even more samey after the infamy rank stuff, as you’re taken on a pointless guided tour of the main game’s area where you do little more than follow markers before fighting another apex. It feels totally superfluous. If you liked Maneater and simply want a few more hours of it, then that’s the only reason the Truth Quest DLC would be worth it. Otherwise, this is just more bland, filler material that attempts to coast along on the strength of its premise and general gameplay mechanics.