Maneater is a game in which you play as a shark seeking revenge against the fisherman who killed your mother, and that’s the least insane sentence I will be writing about it. It’s a cartoonishly violent adventure loaded with massive set pieces, speedboat ‘splosions, miniboss battles with exotic marine life, and tongue-in-cheek narration by Chris Parnell. It’s like if Michael Bay made Jaws and was forced to give the shark half of his cocaine. And in a summer devoid of blockbusters, Maneater happily lurches in to take the spot of “triumphantly ridiculous thing I can plug into for a few hours to forget that the world outside is literally on fire”.

Listen, I’m all for video games and movies that “mean something.” The Last of Us Part II will likely be dominating the video game conversation for the rest of the summer, and that’s fine. It’s a big, important piece of art with a lot to say about humanity, forgiveness, and the cycle of violence, among many other statements. Believe it or not, Maneater also touches on some similar themes. However, the loudest statement Maneater makes is, “How many backflips can this shark do with a Cajun marine hobbyist clenched in its jaws before landing on the stern of a superyacht and triggering the kind of explosion generally reserved for nuclear reactions?” That’s the kind of art that resonates deep within my soul.  If The Last of Us Part II is Saving Private Ryan, Maneater is Jason Statham’s Crank. This analogy appeared in my mind after I tossed a human into the air and swatted him into the horizon with my tail like a little league coach trying to get the chubby kids in the outfield some exercise. Maneater is glorious popcorn entertainment, the kind of game I wish had existed back when I was pretending to be sick so I didn’t have to go play outside.

You can rampage your way through the entirety of Maneater’s story in about 8 hours (give or take a few if you’re trying to hunt down every secret license plate and Easter Egg, including the transdimensional gate from Pacific Rim), and that breezy runtime is actually one of the game’s biggest strengths. I am of the firm belief that no movie should be longer than 2 hours, particularly not summer blockbusters, because when you ignore those basic rules of decency you end up with 3-hour Transformers movies featuring King Arthur and Merlin. Nowadays people seem to get upset if a video game takes anything less than a presidential administration to complete, and while I understand that many gamers can only afford one or two new games a year, how many 30+ hour single player experiences have actually justified that length? Sometimes I just want to be a demon submarine single-handedly destroying an entire ecosystem with my unholy appetite, and I don’t need that experience to slowly unfold over the course of several weeks.

And to be quite honest, the joyfully frenetic chaos of Maneater couldn’t sustain itself beyond a few casual evenings of playtime. But that’s fine! Much like a summer blockbuster, I don’t need to be trapped in a seat fighting the need to urinate while massacring my way through my 400th tourist just to get to the end credits. It’s a tall task to get me to watch dinosaurs or Batman for longer than two hours, and no film of the past few decades has made a compelling argument otherwise. (Yes, I’m including The Dark Knight in this, which is a movie that was 25 minutes longer than it had any right to be.) Some experiences are meant to be ephemeral diversions, and in that category, Maneater is the greatest game ever made.

Maneater has you pilot your horrorfish through several different biomes, including a bayou, a wealthy resort town, and the open ocean. Basically, you get to demolish your way through multiple exotic locales, sort of like a Fast & Furious movie only in this one Vin Diesel is a shark with electric teeth. Fin Diesel, if you will. I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to bring it up, but yes, you get to level up your shark powers, which results in some ghoulishly radical mutations like the aforementioned electrified mouth knives and a face made entirely of bones. Seriously, you can eventually earn enough biological augments to customize your own body horror movie, including one ability that allows you to breath on land. That’s right – you’ll spend a surprising amount of time heaving your considerable shark bulk across golf courses, city streets, gated communities, and endless cookouts to remind the world you are the Inescapable Death that made humans invent religion. At one point, you get to storm what is clearly Palm Beach and hide in rich people’s swimming pools. I have sat in a swimming pool for 20 minutes, biding my time and giggling like a 10-year-old magician.

There’s a stable of shark hunters that come after you if you commit too many shark crimes, each one boasting a pro-wrestling gimmick from the early 90s (I’m pretty sure I literally fought the Bushwhackers at one point). You get a special power up for each hunter you kill, but the real reward is the knowledge that they are no longer alive. The best thing about these guys is that each one gets a full-blown Wrestlemania intro, but are no more powerful than a standard human being; on more than one occasion, I exploded out of the water like Poseidon’s trident and snatched the hunter directly off their boat mere seconds after their intro had finished playing. Imagine if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got mowed down by Yakuza enforcers right after the point in their theme song in which we learn that Michelangelo is a party dude, and that’s roughly how three quarters of these hunter battles play out. They’re extremely reminiscent of the colorful henchman the hero has to contend with before tackling the main bad guy in an action movie, like Mad Dog in The Raid, or F. Murray Abraham in Last Action Hero.

Speaking of the main bad guy, the antagonist of Maneater is a Cajun fisherman named Scaly Pete, who makes his entrance into the game by getting his arm ripped off on national television. He swears vengeance against the shark that took his arm, which happens to be you, and also happens to coincide with your own quest for vengeance against Pete for catching and killing your mother. Despite appearing to be an obvious set-up to an even more obvious punchline, Scaly Pete actually winds up being a real character with some depth, and Maneater unexpectedly becomes a tragedy about the cost of revenge. It’s an extremely shallow meditation on the subject, but we’re not talking about The Last of Us Part II here. We’re talking about Death Wish, with a shark. Death Fish, if you will.

As if inflicting balls-out mayhem on the human world wasn’t enough of an appeal, Maneater also lets you harass your fellow sea creatures like the captain of the shark high school football team. The game does a good job of planting the seeds of violent revenge in you; you begin as a near-defenseless baby, so by the time you’re powerful enough to turn the tables on your former predators, you’d choke them to death with photographs of their children if the programmers had thought to map that action to a button. As it is, you have to settle for maiming them to death, which delivers the same impish catharsis as Indiana Jones killing a giant Nazi with an airplane propeller or crushing a child slaver in a rock grinder. When you fight, you bite your enemies’ limbs off one by one, until they’re reduced to a tube of meat desperately trying to bite you back like a rabid hot dog. It sounds cruel, but trust me when I say that it is hilarious in the extreme. You start off humiliating alligators and smaller sharks in this fashion, but you eventually graduate to bullying a killer whale to death in front of an entire crowd of screaming tourists at Sea World. Towards the end of the game you have to fight a fucking sperm whale. Excuse me, I don’t know what came over me, allow me to rephrase – you get to fight a fucking sperm whale. That one whale gradually becomes several, until you finally reach the point of being an extinction-level event entirely unto yourself. If that's not the kind of thing you'd spend $15 dollars to see on a gigantic movie screen, you are a sad person and are beyond my help.

Maneater is truly a Hollywood blockbuster in that it comes blazing in at approximately 3,000 miles per hour immediately after you press the START button and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s gonzo shithouse madness, and it’s the kind of experience that demands to be accompanied by a bladder-destroying bucket of soda and an overpriced tray of nachos. And best of all, you can enjoy it in the comfort of your own home without getting sneezed on.

Maneater is now available on PS4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows.