Dont pay any attention to the metacritic score on this one! Bit of red herring, give it a proper look before deciding.

Great title with refreshing gameplay and decent controls, looks wonderful and has another axis/plane to be aware of that adds freedom of movement over other general fps games. The big catch update added loads of variety and content and with monthly leaderboards to keep things interesting for both divers and shark players.
When i first installed it and played the first few games as both diver and shark i was disapointed and initially felt i had wasted my money and bought a howler, as matches felt like they were a simple exchange of deaths 1 for 1 until the ticker points for spawns went down.

The actual fact is that it has quite a steep learning curve on the play, controlling the character and knowing what to do in confusing environments. There is little prompts or help from the game on most things when you start, and no doubt you will have a spell where trial and error and learing from other players will get you where you need to be, so dont be disheartened when you get torn to bits by a couple of decent shark players initially because once you get past the early stage of playing the game it is a brilliant, tense and fun multiplayer tear with matches lasting about 20 mins.
Playing as a diver first is probably best to find your feet and dont make a public lobby and wait for it to fill...just find a game and it will put you together easily. Shark choice for another type of game altogether, but requires practice to use well.
Community is friendly and helpful with an active forum and so far it seems to be well supported by the developers with regular updates and patches so im sure things that need sorting will get adjusted fairly rapidly
I think a lot of complaints about imbalace to this and that are largely due to the difficulty curve on the game when you first play but once you invest a bit of time and are familiar with the game mechanics its well worth a look and your playtime. I am sure we will see more underwater games in the coming year.

Refreshingly different fps, nice tense challenge and a polished fun game at an excellent price.
Plenty of new updates with new content keeps making this game better and better!.