Meet Your Maker Review (PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, & PC)

Meet Your Maker is probably the strangest game I have played in the longest time. It’s a first-person shooter video game developed and published by Behaviour Interactive, the company that also developed Dead by Daylight. If you're subscribed to PlayStation Plus Essential, you won’t need to make any pre-purchases. Otherwise, Meet Your Maker is out now on PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC for $29.99. But what is the game all about? How strange is it? Is it a worthwhile venture to partake in? Would I advise buying it? So many concerns, all of which I’ll put to rest by the end of our Meet Your Maker review article.

As Always, First Things First. What’s Meet Your Maker?

If you’ve played Mario Maker, then Meet Your Maker is precisely the same as it. Well, not the lore, of course, but the gameplay where users play within other user-created levels is the same. Gameplay-wise, you may compare it to Doom, somewhat. Though, again, there are slight distinctions to make.

So, what’s Meet Your Maker? It’s a first-person shooter set in a post-apocalyptic world. As custodian of the Chimera, a rather atrocious entity created to save life on Earth, you’re tasked with finding the coveted resource that would supposedly complete the Chimera’s evolution. 

This coveted resource is your target for much of the game; it’s essentially pure genetic material called Genmat, found within the brutally constructed outposts of other players. It’s not an easy raid, given the ludicrous effort put in by the community to construct the most vicious fortresses. But once you do, you can then construct and fortify your own fortress, guarding the Genmat against others. 

It’s really a merry-go-round from here. Infiltrate other players’ outposts, outsmart their devious structures, traps, and monsters, gather as many Genmats as you can, and then guard the Genmats by constructing your own brutal outpost that no man will dare invade.

For progress' sake, you’ll find that once you successfully ‘conquer’ another player’s outpost, you receive rewards in the form of new materials and resources you can use to upgrade your gear and build your outpost. Consequently, the busy bees of Meet Your Maker have reached a point where they’ve earned so many upgrades that they've boosted their outpost to a seemingly non-competitive level. 

Beat Others in Their Own Game

Some outposts are literally the toughest, near-impossible levels to maneuver. With some exploring, you’ll no doubt find subpar outposts, then some that seem to have undergone an evolution of mazes a thousand times over. To help you sort the pile, you’ll find the outposts are grouped into three categories: normal, dangerous, and brutal.  

While most of the outposts look similar, and we’ll explore that in a bit, the categories do help you pick your battles wisely. After a while, though, it becomes a pretty wide division, and the need for even more specific groupings comes up. 

For instance, labeling outposts that have the highest death counts or those that took the longest time to navigate. Just something that says, Hey, these are the most brutal outposts available, and among them, here are the most hardcore even the veterans have had a hard time beating.

The “Why”

Next up is the “why.” Is there a “why” to all the building and raiding of the outposts in Meet Your Maker? The story takes you nowhere. I mean, aside from the aforementioned premise, there really isn’t much revealed in the later stages. Like, how many Genmats do you possibly need to evolve the Chimera into something that works? 

If we say, hey, Meet Your Maker wasn’t designed to focus on a plot. It’s a game created just for the fun of it. In that case, I suppose it’d be a game focusing on progression. At least to keep players motivated to keep returning for more. 

You do earn resources when you complete raids. These allow you to upgrade your gear and unlock materials to make a new outpost. So, stage one is successfully completing a raid; stage two: build the most brutal outpost possible.

Beauty from Ashes

The building is so much fun. You can tell by how quickly gamers started messing around with the tools as soon as the beta was released. That’s why there are already a ton of outposts to explore a day after the game's release.

It’s like Minecraft, where you can fly around, placing structures wherever you please, with music playing in the background. Back to the “why,” you’d expect variety in the building blocks and materials you can use. And there are quite some interesting ideas here. 

Players can change block shapes. So, you’ll find the usual rectangular ones or a giant pyramid. The monsters vary too, not just in terms of looks, but also in terms of movement. It’s thanks to a recording feature you use while building to find the most vicious attack patterns you can devise.

When you have a buddy to brainstorm designs with, it’s easy to come up with the deadliest traps together. You can design traps that release arrows on contact, balls of fire, or even ones that grab you by their claws. 

To What End?

Now, “To what end?” isn’t the most immediate question players would ask. After all, Meet Your Maker has a pretty seamless editor, that’s easy to use and has a good enough variety to create distinct outposts. With more and more raids completed, you earn upgrades that further elevate the design process. What’s not to love?

I’m afraid, though, that Meet Your Maker has a ticking time bomb for its level of replayability. The materials you can use aren’t as varied, there are blocks for players to redesign. As a result, some outposts tend to look and feel similar. The monsters are only a handful, too. 

Crossing over to gameplay, yes, it’s so fluid, fast-paced, you name it. It packs tons of fun, shooting down monsters and traps in time. Because if you miss, all it takes is one strike to send you back to the start of the raid. But there are only a handful of weapons and gear. 

There are five weapons in total, which you first work toward finding a combo that works for you, and then it’s a relatively smooth sail from there. When you add the lack of an interesting color palette, it starts to become pretty redundant. 

I mean, is there anything more to Meet Your Maker than raiding an outpost, earning extra materials to fortify your own, and jumping into another player’s largely similar outpost, over and over again? To what end?

Credit Where it’s Due

Don’t get me wrong. There’s so much to love about Meet Your Maker. The idea that all it takes is one strike to die and do it all over again sure does make your nerves tingle. Players have also decided they’ll won't make it any easier for you to complete raids, with outposts growing more challenging by the day.

The outposts are like an endless vertical structure, with claustrophobic structures surrounding your horizontal space. Blocks come in all shapes and forms, whether a flat surface, a pyramid, or even some shaped like strange objects. These weird shapes allow you to place traps in the most unexpected areas, and trigger them in different ways the player won’t expect. 

Then there are the traversal mechanics that are pretty impressive, from the fast-paced melee ones to the grappling hook ability that allows you to hover above structures for a while and plan your next move, to the double jump that’s quite impressive. 

Weapons pack a neat punch, with both melee and ranged ones available. You’ll find that they have only two to six bullets, so using them conservatively is non-negotiable. Generally, Meet Your Maker is a fun way to get your creative juices flowing and challenge one another to painful yet highly addictive playthroughs.

My only concern is, “For how long?” It feels like there’s no real reward for continuously building and raiding as many outposts as you can. Instead, you earn extra materials to upgrade or build your own outpost, then jump into another player’s outpost, which, by the way, has nothing special about it besides brutality. Neither is there anything special in the monsters or the mission itself.

Verdict

It’s definitely too early to tell whether a strong community will spring up to speak to the replayability of Meet Your Maker. Granted, there’s already a roadmap that may fix the variety and replayability issues we foresee in the weeks to come. For now, I don’t particularly see anything that would stop you from having the time of your life playing Meet Your Maker. Only time will tell whether that’ll remain the case for years to come.