Coming from the creators of Dead by Daylight, Meet Your Maker is another inventive twist on online gaming, though where DBD pits players against one another in asymmetrical battle of wits, Meet Your Maker is an asynchronous game of tension-filled attack and devious defence. Releasing today and available to all PS Plus subscribers as one of April’s free monthly games, is Meet Your Maker worth playing?
At the heart of Meet Your Maker is a kind of first-person puzzle platformer in which you raid trap-filled bases that hide valuable genetic material within their depths, trying to get in and back out again. It’s a slow and cautious kind of game, punctuated by immediate bursts of high activity as a trap is triggered, a directional warning flaring on the edge of the screen to warn you to take avoiding action or try to parry – one single hit and you’re dead, sent back to the very start of the stage once more.
On the flip side, you’re now aware of the dangers that lie before you, letting you make iterative progress to your goal. You have just a basic gun and sword at your disposal, alongside a grappling hook and some paid items, but that’s all that you need. The default gun comes with just two electrified bullets that you need to reclaim, and it puts high pressure on each shot you take, as you need to make sure they land and account for a lot of bullet drop. The alternative (once unlocked) is a crossbow that comes with more ammunition, but which is unable to destroy traps, though this ties in with the ability to parry incoming projectiles with a swipe of your blade.
The tension ratchets up as you get deeper into a particularly challenging level, constantly scanning the surroundings for the telltale design of a trap, trying to spot the shimmer of fake blokes, listening for the cyborg guard. You can lean to peek around corners, which is particularly useful, as well as double jump and grapple to back out of particularly sticky situation. That’s especially useful when many traps are single-use.
There’s a Super Mario Maker vibe to the creations that you face, though there’s a subtle distinction in tone. Where the most challenging Mario Maker creations are meant to test you in often ludicrous ways and eventually be overcome through feats of skill, Meet Your Maker’s post-apocalyptic setting means the creations are intended to create more murderous mazes to ensnare and kill visitors time and time again. Ideally for the creators, people will never reach the heart of their trap-laden maze, but if they do, then they might not make it out again.
Playing prior to release, the game was already well-stocked with levels from reviewers and players from testing, ranging from the small and basic, to the large and devilishly tricky. Crafting a level requires a certain level of ingenuity to try and hide traps, to disguise their placement, put them in combination with guards, and misdirect attentions.
As is always the case, there’s a stark divide between the playing and the creating side of this game. I’ve no doubt that many people will quickly bounce off the level designer and the thought that needs to go into creating a deadly maze, but Behaviour Interactive has done a great job of making it fairly intuitive and easy to get started.
By default there’s a randomised assortment of fixed bedrock and regular editable blocks already in place, and a fixed point for the genetic material you’re trying to defend. There’s already a very basic path in place for a Harvester drone to follow to get up to that point, but chances are you’re going to want to completely and utterly demolish that path and create something entirely different.
Building is made out of very large blocks, like a supersized Minecraft, with just standard blocks, halved ramps and quartered ramps as alternate shapes, but you can select from a handful of different block designs to use for aesthetic purposes. Your only constraints are that the Harvester must be able to find its way through to the end, which requires ramps, and a limit to what you can spend on traps and guards.
Traps can be augmented, whether it’s making them trigger only after genetic material has been claimed, adding a second shot or reducing their time to fire, and guards can be similarly enhanced to make them tougher, smarter, or more responsive. Of course, that saps the available resources for that particular build.
If you’re feeling intimidated by the need to create, then my main piece of advice would be to pay attention to what you’re raiding. You can see all the ways that other people have combined traps – the grappling claw combined with a spike trap is a particular good combo – or put them in blind spots, and that’s something you can mimic for yourself. The building mode lets you fly around, but you can instantly switch to a walking view and see exactly how the level would look for yourself. Even if you think your level is complete and utter tosh, you’ll likely surprise yourself with how well it will perform, especially in this launch week.
The main downer is that it does feel like it takes a while to be able to unlock things. You’ll have to beat multiple levels before you can afford to buy a plot of your own, and then you only have a small set of traps available to you without unlocking more. This won’t really matter in a week or two, but it does constrain new players.
So is Meet Your Maker worth playing on PS Plus? Absolutely, and you’ll want to strike while the iron is hot to quickly learn the tricks of the game and get your early creations played as much as possible by people who’ve yet to grasp the basics.
MrYd
A headline with a question mark in? That’s never a good sign. (I had to google what that was called – Betteridge’s law)
The answer to the question is, as is to be expected, no, it’s not worth playing. A complete waste of a slot that could have been taken up by something decent for PS+. The concept is interesting for about 3 seconds until you realise how it’s going to work in practice (that’ll be lots of completely impossible things coming soon then?). And it doesn’t look great either. And that bullet drop is ridiculous. Remember to shoot the ceiling to hit something in front of you if it’s more than arms length away.
Worst PS+ game in a long time.
Stefan L
I like to defy Betteridge’s Law. I actually quite like the game, though. You definitely don’t have to play the impossible ones and the game does a good job of figuring out difficulty based on the number of traps and enemies used. A cautious approach and accepting a few deaths is all you really need.