Playing Meet your Maker for the first time takes me back in time twice over. First of all, back to Quake, because the look, which is dominated by the tarnished rusty red, looks a lot like id Software’s late nineties. The other thing to think back to is Ubisoft’s short-lived Mighty Quest for Epic Loot: a Diablo-esque hack and slash where instead of attacking randomly generated dungeons, you scour dungeons built by other players for gold and better gear.
Both halves of the game, building and chopping, meshed nicely, and despite some weaknesses, I was a wee bit sad when the free-to-play title was discontinued the year after release. Behavior Interactive (“Dead by Daylight”) wants to do better with Meet your Maker and remodels the action portion of the concept from a fast-paced hacking RPG into a shooter where you’re supposed to steal and extract genetic material. It’s actually quite solid, but I still don’t really enjoy the result.
That’s largely because while Meet Your Maker gives players more than enough incentive to build real a****hole dungeons, it doesn’t encourage building something that’s also fun to play. I’m not that far yet, but already almost every attack on an enemy base is pretty much the same. Because, you see, every hit in Meet your Maker is deadly and your own ammunition is limited to two bolts, which you have to collect again first. And so you basically work your way forward step by step on tiptoe. You keep stopping to look at the sloping ceiling behind you, or to look into the offset wall niche on the right to see if there isn’t a bolt trap hiding there. Again and again I fall to my death through “wrong” floors, step into a spike trap at a careless moment that I hadn’t suspected and with every death I remember a new detail.
It’s still exciting for the first three or four attempts, but at some point it’s less playing than mapping. You learn the forts by heart, tile by tile, memorizes the best time to sacrifice a bolt and how to retrieve it. If you then die from stupidity (or from the meanness of the base builder) and have to do everything all over again, including the loading screen, it somehow doesn’t feel good. Actually even bad. I admit, here and there I bit my teeth into one or the other level, almost put work into it, only to leave the level with a few measly experience points and upgrade material. It doesn’t seem all that worthwhile to me. The runs don’t tell stories (which well done loot would do). Or rather: They always tell the same story of careful scanning of dangerous passages. There is no flow of the game for me.
At the same time, I really enjoyed coming up with a few nasty corners for my dungeon in the catchy editor and unlocking new parts. I’m pretty sure the rectangular nature of the components somewhat limits what’s possible here. But I can’t deny a certain satisfaction when I log in and see that my base has someone killed. I even get to watch the replay and witness someone having less than no fun with my creation. This is clearly the stronger half of Meet your Maker.
I’m not sure, it would probably help if Meet your Maker had more finesse as a shooter. But especially in terms of movement, it is very limited. You don’t sprint, don’t have a dash to dodge. At least there’s a grappling hook that you can use to do some physics nerfs if you jump off of it mid-pull on an object. But since you really die with the first mistake, you never really dare to do such tricks.
In the end it is actually the case that despite all the functionality of the idea and its implementation, the fun gets a bit under the wheels. Yes, an entire half of the game is all about spoiling the fun of other players until they master a level inside out. You can get some motivation from that because it’s nice to see the base doing all the work for you. Then at some point it doesn’t matter that the opponent ultimately escaped alive. You anonymously squeezed out all the experience points and resources that were available and the next candidate will definitely come.
But as soon as I have to shoot and puzzle my way through one of the deliberately unfairly designed dungeons, I lose the breath for too much trial and error. I’ll dig a little further to see if I don’t find some fun somewhere else. If that happens, I’ll let you know. It’s included for free with PS Plus this month. Maybe you’ll dig a little?
Developer / Publisher: Behavior Interactive – Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X – release: available – Genre: Shooter / Puzzler / Base Building – Price (RRP): just under 30 euros, included in PS Plus Essential
