Game Info

Meet Your Maker

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　　Behaviour Interactive is one of the few developers that really gets how to run a live service. The Montreal-based studio has done a remarkable job of keeping Dead by Daylight alive and kicking with a steady drumbeat of compelling content, so their new live-service Meet Your Maker naturally comes with a lot of expectations attached.

　　Rather than another asymmetric horror game, Meet Your Maker is all about building and raiding, as players create their own dungeon-like Outposts and try to steal the goodies from the Outposts of others. Is this sci-fi experiment destined to become another long-term hit for Behaviour Interactive? Or has a move away from the horror genre dulled their usual deadly precision?

　　Meet Your Maker casts players as an unnamed “Custodian” for a Chimera – a strange fetus-like creature that subsists on precious Pure Genetic Material (or “GenMat”), which, for some reason, is extracted from the ground in the world the game takes place in. While Meet Your Maker contains some rather detailed logs detailing the lore of its world, don’t go into the game expecting any sort of real narrative. Your goal is to collect GenMat either by establishing extraction Outposts or stealing it from others. End of story.

　　With its big guns, mutant enemies, and blocky Outposts, Meet Your Maker certainly resembles first-person shooters of yesteryear, but looks can be deceiving. While the game’s basic controls and movement bring to mind an id Software game – players move around at a brisk pace and can double-jump and deploy a grappling hook to get around – you’ll quickly realize this isn’t exactly Quake. Your character dies from a single hit and your starting gun has an ammo capacity of two. No, not two clips of ammo, two shots, total. Your gun’s range is also pathetic, with your shots often plopping to the ground like a wad of wet toilet paper well short of whatever enemy you’re aiming at. You’ll increase your abilities as you play, but the scope of these improvements are limited. This game is never going to become Doom Eternal.

　　Thankfully, most of the Outposts I’ve encountered have focused more on troll-ish trap placement rather than intense gunplay. Shorter, tricky, replayable challenges seems to be what the game’s mechanics are building tools were mainly designed for. Really, most of the Outposts I took on felt like they had more in common with a Mario Maker speedrun than a classic Doom or Quake level. Granted, there are folks making Outposts that are larger or more combat-focused, but they felt like a poor match for the way the game actually plays. You can make a classic Quake-style level in Meet Your Maker, but most of them just aren’t going to be very fun to play.

　　Thankfully, when Outposts didn’t try to get too ambitious, I found dying and retrying (and retrying and retrying) in order to figure out their tricksy traps fairly satisfying. Okay, sure, I also did my fair share of cursing, but that’s part of the fun. You can also breathe a sigh of relief – this isn’t a roguelike. There isn’t really any punishment for dying at all, as you get to keep all the XP and resources you earn during each failed run, so you can keep retrying without that extra layer of frustration.

　　On the other side of the Meet Your Maker coin, you have the building, which is fairly versatile but comes with its own caveats and limitations. You don’t build your Outposts entirely from scratch but rather purchase various “Burial Sites” that already have half-finished structures that you can’t entirely remove. There’s something to be said for providing a foundation for people to build upon, but it seems like most people largely ignore these pre-existing blocks, simply building their Outposts on top of them.

　　Rather than providing an editor that offers a free and full overview of your creation, you actually have to move around the Outpost to place blocks (thankfully, you can at least fly while in building mode). You could argue this gives you more of a sense of how it feels to explore your Outpost as you’re building it, but placing blocks is often awkward and it’s easy to get lost in your own half-finished creation.

　　Additionally, in order to upload your Outpost for others to play, you must provide a clear path for your robot Harvester to get to the GenMat supply. Harvesters don’t set off traps, but they can’t jump or navigate complex terrain, which means there always has to be a relatively simple route to the GenMat. While you’re free to include side paths and shortcuts, you can’t make an Outpost that requires the player to figure out a complex route or do any platforming. I get the intent behind the Harvester, but I feel like you should also be able to verify your Outpost simply by completing it yourself, ala Mario Maker.

　　Successfully completing raids and passively offing other players with your Outposts will earn you XP and various resources. Things you can level up include your individual Custodian, the vendors back at your Sanctuary, all your gear, and the Chimera. You also have an overall Tribute level, can progress the Raid map, and earn seasonal Rank Points and Prestige levels for each individual Outpost you build. Phew! It’s enough to make your head spin. At least none of this grinding seems to be designed specifically to push additional spending. New items and cosmetics, most of which will be earnable via gameplay, but will also be available for purchase, have been promised for the future. That said, Meet Your Maker doesn’t have a battle pass, loot boxes, or a garish in-game cash shop like most games of this sort.

　　What wasn’t entirely clear as I waded through all these progression systems is what the overall point of it all was. I understand what Behaviour’s goal is – keep people playing and unlocking new Meet Your Maker content indefinitely – but most live services give you some overarching goal, or series of goals, beyond “keep on grinding.” Like, what’s going to happen if I keep stuffing this weird mutant fetus in a tube with mystery genetic material? I don’t think it’s an unfair question to ask!

　　I initially didn’t attach a score to this review, as I wanted to see how Outpost creation evolved once the full community was able to jump in, and unfortunately, the results weren’t as transformative as I was hoping. While many of the Outposts uploaded in the week since launch are larger and more visually cohesive than those I tackled pre-release, they don’t actually feel all that different. In something like Mario Maker, creators have found ways to offer truly novel challenges that force you to rethink how you play, but it seems like this game’s building tools just don’t have that kind of versatility. I felt this while building too – after making three Outposts, my inspiration started to wane and I simply used the Prestige system to continue collecting XP and resources from them. Technically, you can play Meet Your Maker forever, but I’m already starting to feel the game’s patterns wear on me. Again, content updates are coming, but it remains to be seen whether they provide enough new building blocks.

　　This review was based on a PS5 copy of Meet Your Maker from publisher Behaviour Interactive.

　　7

　　Wccftech Rating

　　Meet Your Maker

　　Meet Your Maker

　　Meet Your Maker may grab you for a while with its tricky die-and-retry raids and reasonably approachable building tools, but some frustrating quirks and a lack of depth means the game’s not a lock to become Behaviour Interactive’s next live-service success. Meet Your Maker is certainly worth trying for “free” on PS Plus (and other subscription services it's likely to show up on in the future) but don’t count on constructing a long-term relationship with the game.

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