Meet Your Maker Review (PS5)

The concept of user-generated content has been around for quite a while at this point. If a game can sustain itself based on the input of its own community, well, that's a win-win, right? Create something so engaging that the audience will make more to keep the good vibe going. Obviously, this doesn't always work out, but when it does, it's awesome, and players always surpass creative expectations. Meet Your Maker is the latest attempt at this — a sci-fi action game that has players building trap-laden Outposts for others to then try and raid for resources.

It's this core loop that holds everything together. After going through tutorials for both raiding levels and building them, you're free to pick through user- and developer-made stages. Your task in each one is to pass through dingy Outposts in the middle of a post-apocalyptic desert in order to find and steal GenMat — a precious material needed to help restore human civilisation. Essentially, you need to get in, find the GenMat, then get out again, and the custodian of each stage will have installed multiple booby traps and guards to prevent your success.

Once you do clear an Outpost, you're rewarded with the GenMat you took as well as a bunch of other resources. It's these materials you'll then use to begin building your own levels, not to mention upgrade your weaponry, traps, and other equipment. The two halves of Meet Your Maker feed into each other perfectly, meaning there's always something you can do that'll help one aspect or the other.

Raiding Outposts, then. By default, you have a bolt gun for ranged attacks, a sword for melee strikes, and a grappling hook to help you get around. All of these will come in handy as you enter a level, but initially there's no way of knowing what to expect; traps could be anywhere. Despite comparisons to DOOM, we've found the game to be quite slow paced. Rushing into an Outpost will likely get you killed, as traps may trigger from all angles, or you'll run into a well-hidden guard, and one hit from any source means death. It's far more effective to approach a stage carefully, keeping your eyes peeled for traps on the walls, floor, and ceiling as you make your way inside.

After you've played a handful of Outposts, you'll begin to recognise what traps look like, and how to deal with each enemy type. Even playing cautiously, there are times you'll be caught out by well-placed defences, but once you've been through a good number of levels, you start to learn what to look out for. The result is that Outposts start to feel very similar despite their differing layouts.

Most of the traps are embedded into surfaces, and most of those will trigger when you're close enough. Protruding spikes, bolts, flames, bombs, and more can trip you up. Once you know what they look like, though, you can destroy them and they'll pose no further threat. Enemy guards are harder as they're moving targets, but go down easily too. If you play carefully, you can make it to a level's GenMat unharmed, and then it's just a case of getting back out and leaving. Traps can be set to only appear after the GenMat's been picked up, but you can either take these out methodically or just book it back the way you came and you should be fine. Though all Outposts are technically unique, they end up feeling very one-note.

There are tougher levels that seriously ramp things up, and these are more engaging. However, while these more difficult Outposts can be more fun and more cleverly designed, they can step over the line into unfair death boxes. Levels in Meet Your Maker are tedious if they're too easy, frustrating if they're too hard, and from our experience so far, there aren't many that thread the needle. It doesn't help that they pretty much all look the same; all bland rock, corroding metal, and dreary lighting.

On the bright side, building your own levels is pretty easy. After securing an Outpost, you can fully customise it using large blocks, then fill it with traps and guards to meet the minimum defences required. As long as there's an unobstructed path to the GenMat, you can set the level active and have players attempt to invade it. The whole process is pretty intuitive, and a decent tutorial gets you through the basics effectively. Over time, even with the game closed, your Outposts will earn you XP as players make attempts on them, and you can go into edit mode to see all their points of death, where they've dropped yet more resources for you. It's quite satisfying to see which of your devilish tactics have caught people out.

There are a number of XP bars, things to level up, and stuff to upgrade, and it can all get a bit confusing. The gist is that beating levels will go towards levelling up the Advisors, characters in your base who can upgrade your gear or unlock new items, as well as grant you time-limited perks. Once an Advisor reaches a new level, you can then level up the Chimera, the monstrosity at the heart of the operation. You'll want to visit the Advisors regularly to see what you can upgrade or unlock, as it all goes towards helping you raid levels or build more devious ones of your own. Currently, there's a lack of variety in weapons and suits, but we imagine there's more to come down the line.

Having put in many hours exploring user-made levels, we're left feeling a little disappointed by Meet Your Maker. Again, the core idea is great, but each Outpost's tricks already feel too familiar. In short sessions, the game can be entertaining, and constructing your own levels and watching the death count rise is definitely gratifying. However, the game overall has a problem with monotony; the creation tools allow for quick and easy Outpost production, but the trade-off is that pretty much every level looks and feels the same. Because of that, it's difficult to recommend.