King of Meat – PS5 Review

King of Meat is a co-op focused mix of platforming, puzzling and hack and slash action from Guildford-based games developers Glowmade.  But have Surrey’s squad of software specialists been able to combine those genres into a cohesive game?  Let’s find out.

The first thing that you’ll see when firing up this game is a fun animated cutscene that sets up the premise.  The titular ‘King of Meat’ competition is actually a TV game show, a sort of mix of The Running Man and American Gladiators, where competitors join up in teams of up to four to take on various stages.  It’s actually a really good cutscene and even though it goes on a little bit too long, the animation is credible and the slightly Rick and Morty-esque humour lands very well.

Once you get into the main game, you’ll have a tutorial mission to play through.  This introduces the 3D platforming elements with the usual run, jump, crouch mechanics you’d expect if you’ve played anything like Super Mario 64 or Ape Escape and, on top of that, there’s a mix of melee and ranged combat to get accustomed to but, again, nothing you’ve not seen before.

A stage in this game will always be a mix of platforming and combat with puzzles thrown in.  Usually these involve flicking switches, finding keys and a little bit of thinking out of the box but the game stops short of making it too much of an IQ test.  As such, all the elements work well in concert but perhaps never really excel in and of themselves.  The platforming is fine, although 3D platforming is never as good as 2D anyway and this isn’t going to trouble the likes of Astro Bot at the top of the genre and the combat is okay but not particularly dynamic, visceral or taxing.  It’s just a case of fending off as many enemies as the game throws at you while mixing up your weapon types and trying to block, parry and stun larger foes.

The levels themselves are a combination of official levels from the developer, of which there are around one hundred, while an in-built level creator allows users to build and share stages too.  As with games like Meet Your Maker, these are voted on by the community, meaning the best should rise to the top of the search screen.

Outside of playing the levels, there’s a whole hub world to deal with.  Initially it all felt like a lot of extraneous faff but it soon starts to make sense.  NPCs will allow you to cash in any completed challenges (essentially in-game achievements), upgrade your weapons and earn special abilities.  You also earn plenty of cosmetic items too, so it’s quite easy to change up your look and give your avatar a reasonably unique look.   And, essentially, this hub world is where you spend your rewards from playing the game, which is fine but ultimately the game feels hamstrung by a few minor issues that don’t spoil the party but do make it eventually feel a tad underwhelming.

The look of the game is cute and cheerful and combined with the obstacle course style levels gives the game a bit of a Fall Guys feel and if it wasn’t for the fact that you earn better guns later on, and the fact that this is a PvE game rather than PvP, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking this could be a free-to-play game.  It’s certainly got that energy to it.  And while the animated sequences in the game are genuinely a lot of fun, after a few hours with the game we were asking ‘but is this actually enjoyable?’

King of Meat works and does its best to charm new players.  We didn’t necessarily need all the ‘Mr. Beast’ tie-in nonsense and some of the levels do spike the difficulty at times but after a while the game started to feel repetitive and the draw of acquiring new stuff, be it cosmetic or game-related, never really got its hooks in.  If you’re going to put rewards/loot in a game, it needs to spike your dopamine a bit.  And so, unfortunately, King of Meat isn’t drawing us back in, which is a problem when you’ve got Void Crew doling out packages of digital crack like Snoop Dogg in the early ’80s.

However, what King of Meat does have is potential.  But at £25, you’re probably not going to be bothering to entice anyone in from your friend list and we wouldn’t be surprised if this eventually went F2P.  There are always randoms and so far this seems to have an alright userbase so far but unless King of Meat introduces some meaningfully new content, your opportunities for multiplayer gaming here could dry up.