Super Meat Boy (XBLA) – Review – Xbox 360

When I look at Game Feast, Microsoft’s fall XBLA promotion, I think of it like going to a restaurant for dinner. Hydrophobia is the drink you receive at first to make yourself comfortable before you decide what you want to eat, however, the drink may not taste like you expected. Next, you have Comic Jumper which can be considered the appetizer which allows only a taste of what is to come and the bulk of the conversation time where jokes may be told. Then you have the main course – Super Meat Boy, the giant meaty burger packed with excitement, and challenge as you try to eat the giant burger in your hands.

Story: Sticking to a simple retro formula, Super Meat Boy is about a boy in love with a girl named Bandage Girl. An evil doctor named Dr. Fetus hates Meat Boy so he beats Meat Boy up and kidnaps Bandage Girl. Meat Boy is furious and tries to get Bandage Girl back, but first he must navigate his way through treacherous, death defying, and near impossible challenges.

Gameplay: Just like the original flash game, Super Meat Boy has you controlling a bloody block of meat through very challenging levels as he tries to rescue his girlfriend. Much like the flash game and another similar platformer called N+, Meat Boy can run, jump and slide, and jump off of walls. To provide challenging and addicting gameplay, players will have to jump over chain saws, jump between parallel chain saws, travel through tight corridors with sharp metal filled ceilings, moveable chain saws, blobs of enemies that get in the way, avoid deadly pools of liquid and more. Navigating and completing a level relies heavily on momentum and precise timing as you avoid get killed by the many obstacles in the way. Although some levels are impossibly challenging to complete, to the point of causing your hands to sweat, I never really felt so frustrated that I wanted to quit. You restart the level and eventually you will figure out the speed and pattern required for completing the level. Once you do complete the level, it’s a satisfying feeling. If you complete a level quickly and with few mistakes, you are given a grade A+. Receiving this allows you to flip the levels on the level select screen and play a dark version of them with not only a dark art style but much more challenging levels. Additionally, throughout the levels, you may even come across a warp zone which transports you back to a retro version of the game with retro graphics and music, but with the same familiar gameplay. Once found, these can be accessed at any time via the level select screen. Similar to these warp zones, glitch levels can be found which have a scrambled appearance to them. If you are seeing too much Meat Boy and think hmm, I wonder what this game would be like with different characters, then you are in luck. There are many different unlockable characters each with their own unique controls or advantages.

Presentation/Graphics/Audio: Many levels, gameplay elements and the art design of some levels remind me of parts from other indie games. To name a few, the dark levels remind me of LIMBO, the first boss reminds me of a boss fight in Splosion Man, the overall gameplay mechanic from N+, and the humour, although unique, it occasionally reminded me Castle Crashers. For those that did something amazing or think they have the fastest speed run, there is a nice little feature that will save the replay. With the ability to save a video replay of the level once you complete it, you can easily prove it to your friends or the rest of the world what you just did in any given level. The cut-scenes are mainly where the humour is at, and although most of it is subtle, seeing the animals run away from you and into chainsaws during the levels is hilarious and helps reduce the stress and frustration when trying to complete a level.

Any surface Meat Boy touches, a line of blood is left behind. Hit a chainsaw and Meat Boy explodes and stains it with blood. The neat thing about this is, if you die and restart the level, the blood remains. Occasionally this trail can even help you decide where you last jumped helping you overcome the challenging obstacle.

The music is one of the best and most catchy music I’ve heard in a game. Each song is a sort of modern version of a chip tune track and when you play the warp levels, it changes to provide that retro feeling.

Overall: Although Super Meat Boy was originally a flash game, this XBLA version is far from a port. Everything is brand new. I love the direction indie game developers are going with these games. They provide more humour and value for your money than anyone else. They know what it’s like to be a gamer and what gamers want. They even know ways around things, so in Super Meat Boy for instance, instead of charging a price for DLC they feel should be free, they are using a loophole that will allow them to provide free DLC for the game post release. I’ve never seen so much fun, comedy, challenge and nostalgia packed into one game, with the nostalgia feeling due to the music and retro warp zones that make it feel 8-bit. Super Meat Boy, in my opinion, is the best platformer since Splosion Man to be released on the XBLA and I know I will not stop playing the game for a long time.

Pros:
-300+ levels of intense and challenging levels; satisfying when completed
-Super easy and responsive controls
-Simply amazing art and music
-Great humour

Cons:

-With the wall jumps, occasionally Meat Boy would slide but not jump resulting in a frustrating fail

Overall score: 9.5/10

An XBLA copy of this game was provided from the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Popularity: 1% [?]