Ms. Splosion Man – Review – XBLA

What a life! Spending all day breaking stuff, reaching new heights, eating cake, and buying shoes, what more could a burning person ask for? Maybe a bigger world?  An easier life? World peace? From the creators of one of the more popular “Summer of Arcade” games of 2009, Twisted Pixel, comes a sequel in this years, Ms. Splosion Man.

Story: After (spoiler from first game) Splosion Man was captured at the end of the first game, a scientific mishap created a second Sploding character, you. It is your job to rescue your boyfriend and make the scientists pay for it!

Gameplay: You’re pink, your’re on fire, you’re Ms. Splosion Man. Twisted Pixel crafted a world for you but they’ve given you only one thing to do,  ”SPLODE”! No matter what button you press, you have one action, and that is to explode. Up to three times in fact, before you have to recharge by touching solid ground, a rail, or special pads throughout the levels. There are three worlds, with 16 levels to each world, and a couple of bonus ones, for a total of 50 levels. To the average gamer that hasn’t played this type of platformer before, it will seem frustrating and might make them quit, but with a  little practice or some help, the game is pretty fun all around. When you go into the world map, you have the ability to try to beat your friends’ scores.  You have some interesting aids to help you get through levels; such as a fat woman that swallows you whole, then if you press the action button, she spits you out to get you to a higher level. There are different pads that will allow you to continuously use the action button without touching the ground, but you need to mash any button to keep yourself on the pad. There are moving and manual cannons that shoot you towards your destination. There are also secret exits to the levels, though you will still need to complete the original path to continue onto the next level, if you finished all the other levels before it.

Graphics/Sound: The graphics are quite comical. The levels are huge, and to accomodate that, they adjusted the camera view for it, the angle is in 2-d. To get a better view of the level, they have a zoomed out look to it at times, which makes it hard to see your character sometimes when you are zooming through the mayhem. The main character will skip through the level, run like Fred Flintstone, prance like a ballerina, and explode in pink smoke! She’ll even randomly burst into song singing the more famous portions of songs such as “Lady Marmalade” by LaBelle and “Just A Girl” By No Doubt.

Multiplayer: There is only one type of multiplayer, and it is co-op with up to four people. They introduced the concept of 2 girls, 1 controller, which allows you to control one characters with each of the joysticks. The more friends you have playing with you, the more explosions!  There are also 50 levels of co-op which serve as a separate story than the single player campaign. Good news for you folks that like to play split-screen as well, the game is two-players per console if you so desire, and it even allows you to take both of you online with two other players.

Overall: Despite the game having a hard difficulty and somewhat irritating camera angles, the game is pretty fun. If you liked The Maw, Splosion Man, or Comic Jumper I would recommend this game!

Pros:

• Funny!
• Fun for all ages

Cons:

• Difficulty
• Camera zoom?

Score: 8/10

A copy of this game was provided by the developer for review purposes.

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