Every now and then a game comes along that you play for only a few minutes, and you sit there, mouth open, eyes wide, and you’ve already made your judgment. Usually it’s ‘This game SUCKS!’ (see Naughty Bear review). Super Meat Boy, however, is an outstanding exception to this rule. Within 30 seconds, we decided that this game is simply fantastic. No, really, it’s brilliant!
We played Super Meat Boy on Xbox Live Arcade today and let me tell you, it’s bloody brilliant. No, really, it’s so much fun! 2D high-speed platforming madness that keeps you coming back again, and again, and again, despite killing you every 5 seconds. The great thing is, no matter how many times you die, you just don’t get bored. It’s all so quick, so entertaining – and more importantly, SO rewarding – that you should love this game, no matter what kind of game you’re into. Sure, it could be classed as just another platformer if you have a super stringent set of rules about what makes a game original, but there’s definitely something that gives this game a whole lot of charm. I mean, the character you play as is a slab of meat for god’s sakes… Meat! No logic required!
Some challenges are easy. The rest really are not.
One of the really awesome things about this game that even softens the blow of the amount of times you will die throughout each and every level, is that you get to watch a replay on successfully reaching the end – but it’s not just you’re success you witness again, because you will also see every single other attempt you made at the level, all at the same time. Basically, if you die 50 times trying to finish a level, the replay camera will follow your winning Meat Boy to the end of the game, but you’ll also see all 49 of the other Meat Boys running around and exploding, being minced up by blades, falling off cliffs, and generally dying in lots of blood-explodery ways.
If the thousands of attempts it will take you to get through the 300 levels that are in the game isn’t enough of a challenge for you, then you could also try to collect the bandages that are native to each level too, usually to be found in an incredibly hard to reach spot, which will more than likely add another dozen or so attempts at each level. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always impossible, but you WILL get angry, you WILL get frustrated, but at the same time, you will never want to put that controller down, because Super Meat Boy just does everything so right, that you’ll simply love to hate it. There’s also warp gates that take you to a different dimension with tons more levels, the option to play every level in some weird kind of hellish version of the same area, and a whole bunch of unlockable characters who have their own special abilities. This game is seriously worth a go, so you need to at least download the trial version. Full game costs 800 Microsoft points, but price is likely to go up to 1,200 soon, so you should definitely grab it now. If you want to wait for the Wii, PC or Mac version though, they are due out soon enough.
We also recommend playing this with friends and taking turns, because as we’ve experienced so far, hilarity will most definitely ensue.