For this review, please imagine me hunkered over, holding my back with one hand while propping myself up with a cane with the other. My trousers are held up with suspenders, my plaid shirt is tapered, and my face wears a constant scowl. Got all that in mind there? Ready? Ok, good. Ahem.

In MY day, games were hard as hell, and we liked ‘em that way! Didn’t need no too-tour-ree-alls, or yer fancy shmancy fast time situations or whatever ya have. Ya hit start at’n the title screen, ya played the game, and ya got yer keester whipped. And that was just fine! … … … AN’ ANOTHER THING! There ‘as no ten minute cuttin’ scenes or surround sound dij’tal Dolby an’ all that nonsense. Only had there 256 colors, at best, and we LOVED it! Why in my day, yadda yadda yadda… I think you get he point.

So many games these days are too complex, too stuffy, and frankly too easy. And I’m from the late NES era. Just imagine what the arcade era thinks! Ahh, but thankfully, before I really do turn into that old man and make my grandchild hate visiting me, there’s Super Meat Boy.

Super Meat Boy is the successor to the Newgrounds flash game, Meat Boy. In this 2D platformer, you play as Meat Boy who must rescue his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, from Dr. Fetus, who is a jerk. The challenge is presented in a gauntlet of stages where you must navigate Meat Boy to reach Bandage Girl at the end. Each stage is pretty short, some even being a single screen, and most can be cleared in under 30 seconds. Provided you get them on the first try, that is, since the game quickly applies difficulty with precarious instant-death obstacles you’ll need to carefully avoid.

However, this difficulty is truly the core of Super Meat Boy‘s appeal. While you’ll die quite often, you never get a sense of being slowed down. With every loss, you immediately restart back at the beginning. The music never restarts when you die or advance to the next stage. Every stage you beat moves you to the next, as opposed to making you return to the world map. Everything about the game psychologically conditions you to keep going; to have a mentality of, “Man, I know I can do this. Just give me one more shot,” instead of, “#@$% I HATE THIS GAME! I QUIT!” Sure, I won’t lie. There are a handful of stages that really ticked me off, and I probably had to play them 50+ times before I figured it all out. But 90% of the time, my anger was typically expressed with “Dawww,” or “Aw man.”

A lot of it is just getting a sense of how Meat Boy plays. He moves around very quickly, and can perform long, floaty jumps. He will also stick to walls briefly, and can jump off from them. This gives Meat Boy a lot of versatility in movement, though you have to keep his momentum in check since he can easily overshoot whatever you’re trying to reach. Once you get a feel for it, it comes together extremely well.

On the Barrel Roll podcast, I expressed this as what I call “meat sense,” where I became so attuned to Meat Boy’s physics that I caught myself paying attention to the obstacles on the screen instead of Meat Boy himself. In some cases, I was practically playing stages without watching Meat Boy at all. Though, I’ll admit that this does not work so well on the later stages. The controls aren’t perfect, and occasionally a jump feels a little delayed, or doesn’t happen at all. I can’t really tell if this is due to the game or the controller (I’m not fan of the 360 controller, especially where old school style games are concerned). But more often than not, you don’t have any problems.

Above, I mentioned that the stages in Super Meat Boy are very short, and that might lead you to believe there’s not much game here. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The game’s primary campaign contains over 100 stages, which are part of a total 300+ stages. Each main world contains 20 stages and a boss stage. However, you can also switch to the “dark world” version of each world, which lets you play a harder version of every stage you beat below a par time.

A handful of stages also have warp zones, most of which are hidden. Finding these unlocks additional “retro” stages, which have Atari, NES and even Game Boy style graphics. These retro warp zones come in sets of three stages, and unlike the main game have “lives.” Basically, you have three tries to beat the stage, and if you fail, you just get returned to the map. Nevertheless, once you find these warp zones, they become unlocked on the map, and can be played over as many times as you want.

And if that weren’t enough, you can unlock a number of characters other than Meat Boy to play as. Many of them are characters from other indie and small game makers, like Commander Video from the Bit.Trip series by Gaijin Games. While these characters play similarly to Meat Boy, they have their own unique abilities (like double jumping, floating, or sticking to walls), and different speed and momentum. These characters are unlocked by completing special warp zones, or by collecting bandages that are scattered throughout stages, which are very challenging to get. Truth be told, though, I still enjoy playing as Meat Boy the most. It’s like Mega Man 10 where sure, Proto Man and Bass have their own unique abilities, but playing as Mega Man just feels right.

I also can’t wrap this review up without mentioning the game’s style. It’s a very charming mixture of both humor and grotesqueness. The story and hi-jinks are silly, but never get the chance to become hammy or annoying. The game has a lot of disgusting things, but is presented cartoonishly enough not to actually make you sick. I mean, you’re basically playing as a hunk of raw meat that leaves blood everywhere it travels and dies. And while the game is full of typical game obstacles like saw blades, missiles and lasers, it also has a number of other icky things like syringes and maggots. And sure, there are cut scenes, but they serve as brief introductions to worlds and bosses, and toss in a lot of the game’s humor and retro homages (and if you are feeling impatient, you can always skip them). Furthermore, like all good games, the music is fantastic; catchy, pushes-you-forward game music. The sound effects are strong as well.

Warning: Montage video contains squishy sounds. Do not watch while eating a burrito.

Quite honestly, I did not want to like Super Meat Boy and had no interest in even buying it. At the time, paying for what seemed like a mere flash game felt ridiculous, and I’m not a big fan of most indie games. I get the idea: corporate games are so often soulless, and made to feed demographics and earn big bucks. But on the other side of the coin, I find many indie games too pretentious and dull. Like a self-infatuated writer that wants to be innovative, and writes a book without punctuation or from the perspective of dirt; these games are full of things that greatly interest the developer’s creativity and impress their art house friends, but don’t do much for anyone else.

But I’m glad I did make myself look into Super Meat Boy, because Team Meat definitely gets it. They focus on the one thing that the big time publishers and the indie artists often overlook; the one thing that’s key to the success of all great games: the player. Playing this game, you can tell they put the fun and fundamentals first. Every block and every saw blade was placed with purpose, and the game’s flow and mechanics were definitely worked out from the perspective of the customers who would be playing this game over and over again. It’s like a fine cut of beef, trimmed of all its fat and spoiled bits, and then slow roasted to perfection so all you’re left with is the highest grade steak you can get. And what’s more, it’s not at filet mignon price either.

This review is based on a copy of Super Meat Boy purchased by the reviewer.

Tags: 2d, action, downloadable games, Meat Boy, microsoft, Newgrounds, platformer, retro, Super Meat Boy, Team Meat, xbla, Xbox 360

This entry was posted on Monday, November 8th, 2010 at 10:25 am and is filed under Indie Games, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.