EXTREMELY hard but superb platforming with super tight controls!

Super Meat Boy is another XBLA and soon to be Wiiware and PC indie darling, crafted mostly by two dedicated individuals: artist Edmund McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes (plus a meaty soundtrack by Danny Baranowsky). Similar to The Behemoth and Castle Crashers, Team Meat spent considerably longer then they estimated but released a game that hurdles above the bar. Right off the bat with a rocking tune, a star struck Meat Boy blinded by camera flashes and an announcer that belted out, "SUUUUUPER MEAT BOOOOY," I knew I was going to have fun.

Super Meat Boy is a platformer that stars a cube of meat that must run and jump through perilous traps to save Bandage Girl every level. All you have to do is avoid circular saw blades, spikes, lava, enemies and falling to your death. Meat Boy is just like Mario in 2D but zoomed out, raw, and on steroids.

On paper, this game should be terrible. "Tough as nails" gameplay where you'll die a lot. The game tracks a stat for this "a lot" and mine currently rests around 2500 deaths. That meant I threw down the controller in frustration, right?

Wrong! Team Meat figured out the magic formula that Silicon Knights got backwards in Too Human and realized you need as short of a delay as possible between death and restarting plus not too much of a penalty. The delay is so short that I often saw buzz sawed chunks of the dead Meat Boy falling down as I started fresh. Each level is short and takes ten to thirty seconds on average.

A game can get can these things right and still cause migraines. A prime example would be fighting toe-to-toe with Seth, the last boss in Street Fighter 4. He's cheap, unfair and leaves a bitter aftertaste. However, at no point did Super Meat Boy ever feel cheap or unfair. Each time I died, I knew I could go a bit further if I got the timing down or tweaked my strategy and as a result, I never wanted to put down the controller. Finishing a level, especially the later ones, always felt rewarding. The feeling was amplified when I would see a replay of all my attempts at once; an army of Meat Boys running to their doom with only one found victorious.

Meat Boy controls perfectly and in that department easily matches the best 2D platform games of all time. Direction and speed can be changed mid-jump to avoid obstacles at the last second. Wall jumping with precision down to the tile is possible with practice, and it's needed towards the end of the game. Timing a jump that requires precision never feels finicky, only achievable with practice. For challenges that seem too tough for Meat Boy, there are unlockable characters that have different strengths and attributes. Kudos to Team Meat for reaching out and managing to put other indie characters in the game.

Graphically, the game is deceivingly simple but it does a significant amount subtlety. The characters of the game are disgusting in concept but end up cute such as Meat Boy's smiley, determined grimace that adds to his charm. Meat Boy will leave of a trail of blood on every surface he's touched in a level, including saws that he died on. Because the blood isn't reset after dying, a level can start to resemble a butcher shop after a few lives. My favorite effect was the dynamic light rays that would change as blocks disintegrate or move around, giving a good idea of where all the platforms were with a glance. The only graphics downer is that the worlds become bleaker as the game goes on but I was too focused on the gameplay to care.

On the audio side, Meat Boy fittingly sounds like a steak running around and being thrown against walls. The music really fits the game and often helps the frantic pacing.

At 300 hundred levels and more to come for free, there's a lot of, dare I say, meat to this game. Every couple years or so, a truly great game comes along and Super Meat Boy is one of those.  Only a couple bugs kept me from breaking GameXplain and giving it six stars but I'm sure those bugs will be quashed out in the future. If you are up for a challenge and don't have any qualms with a character who is an evil fetus, then you'll have a blast playing Super Meat Boy.
 

Note: This game was reviewed on Xbox 360