'Splosion Man Updated Hands-On

Very few games can be summarized so briefly and accurately with a two-word title, but 'Splosion Man is certainly one of them. It is, in essence, a game about a guy who explodes himself. Need to jump across a gap? Explode yourself. Need to leap from one wall to another? Explode yourself. Need to seek vengeance on the scientists whose experiments turned you into this monster? You get the idea. This charming, maniacal platformer comes to us from Twisted Pixel Games, the developer behind The Maw. After going hands-on with 'Splosion Man last month at E3, we recently took some time to explore it again with an updated build.

Your character is more or less a walking, human-shaped mass of blazing fire. He's been subjected to some rather morally questionable scientific experiments; thus, he has the ability to explode himself at will. In gameplay terms, this serves as a conceit to explain why your character can triple-jump across large gaps, up tall walls, and so on. Your character goes from bright orange to burnt charcoal as you use up your three jumps, but he quickly recharges when you hit the ground or stick to (and slowly slide down) a wall. The levels are all fairly standard platforming fare with a science lab theme, having you side-scroll from left to right across various environmental hazards, such as acid pools and spike-covered walls closing in on you.

What makes 'Splosion Man so appealing isn't so much the way the game controls--which we'd describe as good, but nothing terribly groundbreaking for the platforming genre--but rather, the game's twisted, maniacal sense of humor. All throughout the levels are scientists who will flee in terror as you run toward them. Your character will switch from his normal dashing animation to an arms-up, boogeyman-style jaunt as you chase them down. When you get close to the scientists, you can explode yourself and they'll burst into a confetti of cooked meats, such as hot dogs and ham, while you remain perfectly intact. If you kill enough of them, you'll get a hilariously tongue-in-cheek achievement like "Get Them Out of Our Schools" with a description that reads, "Eliminate 10 scientists and stop them from spreading their filthy lies." The humor extends further than that, though, even into the controls screen. If you go to the screen for guidance, you'll be greeted with a controller map that shows the word "SPLODE" pointing to every one of the face buttons (you can even "remap" these controls for another achievement).

The animation is also one of 'Splosion Man's high points. All of your character's movements and emotions are rendered with aplomb, going from limbs spread enthusiastically while free-falling to intense anxiety when clinging to a ledge. At certain moments, the camera will zoom in on your actions, as in one moment in level 2-3 when you're tumbling through the air, land on a scientist standing on glass platform, and use him to break your fall as you both land on what appears to be another group of scientists seated at a table eating cake.

In short, 'Splosion Man is a charming little platformer with a distinctly twisted sense of humor and slick visual presentation. From what we've seen, it's got personality to burn (no pun intended), but the big question is how long the triple-jump gameplay mechanic can hold up throughout the course of the entire game. Will it introduce enough platforming variety to keep players interested for the long haul? We should have that answer for you when it's released on Xbox Live Arcade later this year.