It's got problems, but the personality and level design are enough reasons to give this game a shot.
The weirdness is one of 'Splosion Man's biggest strengths. You can tell that the developers had a blast [no pun intended] when it came to the humor. To go into more detail; the explosions that you're able to do appear to be coming out of your character's butt, there are scientists hanging around in levels which literally explode into pieces of meat when you kill them, and there's a song in the game called "Everybody loves donuts" which is, in my opinion, just as funny as Portal's "Still alive".
The controls in 'Splosion Man are extremely simple; the left analog stick moves your dude from left to right, holding the right trigger will bring you back to the last checkpoint, and any of the face buttons will make you explode/jump. You can explode/jump three times before you need to have them recharged, and this only takes about two seconds. Once they recharge, you're free to start jumping again.
There are 50 levels in 'Splosion Man that you play on your own, and there are 50 more that are only playable cooperatively, whether it's local or over Xbox Live. Co-op introduces two new features that are very exciting. There's a boost move which has you explode/jump into your partner so that one or both of you go flying in the opposite direction. There's also a countdown move which is designed to help you synchronize your boosts with your partner. Once used, a three second timer will count down to zero, and then a small icon will appear, and that's you and your partner's cue to explode/jump in tune with one another. Essentially, the countdown is designed to make boosting less cumbersome.
The biggest problem with 'Splosion Man is the trial and error that's used in some of the levels. There are some booby traps that you will not be able to avoid until a number of tries. If you can make it past the elevator puzzle in level 1-10 without getting frustrated, I will personally declare you as God. It's not like these frustrating puzzles come up all the time, but they are definitely frequent enough to be considered a flaw of the game. The trial and error flaws are present in the co-op levels, too.
'Splosion Man is a decent looking game on the technical side, while boring on the artistic side. All of your character's animations look great, and many of them are funny. Another thing that's awesome to see is scientists that turn into chunks of meat after jumping into a puddle of poisonous liquid. At the end of a level, the camera will zoom in so that you will see your character's model up close. The detail just isn't there-- the model is jaggy and has weak texture work. The levels pretty much look the same throughout the entire game, and it certainly doesn't help that they are nothing more than generic looking science labs.
'Splosion Man is a game that I'd recommend to anyone who's familiar with video games. It's priced at 800 Microsoft points, which is a good deal when you consider the amount of levels that the game has. It's got problems, but the personality and level design were good enough to make to make 'Splosion Man an enjoyable game. Thanks for reading.