Super Meat Boy will truly test your patience, and offer you a fun and memorable experience while you're there.
Controls are precise, smooth and responsive • Hundreds of levels with varying design • Epic soundtrack • Unlockable characters can change the gameplay completely • Forgiving difficulty curve
----------The Bad -----------
A few of the unlockable characters aren't that interesting or fun to use • Inconsistant loading times • Some levels range from frustrating to pure evil
"SUPEEEEER MEAT BOY!" yells the narrator at the title screen and me yelling in unison with him. SMB is a basically a fully fleshed out version of Team Meat's game, "Meat Boy", which was released on Newgrounds in 2008. Super Meat Boy is a single player platformer presented entirely in 2D who's most notable points is its unique art design, quirky story and high difficulty level. The aim of Super Meat Boy was for it to be Team Meat's own satirical, parallel universe version of the original NES Super Mario games.
STORY
The story of Super Meat Boy is really just there to put the gameplay in context, but it still adds more to the appeal. A lot of the cutscenes play out like a black humour version of a saturday morning cartoon or an episode of Happy Tree Friends. While the visuals are colourful and cartoony, some of the stuff that goes on is still pretty messed up. Before the game kicks off, theres a short opening that establishes the characters and their roles. Meat Boy and Bandage Girl are short and stubby beings (made entirely of substances that their names represent) who love each other very much. Then the main antagonist, Dr. Fetus, is introduced. It's established that no body likes him, so he hates everbody. This means he hates you, and it especially means he hates Meat Boy. And so, he beats up Meat Boy and kidnaps Bandage Girl. That means it's up to Meat Boy to save her, thus setting the goal of the entire game. Its a game that loves to make nods to several old popular titles, such as the girlfriend kidnapping from Mario, the skyscraper scroll from Megaman and the brief one-on-one battle from the opening to Pokemon Red and Blue.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay of Super Meat Boy seems simple enough. Bandage Girl is located somewhere in the level, get through the level and save her from Dr. Fetus. The description is really the simplest part of it. While the gameplay starts off with pretty straight forward levels while it's still showing you the ropes, the game eventually decides you've learned everything you need to know and starts throwing steadily more challenging levels at you. The level select is another nod to Mario, being set out in a map-like layout and being divided into worlds. The whole game contains 7 worlds, each containing 20 normal levels, 20 dark world levels (much harder versions of the normal levels) and one boss fight at the end. The exceptions to this are Cotton Alley, which has 40 levels and no boss, and Rapture, which has 10 levels and 2 bosses. Each and every level have a funny little title to go along with it, normally reflecting some content of the level. To play the boss levels in each world, you must complete at least 16 of the 20 levels in each world. The finished levels will be marked red and the unfinished ones remain white. The boss levels play out as more carefully designed platforming levels. Since Meat Boy has no attacks and dies whenever he touches pretty much anything, the boss fights normally involve you dodging a set sequence of the boss' attacks, running away from them to get to a safe haven or both. All the boss levels play differently so they never feel repetetive and the responsive control scheme always ensures that your deaths, while normally frustrating, are still completely fair.
Fortunately, Super Meat Boy is a pretty stable game. There are virtually no glitches I have run into. Nothing that hindered game play, nothing that ruined my save game and nothing that caused the game to crash. The loading times can be a bit of an issue sometimes. While the load times are normally quite brief, there were some instances where it took almost 30 seconds to load a level, resulting in me almost turning off my Xbox thinking that it had crashed. Even switching to a different level in the map screen takes a while sometimes. Also some of the characters and their abilities serve little to no use in most levels during the game, and if anything, make the game harder. Not in a fun or challenging way either.
SOUNDTRACK
The soundtrack that accompanies all the different types of stages in the game is a pretty mixed bag. There are plenty of catchy tunes in the main levels, chiptune versions of the level themes in the retro-style stages and epic compositions in the boss levels. Even the music in the very first boss battle stands out as one of the best tracks in the game. The sound effects are also a mixed bag. Theres only a small amount of sound effects involved with gameplay, but they are utilized well. The ones you'll be most familiar with by the end of the game will be the moist sounds that Meat Boy makes when he moves around, leaving a trail of red on everything he touches, and the terrible splat that is made everytime he dies. There aren't a lot of ambient sounds in the game, but this is mostly a good thing. Hearing the whining sound of thousands of saw blades in most of the levels would quickly get on anyones nerves.
REPLAY VALUE
There is a fair amount of extras in Super Meat Boy that encourages players to replay some of the levels. There's a goal time to beat in every regular level that will stamp an "A+" onto the level square and additionally unlock that levels Dark World version. There are 20 bandages in each world that are spread out across several levels. Collecting enough bandages will unlock new characters that you can use to play certain levels with, each with different strengths and weaknesses. There are also portals located in some levels that take you to Warp Zones. The Warp Zones are stylized like old NES games, and even some older 4-colour games. Warp Zones consist of 3 levels that must be beaten in succession without running out of lives, normally having a few bandages hidden along the way. There are also special Warp Zones where you play as new characters and unlock them if you manage to complete them. Those special levels are fashioned after the games that they came from, contain no bandages and you have infinite lives. Theres a few notable characters that can be unlocked, such as the ninja from N+, Viridian from VVVVVV, Jill from Mighty Jill Off and The Kid from I Wanna Be the Guy. Theres also some extra glitch levels that can be unlocked for each world. They aren't nessicary for 100% completion and are among the hardest levels in the game. I still haven't beaten any of them to this day.
CONCLUSION
Super Meat Boy is not leaving without a recommendation. A word of warning that it does get frustratingly hard at times to the extent that some people might find a controller shaped hole in their TV screens. But if you're a fan of platforming games and don't mind a tough as nails challenge, then I recommend picking up Super Meat Boy. It's harsh, but that's just because it loves us.