A game good enough to die for…. over 1000 times
Super Meat Boy may only seem like a straightforward platformer whose simplicity and insane difficulty level create a rather unique experience, but beneath the surface there is one of the most powerful love stories ever told, because it undoubtedly takes a lot of love for such a tiny guy to face not only the weirdest meanest assortment of traps ever setup by any level designer, but also death itself. For Bandage Girl, Meat Boy faces dangers beyond human comprehension, but his love feeds him motivation to keep going fearlessly; he overlooks all challenges ahead, and focuses on his goal: the shiny eyes and enchanting smile of his loved one. In other, much less poetic and complicated words, Super Meat Boy will possibly be the hardest – and occasionally most frustrating – game you will ever play.
Initially, the game is divided into six chapters, each comprised of twenty levels and one boss battle, and with the sixth chapter having five levels and one boss. The levels are all extremely short, ranging from ten to fifty seconds, but they have so many traps (buzz saws, cannons, creepy enemies, lava pits, tricky jumps, deadly lasers, crushing blocks, etc) that each millisecond of the experience comes packed with a lot of tension and nervousness. The game will always keep players on their toes; as a result, dying may come accompanied with an outburst of frustration while reaching your goal will have such a genuinely happy feeling that you won't be able to help celebrating.
It is rare to come across a level on which you will die less than a dozen times, but Team Meat did the game a great favor when they tried to strongly mitigate the frustration of dying. The levels being short obviously give a whole lot of support to that cause, and the fact that Meat Boy goes back to the beginning of the stage a few moments after he dies in a gory explosion of blood and meat also helps. In addition, it is vital that a game that requires so much precision and perfect timing have controls that allow for such perfection and do not – at any times – get in the way of the player. Super Meat Boy basically consists of running, jumping and wall-jumping, and all those commands have fast and precise responses
Players' advance through the game goes in a pace and manner that is similar to that or early Mega Man games. There is a lot of pattern memorization and getting through a level is a matter of being killed by a trap many times, finding a way to regularly go past it, only to be killed many times by the subsequent trap, and so on. As a consequence, there will be frustrating moments, but any player that goes into a game like Super Meat Boy should already be expecting that and be good at handling the frustration while enjoying the little seconds of joy that come with finally reaching Bandage Girl at the end of the stage, only to see her taken by Dr. Fetus to the next level. It is an endless cycle, and one that determined tough players will not be able to escape. Super Meat Boy is addictive by nature.
For the bravest among the brave, the fun of Super Meat Boy does not end when all regular levels are completed. All levels are timed, and when finished within a specific short, but reasonable, time an alternate Dark World version of that level will be unlocked. Hence, the total amount of stages grows to a whopping three hundred. There is also the possibility of unlocking other characters from indie games. Those characters are not just pixelated models that behave just Meat Boy, they have physics of their own and have certain special skills that can help players get through some of the more grinding situations that will show up on later levels. Those characters can be unlocked in two ways: some can be acquired by collecting bandages that are dangerously positioned on the levels, and others can be found by going into equally tough to reach warp zones that will lead Meat Boy to mini-levels inspired by those indie games. If you thought a platformer this straightforward could not hold any secrets, think again.
Super Meat Boy is a glorious, and possibly the most complete, homage to the ridiculously hard platformers that were a big part of the gaming industry in the 80s. The game is not ashamed to show its influences, starting from its title with suspiciously familiar initials to the pixel art that its visuals are. The game also looks back to the industry's past on its humorous cutscenes - appropriately lacking any display of technical prowess – that will make clear references to memorable titles of the past, delighting old-school players. When it is all said and done, Super Meat Boy is so fantastic that it ends up being more than a celebration of the past; it is the still young proof that what is truly great will never die, but will keep being reborn and refreshed through the years. And for that those who love the sheer simplicity of brilliant aged platformers should be thankful.