Super Meat Boy Review: You Might Never Beat This Meat.

That middle column breaks... and you die.

Super Meat Boy isn't just a "tough as nails platformer" like its description says. No, in fact I'm certain that if this game were a living, breathing entity, it would murder you. It would beat you to death, drag you through the streets and then throw your body into the spinning blades of a saw mill. It would do this to you over and over again until there was nothing left and it would laugh maniacally as it committed this heinous crime in front of everyone. I'm not understating this. This game is brutally difficult and... I love it.

It starts off innocently enough. You're Meat Boy, the skinless protagonist, and you want to save your girlfriend (Bandage Girl), who has been kidnapped by the evil Dr. Fetus. And while the first few levels might seem simple enough, the game very quickly becomes a trip through insanity. You'd better prepare yourself for an experience more horrifying than anything described in Dante's Inferno.

Impossible without a gamepad.

You navigate 2-D levels in an attempt to reach Bandage Girl all the while avoiding obstacles such as: buzz saws, piles of broken glass, falling hypodermic needles, random enemies, falling platforms, lasers, and more. It's a good thing Meat Boy controls perfectly (with a gamepad) or avoiding these traps would be impossible. Meat Boy is fast, even without sprinting (hint:sprint anyway), and feats such as wall jumping, quickly stopping to turn around, and changing the direction you're moving midair are all required for success. You'll still die though and as soon as you die you're instantly respawned at the start of the level with no down time. Once you complete a level the replay at the end will show all of the hundreds of attempts you made before finally succeeding. It's both satisfying to watch and a little bit painful. The levels are meant to be played quickly too. Not only is there a goal to meet in the form of a completion time, the game prompts you to jump immediately to the next level to keep going. You can choose to keep going or to quit back out to the chapter and level select screen.

Jill. Who I have yet to unlock.

On top of that completion time there are bandages placed in different levels for you to collect. I'd like to say right now that these bandages are, occasionally, in the most impossible of places and this alone will make you angry enough to rage quit the game. If by some miracle you manage to collect them and make it to Bandage Girl at the end of the level they unlock additional characters from a number of other indie developed games like Ogmo from Jumper, the Kid from I Wanna Be the Guy, Mr. Minecraft from Minecraft, and the robot from Machinarium. I'd tell you how they control but the game is so damn hard I haven't unlocked them yet. I have, however, unlocked Commander Video from the Bit.Trip games and the Head Crab from Half Life. Commander Video can glide and the Head Crab sticks to walls and slides down them very slowly. You'd think those abilities would come in handy (and they are fun to mess around with) but I'd still much rather play as Meat Boy.

You can also unlock characters by visiting warp zones.

It might sound like I'm ragging on the game for its difficulty but in fact I have to praise it. It's not often I find myself quitting a game in frustration and walking out of my room to calm down, only to come back and start the game back up again. The gameplay, art direction, and soundtrack are all great (seriously, I bought the soundtrack) and are part of the reason I keep coming back to it. When I first launched the game there were a number of problems: The game crashed after playing only three levels, the game crashed to desktop on exit, and after a few launches the SFX and Music options in the menu had cranked themselves up well past 100 to somewhere near 123456789. All of those issues have since been patched out. Since the game hasn't been available on PC for very long this really shows the dedication Team Meat has to making their game flawless... As sadistic as their perfect game might be. They plan on continuing this support for a while too as a level editor is planned to be released sometime in the future. Apparently Mr. Minecraft will be the primary tool for level creation. I'm pretty excited for that.

Super Meat Boy, you are an asshole and I love you.

5/5