Review: Super Meat Boy

Super Meat Boy is a 2D platform game for the Xbox 360 and PC on Steam.  It was developed by Team Meat.

One of Super Meat Boy's easier levels. Note the lava and buzzsaws, they are everywhere.

Meat Boy, a boy made out of meat, is in love with Bandage Girl, a girl made out of bandages. But Dr. Fetus, a fetus in a bipedal robot in a suit, hates Meat Boy and kidnaps Bandage Girl to spite him. Meat Boy goes off to rescue Bandage Girl.

Super Meat Boy takes place over five worlds of twenty levels. In each level Meat Boy has to rescue Bandage Girl, though when he reaches her Dr. Fetus will take her to the next level. In theory levels only take a couple of seconds to complete, though later levels can take up to a minute to complete.

“In theory”, because levels are incredibly difficult. Levels are covered in piles of salt, bottomless pits, spikes, and especially buzz saws. Meat Boy can run and jump really far and fast, and wall jump and the player can control Meat Boy’s direction when he falls. It is a good thing Meat Boy can do that, because each level is a test in how précis the player can make jumps. Levels start off easy enough, doing things like jumping over a row of buzz saws, or wall jumping between two collapsing walls. But eventually the levels turn into challenging things like falling down a spike-lined pit to try and reach a spot on the wall that is not covered in spikes, to jump over a large lava pit while dodging laser-guided missiles. And Meat Boy does not have a health bar; one hit on anything makes him explode.

Team Meat knows they made a difficult and tried to alleviate the frustration a bit. The short levels keep the player from having to trek back to whatever killed them the first time, and whenever Meat Boy dies he regenerates at the beginning of the level in less than a second. This means the player can play the level over and over again without thinking.

There are several additional levels in addition to the main ones. Completing a level unlocks its Dark World version, which is a harder version. Some levels have hidden warp-zones that take Meat Boy to levels that look like old video games. And each world has a Minus World level that can only be accessed when the player completes that world. All of these are harder than normal levels.

Each level also has a par time that the player can try to complete the level under. Doing so accomplishes nothing, but beating the levels is so quick, and the times always look reachable, so the player is tempted to complete them all.

Each world ends with a boss fight. These are challenging, but after the levels they usually feel like a breather.

There are twenty bandages hidden in each world. Collecting bandages unlocks hidden characters that have special powers that make it easier to get through the levels, like a double jump or the ability to float. These characters are based on main characters from other games, like The Kid from I Wanna Be the Guy, or Jill from Mighty Jill Off. Collecting the bandages can be annoying, because while some are merely difficult to reach, others are deliberately hidden, which is annoying.

The game is 2D, but it does not look like an old Super Nintendo game. Character do not look pixilated, they look like cartoons. And the levels are really detailed, with birds flying around, and sunlight going through cracks, and changing times of day. The levels do get les varied in design the more bleak they get, but that’s it.

There is no story beyond Dr. Fetus taking Bandage Girl to another place that Meat Boy has to rescue her from. But those scenes are animated, as well as whenever Dr. Fetus summons a boss. They are always funny, in a darkly comedic way.

Super Meat Boy walks a fine line between being difficult in a fair way and being difficult in an unfair, cheap way. The levels start off easy and gradually get harder. Eventually it starts to feel like completing the levels is less about skill and more about luck, Or even worse, slowly drilling the levels repeatedly until you can do all the jumps without thinking about them. And that is not fun, that is memorization. The levels that exemplify winning based on luck are the ones where the obstacles are not on a fixed path or affect the way Meat Boy controls, like the levels with the laser-guided missiles, or the ones where the player has to maneuver Meat Boy over ant-gravity generators. And a lot of those appear in the later levels.

At the same time though, a lot of difficulty is self-inflicted. The player does not have to collect the bandages, or find the warp-zones, or beat the par times.

Super Meat Boy is for anyone who wants a fun challenge. But anyone who obsesses over finishing everything might want to look elsewhere, or else they will eventually resent the game.