Super Meat Boy (Dengakuslash)

Super Meat Boy is an independently developed fast paced single-player platformer from hell on Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare, and soon to be on PC developed by Team Meat. You control a little block of meat named Meat Boy (As the title suggests) who goes on a long quest to rescue his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, from the evil Dr. Fetus. The game is adapted from a flash game that started on Newgrounds (Meat Boy) and due to it's popularity, Team Meat was able to publish this platforming gem onto consoles.

This game is pure platforming at it's finest. The entire game consists of just reaching "Point A" to "Point B" by jumping, running, and wall jumping. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. This is one of the hardest games I have played in my entire life. Team Meat really went out of their way to make this so difficult. This game is so difficult, I bit my controller in rage after dying 200+ times on ONE LEVEL. Every trap and platform you have to  run, jump, and wall-jump to is positioned so precisely that one mistake will send you to a death. Although, even though this game is very hard, it never feels cheap, like a lot of hard games do. All the deaths can be blamed on mistakes you make. Also, it is nice that when you die there are instant respawns so there is no waiting between all of the many deaths that you will bring upon yourself. With the insane difficulty, each level feels very rewarding to complete. One thing I like is when you complete a level, The game plays all of the replays of the deaths that occurred on that level simultaneously, along with a replay of you completing the level mixed in with it. It's kind of a comic relief, seeing a sea of Meat Boys dying after each level.

Even though the game is single player, I had a blast playing this game with a friend and switching off every few levels. Having a friend to share the games with muffles the rage the builds up when you just can't beat a level.

At the end of each world, there is a boss fight. The bosses in Super Meat Boy are insanely difficult. One thing I don't like about the bosses, though, is that most of them are just an obstacle course. Although it's fast-paced and intense, it would have been cool for Team Meat to find a way for you to actually fight all of the bosses.

There is a neat item-collecting aspect to the game, where you collect Bandages scattered across all of the levels. Collecting these bandages grants you unlockables such as new levels and new characters. There are 12 unlockable characters, each with their own special ability. What I like about these characters is that most of them are from different independently developed, and they all have an ability native to their purpose in their own game. Such as Tim from "Braid", who can rewind time for a few seconds.

Being from Newgrounds, this game has a very cartoon like feel and is very humorous. The game FEELS like a classic NES/SNES era game, but with the visuals and aspect ratio of modern games. Although it's not really laugh-out-loud funny, the game's jokes in the short cutscenes made me chuckle. On the menus of this game, it sticks with a newgrounds-esque cartoon-like art style. In-game, though, it switches to a mix of the cartoon-like style and pixel art. Surprisingly, this mix of styles is very appealing to the eye and fun to look at.

My favorite part of this game are the "Warp Zones" scattered throughout the levels. When you Access the Warp Zones, Beautifully crafted Pixel Art "Title Screens" show up, prompting you to press start. When you press start, a chiptune rendition of the game's theme song plays with a set of 3 16-bit or 8-bit levels awaiting you. The moment I saw this, it was like a nostalgic Shin-Shoryuken right to my face.

At the date I bought this game, (10/22), the game was priced at 800 MS points, (That's $10, if you didn't know.), but the game is being raised to 1200 MS Points ($15) in November. It took me around 5-6 hours to complete the game's 6 main worlds. There is lots of re-playability to this game. If you complete a level in a certain amount of time, you unlock the "Dark World" version of the level. This is basically a harder version of the level. And since most of the levels are hard already, the Dark World versions are insanely difficult. Once you collect enough bandages you unlock a world called "Teh Internets", which is Free downloadable content. Free expanding to an already huge game.

Pros:

• Tight, responsive controls
• A good challenge among the modern sea of cakewalk-like easy games
• Great soundtrack
• Appealing visuals and great pixel art
• Massive re-playability
• Free downloadable content
• Even with the difficulty, the deaths do not feel cheap
• Fun to play as a pass-and-play multiplayer game

Cons:

• Sometimes, the difficulty can be rage-inducing
• Some of the bosses don't really feel like bosses

Final Verdict:
This game hates me. This game hates you. This game hates everyone. But that shouldn't stop you from playing this gem of a game. Super Meat Boy is a nostalgic, fun, challenging title that definitely should not be missed! With the great mix of fun, pure platforming, and a great art style, I couldn't recommend this game any more!
Final Score: 93/100 Points