Super Mario Boy

Sawing blades trying to keep Super Meat Boy away from Bandage Girl

A meatball on his heroic quest.

By Bert Baker

Boy likes Girl. 

Douchebag hates Boy. 

Douchebag beats up Boy. 

Douchebag takes the Girl. 

Boy is not amused. 

Girl is neither. 

Boy hunts Douchebag down to get Girl back. 

This concludes the story behind Super Meat Boy, which is not remotely a problem. Super Meat Boy is much more superior in other disciplines.

The Many Deaths of Meat Boy

Apart from the essential mechanics of platformer games, such as the Super Mario series or the eccentric Limbo, Super Meat Boy adds one distinct characteristic to the list: stickiness. Being a living lump of meat Meat Boy sticks to the wall and slides slowly down again. This rule helps climbing walls and lets you use them as vertical platforms. After playing the first levels it becomes obvious that sticking to walls is the core notion of Super Meat Boy.

Super Meat Boy is like Poker. Just faster and less expensive. While the controls are easy to learn, it takes time to master them. The difficulty level switches pretty early from easy to a very advanced level, but it never demands the impossible. Although it can get pretty frustrating, after half of the first chapter it becomes clear that trial and error is the way to go and the many deaths of Meat Boy just feel like casualties.

The replay function shows all of your failed attempts to save Bandage Girl. And the one that was successful.

Mandatory Torments

Super Meat Boy is divided in five chapters with 20 levels as well as a boss fight each and an end world with five levels and a boss fight. Every chapter has its own scenario, such as a forest or a hospital, and comes with specific obstacles and traps. The levels themselves reflect the storyline of Super Meat Boy, so the goal is to get to Bandage Girl – the Girl – just to find out that Dr. Fetus – the Douchebag – will take her away from you again. Saws, static and moving, spikes as well as rockets are trying to make a Meat Boys life a living hell.

Every level has a preset time limit, which adds a race challenge to the game and it rewards you with an “A+” if you can beat the time limit. When you die the level quickly starts over again, there are no checkpoints in Super Meat Boy, which can be frustrating in longer levels, but most of the time it just encourages you to do it better the next time. Plus: Once you successfully passed a level a replay is shown, which shows all your attempts at once and you can see where you lost the crucial millisecond that kept you from acing the level.

Optional Torments

Once you aced every level and saved Bandage Girl Super Meat Boy doesn’t end. You can switch to the Dark World and chase Dr. Fetus again, but this time the levels are harder and more merciless than ever before. 

Or you can replay levels to unlock the so-called Warp Zones and reminisce about Super Meat Boys ancestors while rescuing Bandage Girl Mario- or Commander Video-style. 

Or you can go out and collect all Bandages hidden in the levels to unlock other characters, such as a Half-Life headcrab, and continue playing as them. 

Or you can unlock all 48 achievements, which should take all your skill and time, but they also come with a drop of bitterness, because the achievements mostly just reflect your progress. 

And if even that is not challenging enough, there still is Teh Internets, a growing collection of levels built by fans and tested by the developer Team Meat. As you can see the humble storyline is not a problem at all and Super Meat Boy offers more than meets the eye, if you are up to the competition.

Inside the Meat

Apropos meets the eye. Meat Boys visual appearance has more in common with the storyline than with the game play. The nicely drawn backgrounds and objects have a high level detail and clearly state what their purpose is. 

Only minor inconsistency is the cutscenes, which might look cuddly and neat, but don’t feature the same level of detail as the levels. The practicality of the graphics adds to the smooth feel of the controls and animations. The sound effects and the soundtrack are supporting the overall feel of Super Meat Boy and pay their tribute to its predecessors.

Super Meat Boy can be seen as the modern pinnacle in the genre of platformer games and while not being overtly innovative it surely pushes the boundaries with its challenging level design and precise controls.

Although, it heavily relies on the trial and error mechanic and thus has a very advanced difficulty, you will never feel treated in an unfair manner rather than thinking that you are just not good enough. 

And you will try it again.