It’s back ladies and gents! The feature that I thought would just crawl away and die and hope that no one would notice is back with a vengeance. Actually it’s just back because I had time to kill on two mammoth train journeys to and from London and I needed to not be raging at the lack of quiet on the Quiet Coach.
5. Super Meat Boy
I’m not sure any other game in my Top Ten of 2010 has as good controls as this game. None of them are as finely honed and perfected as Super Meat Boy; they will all have some minor failing somewhere between what your fingers do on the controller to what you see occur on screen. Not so with Super Meat Boy.
When you die (and you will die a lot), it was your fault. Your fingers failed you. I apologise for writing that; I really hate it when I read that stuff in reviews. I can make an exception in this case however, because it is actually true.
For some, this will be too much to take and they will give up. For others, it will spur you on to greater and greater feats of appendage dexterity. It is a remarkable piece of programming.
Everywhere you go you leave a trail of blood
The path through each level is (usually) obvious and even when it isn’t, each of your untimely demises will quickly start to reveal patterns as to what you should be doing. I think that’s part of the appeal for me, there’s a certain evolution that you go through on every new level that you play.
Initially you’re just feeling your way around, trying to work out what to do. Then you go through again and again until you can comfortably complete it (this doesn’t really happen on the later levels). Eventually as you continue to refine and streamline your path, new opportunities for time-saving become apparent (“Ooo, can I take out the need to land in front of saw blade after the wall-jump by just wall-sliding a little higher on the wall and jumping it in one go?”).
Too much salt is bad for you, m'kay?
I found myself doing this for every little chunk of a level, trying to critically analyse its make-up and navigate the most efficient path possible, trying to hone my muscle memory such that I could replicate it every time. After you’ve reached that level of depth, that’s when you try to string everything you’ve learnt together in a perfect run for a world-beating leaderboard time! Incidentally, if you like competing with your friends on leaderboards you will love this. I was ranked pretty highly around the time it came out (both amongst my friends and the wider XBL public) but I dread to think how far I’ve slipped down now.
It’s very addictive and there’s nothing more exhilarating than nailing a perfect run and rising up the leaderboards. On some of the levels, there’s nothing more exhilarating than actually finishing it!
