Saturday, 18 December 2010

2199 and counting

I've been playing the game Super Meat Boy a lot lately and I'm having a great, albeit sometimes frustrating, time with it. If you haven't tried it, or even know what it is, its basic goal is to help the protagonist, appropriately named Meat Boy (since he's made of meat), come to the rescue of his big love Bandage Girl. Bandage Girl has been abducted by Dr Fetus, who for somewhat unclear reasons doesn't like Meat Boy very much. That pretty much sums up the story, but you'll have no problem accepting these as the motivating premises when you start playing, I promise. The game actually more or less makes a point out of presenting the storyline in a very unpretentious way. It's a straightforward and proven story concept made somewhat fresh by a really unusual set of characters. The game mechanics are also very easy to grasp, the game is played on short levels where you go from start to finish by timing a lot of jumps and leaps here and there and avoid hurtful things like saw blades and pointy syringes. I really love the game, but I did not intend for this to be a review.

Instead I wanted to touch upon a big reason for loving this game, namely that it's devilishly difficult without punishing failure too harshly. The levels aren't long, if you don't die on the way to the exit (which in every level is represented by Bandage Girl, just to be snapped away from you right before you reach her) no level will last over a minute. However, you will die. Most levels will need many tries... many, many tries. There is a nifty death count mechanic that shows you how many times you have killed the poor Meat Boy so far, I'm now at 2199 deaths after a few days of playing. That's a lot! But I always find myself trying one more time even after repeatedly falling into the same nasty buzzsaw. I always have the feeling that 'I'm not that far off, I'll definitely get the timing right next time' and it never takes more than a handful of seconds to get back to that tricky jump again for the next (failed?) attempt. The game never feels unfair, just really difficult, and I respect that. And I often find that subtle balance lacking in many modern games, to be challenging enough but not punish me for failure to the extent that I lose interest if I need too many tries.

To sum up my thoughts; I hope more games like this follows, but now I'm off to increase my stats... so to speak.

All the best

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