Meat for clinically insane
It is a not a bad game, but it is meant to such a small niche of hardcore players that it will be a bad game for anyone else, but them. Considering how this was THE PLATFORMER back in the day and its marketing trying to hit the wider audience, game falls short on being great to everyone.
📋You are on the governmental list📋
…if you are considered as expert in this game. Seriously, completing this game alone makes you an elite game. You prove worthy of your mantle. You accomplish something which vast majority of gamers will never achieve nor has the stomach to try. And then developers add asinine achievements like completing the whole campaign chapter without dying… Or speedrunning every level and getting even better score than A+. I would say that such achievements are insane, but a surprising amount of people have them and a lot of people can complete campaign quickly. It is a game which is very receptive to skill and learning. A lot of levels become muscle memory. However, the fact that people get so obsessive, so dedicated makes me question their mental status. Maybe they would be better used by the government or aliens for some higher purpose, taken in a middle of a night and sent to an undisclosed location with other Super Meat Boy masters or autists to make great works for whole humanity. Maybe they could invent infinite energy source and to motivate them we would give a legendary golden pen which only one will ever exist or something.☠️The Cardinal Sin☠️
The controls and controling of meat boy is bad in this game. That is very surprising coming from such established and beloved title. However, when using Xbox controller which this game never fails to remind you to use, you encounter some issues which I did not with keyboard. When using controler, there is a frame delay on everything you do. If you want to shift direction, meatboy seems to have an additional frame where it stops, turns around and then moves. It feels really bad as you expect movement to be snappy, but its animation of turning around makes game feel irresponsive. There is also a massive issue with controllers when it comes to making an assisted jump. I had to use conveyor and for the love of God, I couldn’t figure out how to get a boost on a controller. I tried for dozen minutes when I accidentaly would get few shots where I accidentally succeed. With keyboard I didn’t had any such issues even if it was less comfortable to play this way.
Another issue which I had with controllers is that there is a delay when you press an action and Meatboy doing something. This is part of an issue with this game’s nature and inherent limitations of technology. I have fancy wireless xbox controller. However, that wireless part had introduced delay in a game where you actually have to perform in half a second intervals if not less. Even wired keyboard sometimes leaves things to chance and causes you to die despite doing everything fine. That delay on a controller absolutely kills this game and how it feels. Since it is such pixel precise platformer and how much developers push controllers despite them being god-awful way to play, I will have to deduct points for it.
The final issue is being applied to both control methods. The issue is that Meat Boy feels sticky on the surface. Sometimes it just fails to jump when you told him to. This is especially problematic on vertical surfaces when going off surface. There seems to be an issue in inherent delay between information being processed by CPU, it then needing to receive inputs from me and those inputs having to travel to CPU and be registered in a game world. It seems that in that gap between some inputs can be lost and this results in a feeling that Meat Boy didn’t do what he was supposed to do. What developers needed to do is to create platforms slightly longer, but keep it invisible in order to account for interface lag.
🔥You will need a Bandage Girl for this🔥
I do have a lot of things which I didn’t liked. This game for me ended more on a tedious side where I was happy that I was finished with it rather than feeling for more of it.- What annoys me is that this game loves to give you pixel perfect jumps at random. You can play through entire level and in order to properly beat the very last part, you have to make a very precise jump. This is where I had encountered issues with controllers not being precise. Even keyboards are lacking as there isn’t enough time to do some jumps and game feels like it is left to chance if you manage to make a jump or not. That is very disappointing coming from a supposedly skill based platformer.
Lack of Balance - The problem with Super Meat Boy is that it isn’t a game with tight balance, rising difficulty curve and well thought out levels. It is none of that. Levels can be very difficult or trivial depending on which character you choose to play. Super Meat Boy is fast and he just trivializes levels where speed is of upmost importance. However, in levels where you need to jump, maintain height or to do complex jumping, he is really bad. Some levels become either very easy or very hard. This is why scoring for levels is completely wrong, you can easily beat it far above A+ or to not even get close to that. Same for level difficulty. It varies widely and last chapter isn’t even the hardest. From such simple platformer, I had expected the opposite. Air tight balance. Masterfully crafted levels and difficulty curve. Perfect controls. These are qualities which I had missed in this game and why I went with a negative review.
NPCs – RNG elements - Another thing which annoyed me in this game are NPCs. This is pixel perfect platformer where people git gud through muscle memory and experience. Adding various monsters in this game who doesn’t follow the strict pre-determined path is very annoying. You can do the same thing and monster can get you or you can escape it. They are also a wild card in any encounter as you might lose their aggro all together or keep them through the level. They do not fit at all in this game and fortunately developers agree too as they dropped them in later levels. I was relieved to only fight pre-determined patroling monsters or to be shot at. Those things are completely predictable in how they behave. Various terrain hazzards like saws are the best, because then it is all up to you.
For Clinically Insane
Super Meat Boy isn’t a bad game. It is one of those cases where it advertisizes itself wrongly. Insane Steam achievements really set up the tone. It is a product for a very niche audience. Game has a lot of personality and content. It is awesome game for them. However, as one of truly modern PC platformers, it has surprising issues. Starting from fundamental problems with controls and movement of your character which is just undermine the entire game to whacky difficulty curve which can lead to a lot of frustration. It was a nice game, I grew a lot by playing it. I became god at platformers when previously it was bane of my existence thanks to Super Meat Boy. It is just that as a game it falls short to anyone other than people on the government’s list.
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