Super Meat Boy Review

I love Super Meat Boy. I want to hug it and give it awards and then hit it with something large and heavy until its lifeless body stops twitching and then throw it into a river with cement shoes on. Then I shall dive in after it screaming “I’m sorry!” at the top of my lungs while weeping slightly.

This is the somewhat confusing relationship I have with this brutally difficult platformer. I both love it and hate it. I’m absolutely addicted to an experience that should rightfully have me in tears, not of joy, but of pain and sorrow. Instead, I’m finding that I can’t put it down and don’t quite know why.

Traditionally, a review of a difficult game is supposed to start with a warning. Something along the lines of, “this game isn’t for the faint of heart” or “this game isn’t for the easily frustrated”. But therein lies the beauty of Super Meat Boy. Lines like these are not necessary. I am, in fact, “the easily frustrated” and I am smitten by Meat Boy’s masochistic charms.

Through a brilliant combination of precise control, superb level design, and forgiving game mechanics that do not punish death but instead reward skill, Super Meat Boy takes what could have been one of the most maddening games ever to be released upon the gaming public and turns it into a sublime example of pure gaming at its best.

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First Impressions : Costume Quest

Costume Quest (XBLA, PSN)

Publisher: THQ

Developer: Double Fine

Release Date: October 19, 2010

Date of Play: October 19, 2010

Double fine has a bit of a troubled history when it comes to the sales of its stellar titles. Its wonderful blend of humor, original gameplay concepts, and terrific writing produces games that are critically acclaimed, but don’t sell all that well. This is a shame because Tim Schafer and company produce games that every gamer should be able to play and love and cherish.

With Costume Quest, Double Fine begins a new adventure into the realm of downloadable games. Potentially, this could be a match made in heaven. It allows Double Fine to express its wonderful weirdness in a more compact, cheaper form. Games such as these are less expensive both for the company to produce and for the consumer to purchase. This lower cost of entry has worked well for other downloadable titles that veer from the safety of the mainstream, so it could be the perfect fit for Double Fine’s unique brand of entertainment. Should this venture work out, not only might Schafer’s company have a brighter future ahead of it, but we might get to see more frequent releases from the company as well.

Can Costume Quest manage to condense the wonderment brought on by Psychonauts and Brütal Legend into a package that feels both worthy of the company’s history and of your $15? Let’s find out.

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First Impressions - DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue (demo)

DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue

PSN Demo

Release Date: September 21, 2010 (PSN); September 22, 2010 (XBLA)

Date of Play: September 21, 2010

• It is hard to shake the feeling that I am playing the exact same game as the first DeathSpank. The title menu is the same, the menu music is the same, and the animated intro isn’t the same but it’s close enough. The whole thing feels like a rehash. That’s not necessarily terrible, but I hope there’s something more here. 
• I wonder if your save carries over from the first or if they have some way of explaining why the mighty hero has randomly lost all of his cool shit and gone back to square one with his abilities. I won’t be able to tell without buying the full game, which I have not yet done, but I’m curious.
• Just as I make a comment about the game perhaps lacking new ideas, I actually begin to play and the first weapon I pick up is a gun. Hmm. Intriguing. Not sure if that’s good or bad yet.
• Come to think of it, the gun is just a retooling of the crossbow from the last game isn’t it? Never mind.
• Already there’s a little prick of an enemy who likes to shoot me and then run away forcing me to blast it with my gun/pea shooter. I hate enemies like that. So annoying.
• Unsurprising revelation: just like the first game, the dialog is the best part of this demo. I just hope it’s up to the quality of the writing of the first game. So far so good, though. I’ve already had a number of laughs. 
• Oh great. The game is already resorting to bathroom humor. This is a good sign. Yeah. 

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First Impressions: Monday Night Combat

Online multiplayer games typically don’t tend to be a big draw for me. I like them in principle, but I lack the dedication to practice enough to become good at them, so my experiences tend to consist of hopping online, getting stomped a few times, muttering to myself that I wish I were better at the game, and then never playing again.

But sometimes a game comes along that can convince even me to hop on its bandwagon. Monday Night Combat is just such a game. 

Monday Night Combat is a brilliant mix of well-worn elements that combine to form a captivating whole. Take a large dose of Team Fortress’s class-based team shooter gameplay, mix in a couple of portions of tower defense, and top it off with a pleasingly thick layer of icing in the form of an appealing grandiose sports game presentation. What you end up with is an addictive shooter with high replayability, plenty of depth, and quite a bit of strategy to boot. 

Monday Night Combat doesn’t overwhelm you with modes or options. One could cynically say that it feels like a $15 downloadable title rather than a full retail release, but I prefer to think that it simply pared down the experience to only the most necessary elements and then polished them to a fine sheen. What you’re left with is perhaps lacking in quantity, but of a quality that will stand up to just about any full retail shooter you compare it to. 

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