fastkilr's Super Meat Boy (XLA) review

Great review.

This in particular, is wonderful:

. Team Meat’s given you all of the finesse needed to work your way around platforms, has provided you with complete control of the slippery slab of meat, so really, any problems you might have with SMB can be written off as user error. This is a brutal dynamic that’s rarely seen in today’s mainstream games, one that holds absolute adoration and simultaneously a level of contempt for its audience. It provides gamers with hours of entertaining gameplay but refuses to pick up the tab for the ensuing years of therapy that are likely to follow.

I'm a big fan of challenge and high expectations, but I'm not playing any game that requires years of therapy.

//Zig

Ha yeah that's what Leroux was saying. The game is seriously hard as hell.

I was pretty terrified of this game at first, but I found it enjoyable in the end. It's hard, but not impossible.

The thing about SMB is that it came out in the wrong era. People praise Contra, Metal Slug, shmups etc which are just as tough if not tougher. The controls are so good that the hundreds (if not more) of deaths never feel cheap and the game is pretty much always fun.