Brian's Super Meat Boy review

Nice. I remember this game kicking my butt when I played it on XLBA. I guess it really is the grand-daddy of much more enjoyable games to come after it, like Celeste.

I had a fun month with this game on XBLA. Got up to the top 70K on the leaderboards (no idea where I'm at now, since it's been a long while since I've played it) before I got to the point where I might play an hour or so and clear no more than maybe 1 or 2 levels. For Light World, I was stuck at about 12-13 or so complete in the fifth world (need 17 to reach the boss). Had a lot of Dark World levels complete for the first couple worlds, but my success there was drying up big-time after those two.

Sort of weird, but with the XBLA games, I actually found myself getting better at those sorts of fast-moving, quick-reflex games than I'd ever been. After spending as much time with this game, Trials Evolution and Fusion and the two 'Splosion Man games, damn, those Mega Man games didn't seem so hard when I was replaying them to review MM Anniversary Collection! So that era of lower-cost/budget games must have been doing something right, if they got me legitimately competent at games like that!

Yeah, I get that. There's hope yet for even our old asses. Which is funny, because, clearly our reflexes have slowed down, but we've somehow managed to get better at games just by playing supremely difficult ones and dying over and over. By the way, if you haven't already, you should play Celeste. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd have reviewed it.

I'll have to look it up. Since it's on the PS4, it'll be easy for me to get. But, it might be a while, since Trials Rising is gonna be out soon, supposedly, so I'll have to dive headfirst into that.

But yeah, it is funny. I think the key is that those newer, super-tough games are just so accessible. Super Meat Boy levels are mostly tiny and you have unlimited lives (except for those retro-themed side levels where you have to do three in three lives), so you can drill yourself on one until you've learned it. The Trials games give you checkpoints every couple seconds, so you can clear all but the toughest tracks simply through attrition, but you need to get better at them to get superior medals, which are needed because you need those medals to unlock more groupings of tracks. The 'Splosion Man games have unlimited lives and a fair amount of checkpoints, as did the Rayman games on the 360 (which were tough, but not at the "super-challenge" level).

Compared to those NES games where you had three lives and possibly limited continues and it is so much easier to work, work, work until you've figured out a tough level because you never have to step back and start an entire area over and you'll always be right next to that jump you keep botching or that obstacle you can't get past. Even if these games are more difficult than older ones, they don't feel frustrating or that brutal because of that convenience.

Good point -- that's what it's all about, that saved progress. Celeste is available on Steam too, btw, and while you're at it, check out Cuphead for another hard but amazing game.

I generally try to do the pure action on consoles, since I haven't bought a Steam controller for my computer yet and, therefore, prefer to play games that are more keyboard/mouse oriented there. But it looks like Cuphead isn't on the PS4, so if I want to play it, I'll have to get that controller.

So far, the main thing this talking has done is get me back into playing the two Trials games I have in order to be prepared for Trials Rising. Seems that I'm a bit rusty! So I started doing easy courses in order to 0-fault them to get some skill back and then work with more medium and hard ones. Expert, not so much. Those courses are evil. I've completed one of them on Evolution and had well over triple-digit faults.

You know you can use your PS4 controller to play Steam games, right?

Uh, I do now!