I wasn’t sure that Super Meat Boy could work in 3D. The original games are so precise, responsive, and focused in a way that actually pulling the gameplay off in three dimensions was an incredibly tall order. Thankfully, Hell Pie developer Sluggerfly was put in charge, and they’ve done a very good job of capturing the feel of the series alongside giving it its own unique spin. It isn’t quite as good as its inspiration and there are some issues here and there with the perspective shift and the boss battles, but this is a very strong game that offers what I love about the series.
Super Meat Boy 3D takes place across five worlds with 15 levels and a boss battle each. Completing a level quickly enough will unlock a far more difficult dark world level, too, giving the game a decent amount of content. Granted, beating the main game on its own won’t take all that much time, especially since the overall challenge for the main levels is a bit on the lower side comparatively, especially since the worlds mostly don’t get more challenging until nearly halfway through. The real challenge here is, of course, in the dark world levels, which are far trickier and more demanding.
As ever, your goal in each level is simply to make it to the end. Levels are incredibly short, often taking around half a minute to complete. Many of them are shockingly lenient, too, as I was frequently beating them in just a couple of tries, which is really surprising compared to how brutal past games could be. Meat Boy himself is mostly the same, as he spends his time wall jumping and manoeuvring around hazards. The devs have done a really good job of transitioning his movement to 3D while still keeping the classic game feel intact.
Meat Boy can now wall run at an angle (which is a bit awkward) as well as air dash, which is a really nice addition to his kit. Combining them makes it feel like a cinch to zoom across levels, and the controls mostly feel very precise and responsive. The perspective can occasionally make it difficult to see where you are or what’s going on, but I mostly found that the camera does a pretty good job of keeping up. Levels each have bandages to find, just like before, and these unlock extra playable characters (some of which come from Sluggerfly’s previous games.)
There are some issues here and there, though. Some levels have sections that just don’t make great sense or are hard to get through for the wrong reasons. One level in world 3 requires you to get past some lasers at the end of the level, but it’s weirdly difficult to see what you need here, and the lasers themselves are difficult to understand in the level’s context. These issues aren’t frequent, but they do crop up enough that I wish that their design had seen a bit more care, as they really needed to be improved.
Nowhere is this clearer than in some of Super Meat Boy 3D‘s boss battles. The first boss battle is a pretty massive difficulty spike that’s tougher than anything else in the first two worlds. The worst boss battles here are incredibly, stupidly memorizey and kind of awkward, and I often hated playing them. Weirdly, the second boss battle was too easy, while the third was even more memorizey and unfair than the first was. They’re also often auto-scroll, which is fine, but the fact that so many of the hazards require you to repeatedly die to them to carefully learn your way past almost each and every one really ruffled my feathers.
Overall, I’m pretty pleased with Super Meat Boy 3D, but I do wish that some levels (and mostly boss levels) had gotten a bit more TLC, as some of them just don’t feel like they’re quite where they need to be. It’s still an enjoyable game that offers plenty of what made me love the series to begin with, even if I wish it had an option for a more typical 3D camera (that would make the game much harder, but still, options are options.)
Super Meat Boy 3D: Super Meat Boy 3D is mostly a great 3D version of the classic game, even if some aspects can get kind of annoying here and there. – Andrew Farrell
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