After over 15 years of placing gamers by way of punishing trials, the Super Meat Boy sequence is lastly up towards a fierce problem of its personal design: shifting to 3D. Super Meat Boy 3D seems to evolve an influential indie basic by convincingly adapting its ultraprecise 2D platforming into a 3D recreation that’s each bit as brutal. It’s a smart, if overdue, path for the sequence to run in, however like a Super Meat Boy degree, it’s not a feat you’re possible to pull off in your first attempt.
Though it is aware of the marks it wants to hit, Super Meat Boy 3D struggles with execution. Developed by Sluggerfly and Team Meat (although as soon as once more minus sequence co-creator Edmund McMillen, who quietly break up from the studio a decade in the past whereas engaged on Mewgenics), the most recent installment is a sloppier platformer than its 2D counterparts. Loose motion and restrictive camerawork drop an added layer of unanticipated problem on an already robust platformer. What might have been a second for reinvention as a substitute feels just like the sequence confidently leaping head-first into the identical meat grinder.
Super Meat Boy 3D isn’t hiding something about its elevator pitch: it’s a new Super Meat Boy recreation, however in 3D this time. Strip away the attitude shift and you’ve got the identical basic recreation that helped usher within the indie recreation revolution in 2010. Playing as the identical pint-sized meatball man, you make your method by way of a sequence of lethal platforming gauntlets in pursuit of the dastardly Dr. Fetus. There’s no fight. Your solely weapon is endurance as you run and soar round hellish loss of life traps stuffed with buzzsaws, spikes, and different lethal methods that may immediately flip you into a purple splat upon contact.
Everything that made the unique Super Meat Boy work as a little bit of style satire holds true in 3D. When you play a recreation like Super Mario Bros., you’re certain to die a lot. You’re additionally not meant to give that an excessive amount of thought. Mario at all times returns to life seconds later, as peppy as ever. Super Meat Boy lampooned that by making you deal with every failure like a digital homicide. Blood trails from your fallen brethren paint the surfaces and an end-of-level replay exhibits each single one in all your deaths play out without delay. It rubbed your face in all that purple goop like a canine, turning the sport itself into the supervillain you felt pushed to defeat. Super Meat Boy 3D proudly carries that antagonistic streak ahead even when it doesn’t add a lot to the dialog in addition to wiseass loading display screen hints that urge you to get good. It’s 2026, however right here, it’s nonetheless 2010.
The fundamentals nonetheless land, for probably the most half. Each degree throughout its 5 most important worlds (and their more durable darkish world variants) is a exactly designed American Ninja Warrior impediment course. Not a entice is misplaced as Team Meat and Sluggerfly fill every stage with delightfully merciless gotcha moments meant to catch you off guard proper as you’ve constructed up your confidence. Sometimes I’d lock in throughout a degree and get all the way in which to the tip just for a set of spikes to come out of the wall the place I used to be least anticipating them. The thrill comes when repeated trial and error ends in gradual positive factors, till you’re abruptly in a position to conquer a degree you’ve been bashing your head towards in 20 seconds flat.
The soar to 3D additionally offers the builders room to play with a ton of latest platforming methods proper by way of the tip of the sport. Bounding off criss-crossing practice vehicles or timing your jumps excellent to dance round electrified platforms brings Super Meat Boy’s simple platforming extra in step with Nintendo’s ingenious design philosophies. Not each gimmick works — particularly a late-game one which toys with gravity — however Super Meat Boy 3D doesn’t stick on one concept for lengthy, and also you don’t want to beat all 15 of a world’s ranges to unlock the boss. It’s a stunning little bit of forgiveness for a sequence that despises you.
Physically navigating these worlds is one other story. Meat Boy has a easy set of strikes past his dash and jumps, like an air sprint and an infinite wall soar. You can transfer far and freely with these instruments as a result of the motion could be very unfastened in contrast to the exact 2D video games. It feels custom-built for speedrunners who need to discover exploits, permitting gamers to skip complete sections of a degree with a well-timed soar sequence. The facet impact of that’s that Meat Boy feels extra unwieldy and unpredictable in 3D. It’s more durable to nail down pixel-perfect jumps if you’re butting up towards surprising physics quirks that you simply want to study and account for in every degree.
Everything about Super Meat Boy 3D is messy in contrast to the scientific precision of the sequence’ 2D video games.
That could be a tremendous compromise should you weren’t wrestling with different annoyances. The mounted digicam angles make it tough to gauge depth of area in ranges. I had loads of ranges the place I wanted to wall soar from a flat floor round an impediment, however digicam placement made it tough to choose the place I used to be in 3D area. Other instances I’d try to land on a platform towards a wall solely to fall by way of a tiny hole hidden by the digicam angle. That’s additionally sophisticated by the truth that Meat Boy could be very small on display screen, so it’s simple to lose observe of him in busy ranges the place plenty of equipment is spinning within the distance. Bugs compound that additional; I had loads of circumstances the place I someway lodged myself inside a wall. (The recreation’s devoted suicide button positive got here in helpful there.)
You can throw in a unusual issue curve on high of that. Levels wildly oscillate between simple and unimaginable with little sense of naturally mounting problem. Its first boss stage, a lengthy auto-scrolling chase scene, is one in all its hardest ranges, whereas its fourth boss took me a few makes an attempt to piece collectively an 11-second victory. Everything about Super Meat Boy 3D is messy in contrast to the scientific precision of the sequence’ 2D video games.
I’d be extra prepared to stay with the warts in the event that they have been the unwanted side effects of experimentation, however they aren’t — and that’s what finally disappoints me concerning the challenge. Moving a online game sequence from 2D to 3D is an thrilling second, traditionally. It’s not simply a matter of switching the attitude or buffing up the visuals; it’s a chance to reinvent. Super Mario 64 isn’t revered as a basic as a result of it faithfully reworked Super Mario Bros. 3’s construction into 3D. It allowed Nintendo to make Mario’s moveset extra expressive, discover new degree targets that went past operating from left to proper, and construct extra artistic play areas that embraced verticality. No 3D Mario recreation since has taken that freedom without any consideration, consistently rethinking how Mario can work together along with his worlds. That pivot level can flip enjoyable video games into empires.
Super Meat Boy 3D chooses to play it protected as a substitute, which is stunning for a sequence that’s all about confronting threat. It’s too snug following the identical method and treating the additional dimension as a new gimmick reasonably than a chance. I discover myself much less excited by it than I used to be the poorly acquired Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine, a spinoff recreation that detoured from platforming to create an evil riff on Puyo Puyo as a substitute. For all its issues, there was a imaginative and prescient I might see: What would it not seem like if we utilized the design fundamentals of Super Meat Boy to a completely completely different style? That’s a enjoyable thought experiment that furthers the sequence’ meta commentary on recreation design. Super Meat Boy 3D makes me really feel just like the sequence has run out of questions to ask, and that’s a harmful artistic place to be caught in — like getting trapped between two buzzsaws closing in on each other.
For those that simply need a basic Super Meat Boy recreation with a novel idea, Super Meat Boy 3D fills that craving decently sufficient. There are plenty of dastardly new traps, hidden bandages to discover in every degree, A+ completion instances to chase, and even secret ranges to seek out. It’s a strong rage machine for the type of masochist who welcomes the ache. But as a continued dialog with the platformers that impressed the sequence, it misses a step within the soar to 3D. And everyone knows what occurs if you miss a step in Super Meat Boy. Splat. Try once more.
Super Meat Boy 3D can be launched March 31 on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The recreation was reviewed on Windows PC utilizing a prerelease obtain code supplied by Headup. You can discover additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
