Super Meat Boy 3D

If I had to pick out one game to describe as 'devilishly fun', it would be Super Meat Boy. There's something so wickedly delightful and cruel, yet fantastic, about the platforming gameplay, level design, and philosophy on difficulty. It's not quite as rage-inducing as what the sadist Bennett Foddy cooks up, but it's also far from what you'd regard as an accessible platformer too. Super Meat Boy has always existed in a Goldilocks zone of being just hard enough to get you worked up while still having levels that after a reasonable amount of practice and trial and error are conquerable.

I bring this up as Super Meat Boy has operated as such for a long while because of its 2D gameplay design. The developers can dedicate all of their time to ensuring that the game retains that Goldilocks approach as they only need to worry about two dimensions. This is no longer the case. Super Meat Boy 3D is now here and it's changing things up by quite a significant amount, but does it work in the series favour?

In answer to that question, all I can say is that I'm not quite convinced but I'll get to that in a moment. For now, let me highlight what Super Meat Boy 3D does right, as there are quite a few different things. There's the overall feel, the art direction, the brutality, the basic but motivationally-clear narrative, the simplicity of the gameplay. All of this is Super Meat Boy through-and-through and you will not doubt for one minute what game you are playing with this new chapter. There's still separately-styled worlds with an accompanying Dark World, there's still additional characters to unlock if you have the guts to try and claim every single collectible, and an emphasis on speedrunning and completing each level as quickly and faultlessly as possible. The Super Meat Boy formula has been preserved and built upon to great effect and yet, something just doesn't feel right to me when playing Super Meat Boy 3D...

Jumping from 2D to 3D is a massive undertaking as it requires a complete design overhaul in ways that perhaps are lacking a final degree of refinement and precision in this game. The Super Meat Boy formula is too fast and brutal for a player to be concerned about your character's exact positioning, and yet in this game, this consumes most of your thoughts. It may sound trivial, but instead of focussing on attempting to squeeze through buzzsaws and meat grinders, you'll be focussed on simply keeping Meat Boy on a 'safe' platform, because the movement is so fast and snappy that it's incredibly easy to make basic movement mistakes.

Adding to this is the fact that the 3D nature of the game doesn't work like an over-the-shoulder camera, meaning you don't get a soul-crushingly hard 3D Prince of Persia-like platformer. Rather the camera is a fixed position as it follows you through the level, meaning the 3D nature mostly revolves around how Meat Boy now has a few extra movement options when working through a level, something you don't really need.

Essentially, the point I'm trying to make is Super Meat Boy 3D's 3D element doesn't actually feel like a gameplay evolution but more of a design gimmick that fails to improve the experience. There's no argument it's different, but there haven't been many Super Meat Boy games so there's not necessarily a desperation for overhauled options, especially if they don't generate an experience that feels like the next great step forward for the series. This game isn't that. It's not a detraction or a step back either, it's simply a side-step taking Super Meat Boy on a path it doesn't need to go down. It's a bit like Sonic the Hedgehog in 2D and 3D. There is a world where the character can exist in both dimensions, but there's no denying that the lightning-fast and fluid platforming gameplay works best in a 2D format. That's the exact same way that Super Meat Boy 3D makes me feel about this franchise. It's not a disaster nor even a poor incorporation, it just doesn't feel like the Meat Boy formula really fits 3D in a gameplay manner.

Perhaps there is some room for refinement to make this new marriage of traditional gameplay and an additional dimension work, be that having a closer camera so that it's easier to keep tabs on the rather tiny protagonist, or even slowing everything down just a tad to improve the flow. Either way, as it stands, I'm not entirely convinced by Super Meat Boy 3D in its current form as it simply feels too imprecise for a series of such brutality.

So long story short, Super Meat Boy 3D comes across as a game that doesn't evolve the series but rather takes it down a different path it doesn't need to explore. The theme, the tone, the style, it all still comes across as authentically Super Meat Boy, but the gameplay has a slightly uncomfortable edge where it doesn't quite feel right for one reason or another. Super Meat Boy may be back but this isn't the character in top form.