Metascore
87 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 11 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 11
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 11
  3. Negative: 0 out of 11
  1. Dec 16, 2010
    95
    This sublime platformer provides tons of challenge, precise controls, and incredible level design that will keep you glued to the screen.
  2. May 3, 2011
    90
    Oldschool-Jump and Run at its finest!
  3. Feb 11, 2011
    90
    As beautiful as it is hard. You'll love it and hate it at the same time, but ultimately walk away satisfied. [Feb 2011, p.59]
  4. Dec 30, 2010
    90
    A delightfully challenging platformer, and the most fun you'll have by dying repeatedly. [Feb 2011, p.98]
  5. Dec 16, 2010
    90
    If your nerves can tolerate really high difficulty, this is one of the best platforming games of the year.
  6. Dec 16, 2010
    90
    Super Meat Boy is one of the best modern platformers. It's infuriating, exasperating, and arduous, but it's also delightful, thrilling, and hilarious.
  7. Jun 1, 2011
    89
    Blood, action, romance. Super Meat Boy Ultra Edition has got it all.
  8. Mar 21, 2011
    85
    Super Meat boy is hard, very hard. But when you finally beat that goddamn level – it's a feeling that is impossible to describe. [Feb 2011, p.103]
  9. 80
    Indie gaming at its retro-loving best, with some of the most cunningly-designed and purposefully infuriating 2D gameplay of the year.
  10. Feb 21, 2011
    80
    It's a very hard game, but also extremly motivating and fun. The puzzles are cleverly designed and the retro style very charming. If you like the genre, you have to buy this game.
  11. Jan 31, 2011
    80
    Super Meat Boy is one of the trickiest, difficult but incredibly interesting games of 2010. But you'd have to be a real geek to enjoy it.
User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 189 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 54 out of 64
  2. Negative: 5 out of 64
  1. Simply put, the best true platforming game to come out in YEARS. As you can immediately notice, the user scores are quite polarized, and I believe this is true to the nature of the game. If you find joy in surmounting difficult (But FAIR) platforming challenges, this game is the PERFECT game for you. Let me also state that the 10 I assigned this game was not some knee-jerk reaction to a merely clever indie game. This game is fantastic by ANY standard, it is perfectly executed. There is nothing in the game where I have ever said, man, I wish X existed. In a time where games like Fallout New Vegas and Civ 5 release with the swath of glitches and bugs in the game, it is refreshing to have a game ship out that is immensely bug free, it is absolutely precise. You may even grow to treat this precision as a foe, as there is a razor thin edge between success and death in each level, there is no "give", if you touch a deadly obstacle with any part of your hit-box, you can count on dying. However, this consistency gives rise to the games greatest achievement, the overall fairness of the game. I am astounded that I read other user reviews that actually complained about the controls, they are absolutely astounding. To be fair, I do use a Xbox360 controller, I could see that without one it may take longer to "pick up" but the controls are nevertheless, precise. The character becomes an extension of your will, you'll find sometimes that when an unexpected hazard appears, you react quickly and ably within fractions of a second, as if you were acting out of instinct. I am also disturbed to read some people claiming that this game's difficulty is just a mechanism to lengthen the game. I find it hard to believe we even played the same game. The levels are difficult to be sure, but they are absolutely fair, if you die, it is your fault, there are no invisible traps, your character will not move if you don't tell him to. And even if you die, the levels each can be completed in under a minute, so if you do die (and you will die, often) almost no progress is lost. You will not be spending 5 minutes just to get a chance to practice the spot you died at last time. The other reason I find this explanation difficult to believe is that there are over 300 levels. The game is already massive, it wouldn't need to be lengthened by unnecessary difficulty. In short: A difficult platformer, but an absolute masterpiece if you are willing to take up the challenge. Full Review »
  2. Super Meat Boy revives the painful old days of restricted technology that forced game developers to make unintuitive and difficult games to make their products last longer. On top of that, it adds silly "features", which might as well be called gimmicks for what they're worth, such as "boss battles" and extra playable characters. The boss battles are nothing more than a regular level with a big object following the character, while extra characters work the exact same way as Meat Boy, with silly, gimmicky "abilities" that nobody will ever use, at the cost of speed. But unsatisfied with the state of their game, Team Meat has also shipped the game on PC without testing it on different configurations, resulting in missing graphics elements, glitches everywhere, frequent crashes and a lack of support for direct input controllers. Talk about a lack of polish. The rest of the game consists of jumping, running and avoiding saws. and holes. That's basically it. Story? No big deal, let's just make a short animation at the beginning of the game and call it a day. There's also the fact that the main character is a piece of meat trying to save a girl made from bandages from a fetus in a jar in a suit. Tasteless. Also reminds me of Super Mario. This game is original, too. I added two points to it for tricking me into buying it in the first place. But ultimately, Super Meat Boy is an incredibly disappointing "game" (or should I call it a "chore"?). Full Review »
  3. Whoever said this game is fun is a masochist. It's fun if you like replaying the same bloody level 40 times because there's no way to beat it aside from trial and error and mind-numbing memorization of button sequences until you could play the level blind-folded. Oldschool my @$$. What is up with people's obsession with "oldschool" anyway? Oldschool sucked. Mario sucked ... sure, it was great at the time, because *there was nothing else.* While I'm at it, guess what else? Goldeneye sucks too. It's not "the greatest FPS of all time." Try playing it on an HDTV? It looks like garbage and it controls even worse. It was just the best of what was available. People's over-bloated infatuation with nostalgia is beyond puzzling. People always want to think "the good old days" were better. Really? In the "good old days" people used to die from diarrhea. The "good old days" blew. This blows. Stop pretending it's awesome just because it references gaming in the 80s... Full Review »