Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 11 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 377 Ratings

  • Summary: Super Meat Boy is a tough as nails platformer where you play as an animated cube of meat who's trying to save his girlfriend (who happens to be made of bandages) from an evil fetus in a jar wearing a tux.

    Our meaty hero will leap from walls, over seas of buzz saws, through crumbling caves
    and pools of old needles. Sacrificing his own well being to save his damsel in distress. Super Meat Boy brings the old school difficulty of classic NES titles like Mega Man 2, Ghost and Goblins and Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Japanese one) and stream lines them down to the essential no BS straight forward twitch reflex platforming.

    Ramping up in difficulty from hard to soul crushing SMB will drag Meat boy though haunted hospitals, salt factories and even hell itself. And if 300+ single player levels weren't enough SMB also throws in epic boss fights, a level editor and tons of unlock able secrets, warp zones and hidden characters.
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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. 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]

See all 11 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 80 out of 96
  2. Negative: 10 out of 96
  1. This game is perfect. First of all, this is as much content as I've EVER seen in a game this price (free roguelikes aside as that would be completely unfair :D). HUNDREDS of stages, challenges, and unlockable goodies. Also, this game is hardcore. This is a real treat when the general game holds your hand with garbage like a quest compass and regenerating HP... in Super Meat Boy, if you screw up, you die. Usually instantly. And it only gets harder. The learning curve is also fantastically satisfying. You will consistently get better from play. When you are playing the first boss it WILL seem difficult. After playing the next few levels if you go back you'll wonder what was so hard. You will stand back and say, "oh my god, I'm DOING this." The mechanics are very smooth, jumping, wall jumping, dashing, these are fun and for the most part the game seems very fair. When you die you'll know YOU messed up and it wasn't just something stupid due to chance. Point being, if you like video games, get this game. Also, use a controller. This game is a seven with a keyboard, a ten with a controller. Do it. Expand
  2. This game is good. i read reviews before i bought it so i would know what to expect, and it delivered. very precise controls, and good level design. while the early levels are pretty easy, the game gets hard, and i mean HARD. But surprisingly not frustrating and hard. It seems like more of a challenge than it feels cheap, because level design is so good. Good game to play for minutes or hours at a time. Expand
  3. 7
    So the game is enjoyable... however... It is not really designed for the PC. I found the controls hard to get used to. I have some old USB controller laying around and I might give that a try. Really this is the only thing I found that was holding the game back from it becoming one of my top time wasters. Expand
  4. The game-play in Super Meat Boy deserves a solid 8. But I'm going to give it a 4 anyway. Why? Because the PC port feels horribly unpolished.

    An XBox 360 controller is (understandably) the recommended method of controlling Meat Buy. But does a it work out the box? No. The buttons mapping is completely mangled with no way of reconfiguring in-game. So fixing up the input config file I eventually got the stage controls to work but the menus are still buggered.

    Whatever, I can deal with that; except that there are parts of the menu that are unreachable with a mangle button setup. Oops. Fortunately having done a bit of game-dev specifically controller input I got the feeling that it was a Human Interface Device gone wrong. Fine, found it and removed it from the Device manager and everything worked.

    I should be happy. No, I've spent my time fixing issues the developers should have dealt with. Added to the controller woes: SMB does not start on some machines (screen remains black) and the graphics are messed up on others (mostly black textures) making it unplayable.

    A good concept? Yes. A good implementation? No.
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See all 96 User Reviews