Super Meat Boy tests, rewards patience

Dr. Fetus is a JERK.

When people tell tales about the controllers they’ve flung in fits of gaming-induced madness, I generally shrug. This hobby of ours is something we do to keep madness at bay, right? How frustrating could a game be, and whose interests are served by chucking a $50 peripheral at a wall?

But I’m starting to sympathize.

In the ten days since I bought SUPER MEAT BOY from the Xbox Live Marketplace, I’ve died many thousands of times. I’ve been through the five stages of grief over and over again. I’ve slung hurtful, often scatological obscenities at my 360 that I normally save for arguments with my family.

SUPER MEAT BOY is exactly why people abuse cliches like “love to hate” and “emotional rollercoaster.” It’s an immaculate and personable 2-D platformer, stuffed with hundreds of levels and unlockable rewards. It’s also very fair, packing ruthlessly precise controls that pin the responsibility for poorly timed jumps squarely on the player.

You will make tens of thousands of those jumps, and most of them will send you hurtling into spkies, lasers, salt, ghosts and other fatal obstacles.

The good news is that, in most cases, your only punishment is a nearly instantaneous trip back to the beginning of a given level. The bad news, depending on your persuasion, is that this will happen over and over again.

The game’s shoestring narrative, told through a series of charming, nostalgia-tweaking cutscenes, casts you as Meat Boy, an ambulatory ham cube with strong feelings for Bandage Girl, who is also a cube. But she’s pink.

At the story’s outset, the nefarious Dr. Fetus punches and kidnaps Bandage Girl, leading Meat Boy through dozens upon dozens of buzzsaw- and lava-laden gauntlets before they square off in the game’s post-apocalyptic finale.

If you clear any of those levels within a prescribed “par” time (an increasingly demanding chore), you’ll unlock its “Dark World” analog — an even more difficult version of the same area.

Experienced jumpers will sail through the first couple dozen of these, but they’ll be counting on their calluses by the time they reach the game’s disingenuously titled “Rapture” world.

Those levels, coupled with a handful of brutally tough “warp zones” and other secrets, will keep you plenty occupied. Team Meat, the two-man development studio behind the game, has positively stuffed this game with content, and a free batch of levels is reportedly in the downloadable offing.

If you have the stomatch for it, SUPER MEAT BOY is an outrageously good deal at $10. It’s already available on the Xbox Live Marketplace now; look for it later on WiiWare and the PC.