Something has gone wrong in a mad scientists’ laboratory. They’ve created an uncontrollable, maniacal creature who glows red and has a strange fascination with Arnold Schwarzenegger movies… Oh, and he can make himself detonate at will and has escaped. You are this creature, and its your job to make those scientists pay for… I guess creating you?
The story isn’t the strong point of this game. In fact, it’s barely there. So if you’re looking for the next Godfather movie, move on. Instead, this game is all about the platforming. ‘Splosion Man could just as well be played with an old school NES controller as there’s really only two things you can do: Move and ‘Splode. You can also suicide but most of the time you’ll just die. As long as your feet are on the ground, you can explode just about whenever you want, but once you go airborne, you’re limited to three blows which equates to triple jumping.
Most of the time, you’re running (or being propelled) from left to right, trying to get through 50 increasingly complex levels of death. Reaction time is critical and you need to be as precise as possible, or you die. Miss one detonation? Die. Blow up a hair too late? Die. Forget to pick up the fat scientist? Die. In fact, you will die in this game more than you’d probably like to… but don’t worry too much. While you’ll have to re-try sections of the game numerous times, the developers have crafted the levels beautifully, throwing down checkpoints in all the right places so you never have to repeat too much over and over.
The game is broken up into three worlds, each with its own quirky and entertaining final boss battle. While you blow through the game, you’ll learn new mechanics pretty much right when you just begin feeling like you need a new mechanic to learn. Each of the levels is setup as a mini puzzle and has a “par time” that you can attempt to hit (and probably fail doing so). Optimally, you’ll shoot for the fastest time through a level and that info is posted to the Xbox Live Leaderboards, but at first you’re probably just going to work at trying to get through a level without quitting or lobbing your controller through your LCD.
In an effort to reduce the feeling of platforming fatigue, Twisted Pixel have injected ‘Splosion Man with plenty of charm and whimsy (and gasoline probably). The lead character is memorable, maniacal, and magical with plenty of hilarious animations and voice work. Sometimes he’ll throw his arms out to the side and pretend he’s an airplane, other times he’ll hunch over and pretend he’s a gorilla complete with gorilla sounds. The levels are full of frightened scientists who both try to stop you, and run away from your explosiveness. If they get too close to a boom, they’ll comically turn into steaks and hams (no blood, just comedy here). There’s even a big, fat, donut eating scientist that comes with his own donuts theme song. If anything bad can be said about the artwork, its the backgrounds. Each world has a specific tileset that never deviates too far from the generic. A bit more variety would have been welcome.
In addition to the lengthy single player campaign, there’s a whole separate co-op multiplayer focused set of levels that are designed to be less about pinpoint precision, and more about working together as a team. You can take up to four folks (both online and offline) and try to traverse the levels with your own colored version of ‘Splosion Man. In addition to the new levels, you even get a few more mechanics to play with, like super jumps off of one another, and even a way to coordinate timed explosions.
‘Splosion Man is a classic platformer with changes made in all the right places. It’s a great looking, sometimes hilarious, often frustrating game, but its a hell of a lot of fun. Hearing ‘Splosion Man yell “GET TO THE CHOPPAH!” in a chipmunk inspired voice while blowing the meat out of a scientist makes the hair pulling seem not so bad and honestly, who doesn’t like explosions OR meat? Bad people, that’s who. Having the single player alone makes this game worthy of the price tag, but throwing an entirely separate cooperative mode makes it an incredible value. If you’ve got any love for the old platformers and want to see what a well done, more recent entry can pull off… go buy this game.
Score: 5 out of 5
The Good
Incredible sense of humor and style
Spot on platforming is difficult, but doesn’t get old
Plenty of stuff to do
The Bad
Needs more background variety
The Ugly
Missing a jump by that much.