Developer: Team Meat
Publisher: Team Meat
Platform: PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch, Android/iOs
Tested On: Switch
Super Meat Boy Forever – Review
Released back in 2010, Super Meat Boy became a massive hit and one of the best known indie darlings, to the point that it grew to be considered one of the greatest games of all time. After 10 years, a long-awaited second game in the series has finally released in the shape of Super Meat Boy Forever, which takes the original formula and revamps it as an autorunner.
Story
Super Meat Boy Forever’s story is quite simple: after the dastardly Dr. Fetus steals Meat Boy and Bandage Girl’s baby, the duo sets out to stop him and retrieve their kid. To do so, they’ll have to chase the villain throughout several areas calling back to the original game and a few new ones.
While the game’s story may not be a masterclass of storytelling, it definitely does its job as a something entertaining to tie the levels together, only improved by the constant callbacks and references. In each area, Super Meat Boy Forever parodies other games or itself in its classic ridiculous and delightful style.
Graphics
Completely revamped since the original game, Super Meat Boy Forever’s graphics present a crisp coat of paint with expressive and well made animations. Despite most not being mechanically different, the game also presents quite a wide variety of enemies, changing visually throughout the areas.
These areas also have their own strong, visually distinct styles, each fitting their particular theme. For example, the desert area features meat hooks, rusty metal and lots of crates, while the lab has lasers and hi-tech gadgets instead. This theme also applies to the different bosses, which all have different gimmicks and styles.
Soundtrack
The game’s soundtrack is also very well made with loads of amazing tracks and great SFX. All of the music changes for each of the different areas with alternate tracks on the dark versions of each, making the game feature quite a big amount of different songs. The SFX are particularly satisfying due to the way they combine with the art to make attacks satisfying and deaths squishy, as befitting a character made out of raw meat.
Gameplay
As previously mentioned, Super Meat Boy Forever is an auto-scroller, in particular a platformer one, where the player must use the tight controls to dodge incoming danger. While a departure from the original game, Forever still captures the essence of what made Super Meat Boy a great game, this being fast-paced gameplay and simple mechanics.
These mechanics are only a handful and easy to understand. Players will start and end the game using exactly the same move set, which consists of a jump, a dash attack while jumping, sliding and a slide attack. By using the dash attacks, players will also move faster, being usable again after landing or hitting an enemy with it. In later levels, several modifiers applied to the dash attack will also be occasionally found, slightly changing or adding to its effect during a single use with things such as a short range teleport or generating blocks behind the player.
By combining these modifiers with new environmental hazards, the game effectively increases the difficulty without altering the core gameplay. In each area, different hazards will be featured, requiring the player to optimize their movement accordingly in order to survive.
It is worth mentioning that most of the boss fights don’t really feature any of these hazards, opting instead for a more straightforward “dodge attacks until the weak point glows” approach. While a shame, they still are quite entertaining nonetheless. The last boss fight, in particular, shines for its uniqueness, being an exception to the format and combining different hazards with the mentioned added effects to the player’s dash.
Super Meat Boy Forever also features quite a few areas, with six to start with and another six harder “dark” worlds, which can be unlocked by obtaining good scores in the light world versions of the levels. Each of the areas also has a secret level with unique gameplay, which can be found through glitch portals appearing in a few levels. After completing the game, an extra “glitch” world will also appear for players, featuring unique mechanics on top of the usual ones and combining all the different areas.
After finishing the game, players can also experience it in a different way thanks to the procedural generation of the New Game +, which will remake the levels from several presets. That said, this system can break at times, leading to unfinishable levels in some cases.
Conclusion
While a departure from its original formula, Super Meat Boy Forever is still a worthy successor to the original game. That said, they shouldn’t be considered the same. Even though the gameplay of Forever is certainly a throwback to the original game, it is still a wild genre change. Same as Super Meat Boy was the king of platformers, perhaps Forever will be such for autorunners. At 15.99€/$19.99/£15.99, the game is also at an accessible price point; the usual standard for most indie games.
Personal Opinion
“I really enjoyed my time with Super Meat Boy Forever; it scratched the itch for a fast-paced hard game I could “git gud” at with a satisfying payout. While I do agree with other critics that the departure from the original formula is massive, the same overall feeling still remains. Besides a few small comparisons, I do not consider it fair to say Forever is a better or worse game than the original Super Meat Boy; at least when strictly talking about the gameplay. The change in genre makes it impossible to compare them on equal grounds. In my opinion, Forever shouldn’t be considered as Super Meat Boy 2, but rather a spinoff.”
Super Meat Boy Forever - Review,
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