There have been a clear lack of plat formers with any original style, most are just obvious mario clones, I mean ok, Mario is arguably the standard for plat formers back then, but very few games wanted to go above that formula. ‘Splosion man doesn’t offer anything new to the formula, and in some ways it just subtracts, no power ups, No character progression, no story apart from you play as a person made of ‘splode who loves cake and meat. But it was charming in a way that a lot of games have been missing for a while now, and when twisted pixel announced Mrs ‘splosion man, a name that is a nod to Mrs Pac Man xbox 360 gamers had a treat waiting for them.
Well its been a few years since the release, but finally we have a PC version, though surprisingly it is not ‘splosion man, we are getting the woman of the house hold, out to rescue her husband and splode all over the place.
For those of you who have never played a splosion man game, such as most of the PC gamers, hers a brief over view. You play as mrs splosion man, scientist’s created her, and now she’s running amok and killing everyone, sploding them into massive piles of steak and sausages (Seriously go watch the ending cut scene of the first game, just meat, everywhere) as she babbles incoherent nonsense and runs around in all manner of poses, just like her husband. You have no “Jump” but you can splode up to three times to get around, you can wall jump which drastically increases your range, but after three splodes your all out, unless you hit fire or an explosive barrel, water also puts you out. You have to get through each level by sploding around obstacle’s and destroying robots designed to kill you, that range from small projectile firing crawlers, to monstrous constructs chasing you around the level (First boss I counted at least 4 movie references, can someone else name any more?) and now the possibility of running this game at full 1080p and no slowdown shows how great these scenes look, and just the humour of them too.
Story wise its pretty basic, the scientist’s trapped Mr Splosion man in a trap and took him away, its your time to shine as Mrs splosion man and save your husband, that’s pretty much it, you get nice little cut scenes with boss fights, mostly movie references, but that’s you lot. There isn’t much extra added here either, you still have a hidden cake to find in every level, and you have a completely different campagin for co-op (local only) which is nice to see, as the game is pretty long with 30+ levels, so to have another 30+ designed for multi player only is a pretty sweet deal on the dev’s there, as most would charge you for DLC at every possible moment.
Graphically the game is very pretty, nothing amazing but it does get help from being able to be ran at 1080p native, everything just looks crisper, and those with higher end graphics cards try forcing some AA in your respective control panels and the game can looks quite a bit stylish, more so than you might expect.
Now the game is a straight port from the XLBA version, so if you already have that there isn’t much, all the levels are here, and they are in the same order, difficulty will depend only on your choice of controllers. So unless your only complaint about the original was 30fps and 720 upscaled, there really isn’t much to see here, the game is cheaper on steam, than it was on XBLA which is nice, though again its not known why the original ‘splosion man was not released. Of course with a lack of online co-op it will mean a lot of people will never get to experience this part of the game, though some of the jumps needed would be nearly impossible with online co-op and lag so it could just be a blessing in disguise.
All in all this is a game that should be at least attempted, its sometimes nice to play a game that has a retro genre, that isn’t trying to copy the other hordes of games, or to be overly artsy, it just becomes a pain, its nice to get an indie game that has actual game play for once, doesn’t try and shove its “artsy” decisions down your throat. Plus at £7 you get quite a lot for your money, considering the XBLA version cost around £12 (Though £15 as you had to buy a certain amount of points).
Buy the game on steam here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/105420/?snr=1_4_4__103_3
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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