Super Meat Boy 3D

Super Meat Boy 3D isn’t Shakespeare — it’s main antagonist is named Dr. Fetus, afterall — but I found its platforming puzzles to be largely solid across the board and I was impressed by its adherence to the idea that the game will happily beat you down, but the way back up from that is through perserverence. Perserverence that it’s happy to show you that you posses by watching your level replays.

Although it maintains the spirit of the original Super Meat Boy, Super Meat Boy 3D, as a reimagining, doesn’t quite evolve on its ideas enough to strike a chord. Rather, it reframes them, and it’s these new perspectives and angles on Meat Boy’s frenetic platforming that prove to be the biggest bother of all. It’s still fun enough for the most part; however, I struggle to look beyond the compounded frustration and needless death—in a game about dying, no less.

Despite my issues, there are feelings Super Meat Boy 3D gets right. It’s that same level of hard that begs to be conquered, cultivated in the original. And when I finished a particularly hard level, I got to see a marathon of my little Meat Boys failing all over the level until I finally got one of them through, and that part is as triumphant as it has ever been. Other dedicated people will conquer this game. I suspect some speedrunner will weave wizardry in their mastery of Super Meat Boy 3D and its levels. That said, this feels like a game in which you have to have more patience that ever to put up with the shenanigans that a fast-paced 3D Meat Boy game presents.

Super Meat Boy 3D successfully preserves the fast-paced, challenging gameplay fans expect, offering plenty of content for those who enjoy mastering difficult platforming. However, its shift to 3D reduces precision and introduces camera and control issues. While some will enjoy the added freedom, others may find it frustrating, making it a solid but imperfect evolution.

Super Meat Boy 3D has strong bones, but gets lost in the three-dimensional sauce. You will die 'n retry often, for sure, with a bunch of tight levels and clever secrets to conquer for true old-school masochists, but too many deaths - and so, too many retries - stem from perspective issues which create artificial difficulty. Sluggerfly's game feel shines when the studio actually focuses on delivering a clever 3D experience rather than translating 2D ideas into a game space with depth, which induces an excessive margin of error in every movement. Do try the demo version before buying.

Super Meat Boy 3D isn’t the grandiose translation to 3D as fans were perhaps hoping for. Though there’s competent enough level design and plenty to see and do with its many challenges and unlockable characters, it quickly goes back into old habits, be it with its immature and dated humour or its penchant for the 2D. Featuring generic Unreal Engine 5 3D work and level design that doesn’t quite prop itself up on its own, Super Meat Boy 3D is challenging and quite ugly to look at, but not in the ways I’m sure the developer intended. Not the worst platformer ever made, you could do much worse with Super Meat Boy 3D, but you could also do much better.