The End Is Nigh Image
Metascore
84

Generally favorable reviews - based on 15 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
7.5

Generally favorable reviews- based on 72 Ratings

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  • Summary: The End Is Nigh is a sprawling adventure platformer where you die a lot, but thats ok because you are probably already dead anyway.

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The End Is Nigh - Teaser Trailer
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 15
  2. Negative: 0 out of 15
  1. Jul 17, 2017
    95
    Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel have done it again. The End Is Nigh is a new masterpiece, a statement of how to create videogame. It hooks the player and makes you an addict of this wicked platform game.
  2. Jul 26, 2017
    90
    The End is Nigh is a complete success. Not only does it bring back memories of Super Meat Boy but it also speaks a new language. Outrageous replay value, precise controls and impressive level design deliver a new platforming masterpiece from McMillen and Glaiel.
  3. CD-Action
    Oct 30, 2017
    90
    A frustratingly difficult game that I couldn’t get enough of. [10/2017, p.59]
  4. Jul 31, 2017
    85
    If you couldn’t get enough of Super Meat Boy and have spent the past seven years fiending for more punishing platformers, than The End of Nigh is something you should immediately inject into your veins. If you are usually iffy on super-challenging platformers, but curious if this is the one that will turn you around, keep on walking.
  5. Aug 23, 2017
    85
    This game will not become the new Super Meat Boy, but it is an excellent hardcore platformer you will love through hate.
  6. Aug 4, 2017
    85
    The End is Nigh ultra precise platform challenges will make you throw you controller at the wall with frustration. Still, you will return to its charismatic, intelligent and well designed world in a masochistic loop that reminds us of its elder brother: Super Meat Boy.
  7. Edge Magazine
    Aug 17, 2017
    70
    It is, as a whole, smart stuff, and a refreshing new direction for McMillen's brand of twitch platforming. [Issue#310, p.118]

See all 17 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 15
  2. Negative: 2 out of 15
  1. Jul 12, 2017
    10
    This game is amazing, well worth the money. This game introduces the mechanics in a way that are easy to grasp and then brutally tests yourThis game is amazing, well worth the money. This game introduces the mechanics in a way that are easy to grasp and then brutally tests your abilities to execute them. The graphics are gorgeous and the lighting especially in the Hollows is awe inspiring. This game is so good I actually created a metacritic login just to make sure I gave this game the justice it deserves. Expand
  2. Dec 16, 2018
    10
    The BEST platform game i ever play. Very hard, enjoyable , with good mecanics a very nice esthetic and a lot of cool enemies. Hide masterpice
  3. Jul 15, 2017
    10
    Not sure what I expected from the meat boy follow up but when I first launched it I was extremely skeptical about the quality of the gameNot sure what I expected from the meat boy follow up but when I first launched it I was extremely skeptical about the quality of the game after the first minutes of the game has the main character almost burst an eardrum by screaming f****** at the top of his lungs and then the main character seemingly having fewer abilities than meat boy. Don't be fooled by those first moments. The game uses a Metroid style layout with hidden paths and collectibles. the game is brutally hard yet very technically sound. Love you Ed. Expand
  4. Jul 31, 2017
    8
    Interesting, a funny game with a good gameplay, good soundtrack and graphic style, challenging and engaging, the game will hold you for hoursInteresting, a funny game with a good gameplay, good soundtrack and graphic style, challenging and engaging, the game will hold you for hours until you finish it Expand
  5. Jun 29, 2021
    8
    The End is Nigh is the game I wanted when I first played Super Meat Boy.

    I would highly recommend The End is Nigh.
  6. Oct 18, 2017
    7
    The End Is Nigh is a very difficult platforming game made by the same guy who made Super Meat Boy and the Binding of Isaac. The game’sThe End Is Nigh is a very difficult platforming game made by the same guy who made Super Meat Boy and the Binding of Isaac. The game’s aesthetic is more reminiscent of the latter, while the gameplay is heavily reminiscent of the former.

    A highly difficult platforming game, you play as Ash, a black blob with one good eye. He can run, jump, swim, and do a sort of butt slam attack into the ground that accelerates his rate of downward motion and can smash through breakable ground. He can also hang off of ledges and do a longer horizontal jump while doing so that will also smash through breakable sections of wall.

    The game starts with Ash playing a nigh-impossible retro-platforming game. Given the great difficulty, the player is very likely to die… and the moment they do so, the game glitches out and breaks, and Ash goes out into the world to make a new friend now that his video game cartridge is busted. The world is a post-apocalyptic hellscape, rendered in the style of a place full of tumors and black blobby enemies and spikes.

    You can’t kill enemies in this game; indeed, contact with any black blob enemy will instantly kill you. There are some enemies – signified by having white skulls – that you can jump on the heads of to propel yourself up into the air. The game is mostly about environmental challenges, though, and avoiding the enemies – springs, spikes, collapsing buildings, and similar challenges are the barrier between you and getting to the next screen. There are sections of the game where you swim around, including in boiling water that will kill you within a few seconds, so you have to get out of it quickly.

    The game’s mechanics are on the whole simple and relatively straightforward. Your challenge on every screen is to make it out onto the next screen; there are optional challenges, in the form of both harder-to-reach tumors sitting around in mostly-obvious spots in the levels, where the challenge is to get to them, and secret side areas, which are hidden off of the main path and which contain mega-tumors (5 tumors) or game cartridges at the ends of them. These paths are much harder than the main path, and the paths which conceal later game cartridges are amongst the most difficult parts of the game.

    The game cartridges are an alternative collectable that allows you to play a “retro” style game, pixel graphics, where you must navigate through levels which are even harder than the main game. These, too, award you with tumors for completing them. Unlike the main game, many of these also have limited lives, meaning you only can fail 20 times before you are kicked out and have to start over on the minigame (and you must fail fewer than 10 times to get a bonus tumor).

    While the main portion of the first half of the game does not have limited lives, in the second half of the game, the player’s tumors become extra lives, refreshed every time the player reaches a checkpoint – once every 20 levels or so. Because the second half of the game is much harder, this greatly encourages the player to collect those tumors, and the final level of the game subtracts a whopping 450 tumors from your total (out of only about 500 or so in the whole game), making the final section of the game much more difficult to complete without getting kicked back to the start of the area.

    Unfortunately, this game feels like a less good version of Super Meat Boy – but ironically, not directly in terms of gameplay. Ash plays differently from Meat Boy, but he works well and the levels are, on the whole, interesting to complete.

    The biggest problem is the level select and the collectables. The levels are almost all linear, but you can only go to the first of 20 levels in an area, and then push your way back through all the others in that area if you want to collect a missed collectable. This strongly encourages the player to collect every collectable on the first time through an area, or else forces them to tediously re-complete the area while searching for them.

    The other problem is that the game has very little in the way of a sense of progression. There’s only a handful of cut scenes, rather than the one after every section of levels that you saw in Super Meat Boy, and beating one area just leads onto another, harder area, rather than any sense of reward. This gives the game a feeling of monotony; what are you accomplishing here? Nothing, really. And the second half is even worse because there is no clear goal – you just go out and do platforming sections. While this doesn’t seem like it should matter, it somehow does, and it diminishes the game as an experience having no real sense of progress or a meaningful goal.

    Not being as good as Super Meat Boy doesn’t make it bad, and indeed, I had fun with it overall. But this is definitely not a game for everyone.
    Expand
  7. Jan 18, 2022
    0
    Not fun whatsoever. Terrible progression system. If you miss like one collectible you have to play the entire world again. Trial and error BSNot fun whatsoever. Terrible progression system. If you miss like one collectible you have to play the entire world again. Trial and error BS is what Edmund's best at, so if you like that, you'll like this. Expand

See all 15 User Reviews

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