I have conflicting feelings about Super Meat Boy 3D. My initial draft of this review was scathing. Bad Game. Bad transition from 2D -> 3D. Bad camera. Bad controls. Bad bosses. Mediocre levels.

Then I went to check Steam reviews just to see if I was missing something, and it turns out I sorta was: by default as an “accessibility feature” the game locks you to 45 degree movement angles. Presumably this is to make it easier to aim to intended lines in the levels, but I found it overly restrictive to the point of being wildly counter-intuitive. It led to frequently feeling like the game was screwing up interpreting my inputs, leading to me wildly missing a target, or air-dodging in absolutely not the direction I was aiming. After turning that off I went back to the first world and had minimal issues getting all the bandages and getting A+ times on all the normal and dark-world levels.

So my primary complaint with the game can be fixed, but the fix is not obvious and it’s hidden two menu-levels deep into the settings, in a menu I would typically associate with “the one that lets me make the game artificially easier”. I guess it sorta does that? But it doesn’t seem like the intent, it seems like this was an accessibility thing that defaults to on. If the game can feel that broken by default, is the game bad? I don’t know, but it doesn’t really feel good.

So even with the transition from 2D -> 3D and the clumsy-to-garbage default control settings, the game is sill recognizably Super Meat Boy. It still brings all the usual “fun” of Meat Boy (running into spikes, salt, lasers, chainsaws, etc) but now it comes with the bonus “fun” of “your input was misinterpreted, so not only did you miss your jump, and miss your platform, you completely slid beyond the boundary of the level geometry and now you’re dead lmao”.

Most levels require precision the engine simply isn’t built to deliver reliably, and often times go on far too long. There’s a run button, and in that menu I found the direction unlock in I also found an “auto-run” setting, but that sort of makes it worse because now it’s even more slippery and fiddly, but at least it’s slippy and fiddly all the time and I don’t have to hold a button down. Boss fights are tepid auto-scrollers where you’re basically forced to memorize patterns rather than react, and while yes the bosses in the original Super Meat Boy were also a bunch of auto-scrollers, they felt more engaging than just sitting and waiting for the same patterns to spawn in order.

One nit-pick I have is with the game’s timer: for a game so focused on level completion time, it’s bizarre that the timer starts rolling immediately on respawn. So if you go to scratch your nose between death and respawn whoops you’ve likely just tanked your chance of getting an A or A+ time. They could have started it on first-input, but no, it just starts rolling immediately. I’m not going to go back and check, but I bet the original Super Meat Boy was like this too, but somehow I don’t remember it being a problem.

I don’t know. I’m probably going to bounce off this game having completed the first ~50 levels or so. Even on Game Pass I’m finding it hard to want to keep playing, and I know it’s just going to get more unreasonably punishing as I go. It’s hard to recommend at MSRP, and it’s not just an issue of it being a game that I “didn’t get” but understand isn’t “for me” – I think this isn’t going to be a game for most people. If you’ve got Game Pass, or if it shows up in a Humble Bundle, or if it shows up in a Steam Sale for $1, go ahead and give it a shot, but definitely fiddle with the accessibility settings first. Outside of those options, I don’t recommend this game.