Life After Death: The Super Meat Boy Story

There is one feature of Super Meat Boy that separates it from its 2D Platforming Peers: the zero second respawn time after death. This singular feature turned what was a creative romp through the timeline of video games into a lightning storm of tense moments, trial and error, and murderous intent turned pure ecstasy. I draw a comparison to the Mario Bros. games of old; in the olden times, the long, long ago, death was to be feared. 1-UP's were the currency of the world. Sure you could jump above level 1-2 and just run to the end, but you miss out on about 3 extra lives from coins and shrooms. When the zero was next to the Mario face, you knew this was it. Die now and you must fight from the beginning.

This mindset of death actually punishing the players is making quite a resurgence. Games like Demon Souls may allow you any number of deaths, but they strip you of everything you hold dear in the process; even Minecraft puts a hefty price on taking too many arrows to the face. This return to the punishing styles of our 8-bit history is dramatically changing the gaming landscape.

Don't get me wrong, I love it. I love the sense of satisfaction from besting a game that forgives nothing. The beauty, however, of Super Meat Boy is that the satisfaction is different; it isn't better or worse than say, Mega Man's life counter, but it is distinct from it.

The things video games teach us are incredible. In this particular instance, death is a tool.(am I right?) In some games, death is a punishment for poor or inattentive play. In Super Meat Boy, death is only the beginning. Die once and you instantly learn what not to do next time. The learning curve is an exponential curve in Super Meat Boy. You can legitimately not die in the first chapter(difficult, but you can). However, by the time you reach "The End", you may very well die 10-25 times per level. Some levels demand much more than that.

This trial and error view of death may make the game seem easy early on, but that is only the tease before the trap. Super Meat Boy may give you infinite lives and no punishment for death, but it is still one of the hardest games I've played in the last several years.

A seemingly simple addition to a fairly simple game that makes all the difference.

Intelligent Design

I'm convinced that you don't realize the genius behind excellent game design until you try to design a game yourself. On the heels of playing the Metroid Prime Trilogy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Halo 3, Modern Warfare 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and World of Goo, I am taking classes in programming and design.

This may have been a mistake. I hold myself to such a standard. I don't want to contribute to the derivative dribble traipsing it's way across the hundreds of free-to-play websites of the interwebs; I want to build upon the foundation set by the greatest of game designers that have come before me. I am paralyzed by my own insecurity.

I'm working my way through a documentary about the Medici family of Florence in the 14th and 15th century. Currently, the first patriarch of the Medici line has died and a new leader has arisen from the ashes of the first. This new leader of the godfather-family of Florence must choose how to move forward and maintain his power. He, in spite of his family's allegiance, and even support, for the Catholic Church, embraces practices in pagan art for men such as Bernacelli and Donatello. This flash in the face of those governing the video game world is not what I want. I much prefer to pay homage to those who have paved the road before me. To be fair, the forebearers of my art are not the Catholic church, therefore I do not have to fly in the face of Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima. I can safely acknowledge them without fear of retribution.

Master of Galaxies and What That Means

It is finished. After 42 hours of gameplay, 622 deaths, 242 stars and a lot of fun, I'm 100% complete with Super Mario Galaxy 2. The final star consisted of completing an incredibly difficult and diverse final obstacle course without taking any damage. The final start required about an hour of my time(even though it was only a 5 minute course) and right around 50 lives.(thank goodness for an infinite life loop in the Supermassive Galaxy) Upon completion, the game awarded me the title of "Master of Galaxies".

The game ended up being one of the most fulfilling games I've ever played. I've written to how much I enjoyed it and I don't want to retread, however I will say, if there were more levels with the same levels of creativity, design, and fun, I would continue playing.

I would be lying if I said that I didn't wish that there had been some extra quest about which I didn't know. If Rosalina had revealed that there was a third tale to be told about the 120 bright pink stars I would have been on board. In light of that, however, I think there is something to games not overstaying their welcome. This game was obviously paced well and was intriguing all the way through. In light of its brilliant design and gripping gameplay, maybe it is best to leave me wanting more. If there really were another 120 stars, I might grow tired of the game's everlasting fetch quest and overly cheerful demeanor. There's no way of knowing as the third portion of the game doesn't exist, but it does shed light upon one of the most difficult decisions in game design: how long do we take it?

For me, 42 hours into the quest, I want more, but that has more to do with the intelligent design of the game. Had Super Mario Galaxy 2 been a mere shadow of the previous title, I would not desire for more. I would have ended the "story" portion and probably been done with the game. It all comes down to gameplay. If the game makes me want to continue playing, it is doing its job. If it is struggling to keep me involved, maybe it's a good thing that developers cut it short. I could site hundreds of examples of games, movies, songs, and books that just go on too long; the knowledge of when to stop is as important as a skill in design as story, music, control, and level design.

241 and Trying

As of this writing, I have not completed the 242nd star in Super Mario Galaxy 2. It is the last of a very long and arduous road of completion-minded quests. The best part of this trek has been the fact that I do not want to stop. I'm actually stuck right now collecting the stupid little star bits that are, at best, a distraction from gameplay, but I do not want to stop. My good friends call me and come over to my house to hang out with me; I regret putting the controller down long enough to get into a great conversation. Then, at every lull of dialog, I long to wave my Wii-mote around the screen and collect the odd colorful polygons.

How Nintendo has held me captive for this long is irrelevant. The quality of the game has no meaning. Someone could tell me that the game is complete crap and I'm wasting my life on it; it would not matter. I'm unrepentantly in love with this game.

The game itself in the scope of the history of games, is not groundbreaking. Is it brilliant in its simplicity? Is it designed as well as any game ever made? Does it control to perfection? Yes, yes, and yes. It has little to no story. It breaks no precedence in writing or directing. However, the graphics, the gameplay, the level design, the music are all benchmarks for their time. The age old rule is that the game is good if the game is engaging; this game is as engaging as catnip for felines. I never, ever, ever want to stop, I will soon get this 242nd star and will love this game forever.

My Strange Habits

So, I've found that I have a very strange gaming habit. I play single player games with multiple people. Recently, a bunch of my family sat around taking turns on the career mode of Need For Speed Shift. I've been playing games like that for as long as I can remember. Not to say that I've never played games by myself, but simply that I think I prefer it that way. The first game I ever beat was The Legend of Zelda on the NES. I was four years old, my sister was six and we played it together. how we've always played Zelda games(which at this point is four separate titles on various systems) is that she does the walking around and problem solving stuff and then I fight. I don't think you've ever played a Zelda game, but there is plenty of both fighting and problem solving so we shared fairly evenly. To this day, I have only completed one Zelda game without my sister. I've replayed games I had beaten previously with my sister but only once did I beat one for the first time by myself. I find this strange given how big I am into gaming.

Rachel and I are tossing ideas back and forth about getting an XBox 360. The main reason is that I'd like to play some games with you and learn your styles and enjoy your company. I hate that the one person who is as in to gaming as I am lives across the country. The joy of online gaming is that we can still play together and I really hope that we get to play. The funny thing is that I really want to be able to play with you, because there are games that I won't play otherwise. The reason I won't play them otherwise is because of my strange habit of playing all games, multiplayer and single player, with other people...

Console Wars: The Next Generation

There's been a lot of talk about the next-next generation of consoles. The PS4, the XBox 720, Wii 2, all of these concepts and ideas have been floating out there for the better part of 2 years. The irony being, of course, that the Wii and PS3 are only a little over three years old and the XBox 360 is closer to six.

When I look around, however, I don't know that I need a next generation of console. I have a Wii, and while it isn't the most powerful system out there by any stretch, There haven't been any games that have pushed it to its limits. Super Mario Galaxy came close as for visuals and unique gameplay experiencs. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the best local and online multiplayer experience on Wii. World of Goo is one of the pinnacles of story telling in modern gaming and one of the best puzzle games ever. Even the controls on the Wii are continuing to be perfected. I know that the Wii can do more.

XBox 360, even having been out for nearly six years hasn't been eclipsed in its abilities. Every year it seems that there are new games coming out that push the graphical boundaries on the 360. With Natal coming out in the next two years, a whole new collection of ideas and gameplay options will be attempted. If you don't know what Natal is, do some quick research. It's an interesting idea that could really do some neat things in the world of gaming, particularly in the advent of 3-D gaming.

It's hard for me to even talk about the PS3. I almost want to chalk up the first year and a half of the PS3's lifespan as a mistake and maybe that it didn't happen at all. It hasn't been until this second half of this past year and now into this year that there are games that even play on the same field as the abilities as the PS3. The PS3 was designed to last about ten years on the market because of the way the hard drive and processing cores were built. To this day, no one has even pushed the PS3 even a little bit. Not that there haven't been great, even excellent, games for the PS3, only that there haven't been any games worth the initial $600 price tag. The hardware was worth that much, however it is software that sells hardware.

With all that said, I'm pretty sure that Nintendo will be the first to upgrade. It will be a similar style to the Wii, but it will have quite a bit more processing power. They would be foolish to change the controls, I think that the Wii-mote with the Wii Motion + and the accompanied nunchuck is perfect for most gaming, if not all. They will adopt a new button layout, but only to make buttons more accessible. Next will be the XBox 720, but only after Microsoft can't keep up with the abilities of the PS3. All I'm saying is that it may be a while.

The Metroid Prime Trilogy: A First Person Shooter... Kind of...

So I'm playing through the Metroid Prime Trilogy. The first two of the set were released on GameCube a few years ago and the final was released on Wii about a year and a half maybe 2 years ago. They then updated the graphics from the first two games, implemented Wii controls and released the whole trilogy, all three games, for $50... I then found it on sale at Target for $30 and had to have it... seriously? Three games from one of my favorite titles(Metroid) for $30? All I'm saying is that it's an awesome deal.

So I don't know how much you know about Metroid Prime. Metroid started as a Side Scrolling puzzle platformer on NES. The defining game in the series was a similar style game on SNES: "Super Metroid". Then after the N64 on the GameCube, Metroid was changed from a 2-D platformer into a 3-D First person shooter: "Metroid Prime".

There's the brief history for you. I've played the first and the third games and I'm really looking forward to playing the second one. But I'm troubled by a few things: while it is a FPS, it isn't like any other FPS I've ever played. The game is all about solidarity, being alone. The soundtrack, the level designs, the details, everything identifies you as this person who is very, very alone. Other FPS(i.e. Halo, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor) are all about the giant battles, the combat, being a one man army. Not this game; it finds success in forcing the player to be alone and to solve these puzzles not knowing when a flood of enemies will jump out at you(and they do jump out at you... very creepy)

The funny thing to me is that even though FPS, First Person Shooter, is really only a description of the camera angle and what kind of weapons you have, still that label: FPS, means a lot more than that. I hear about a game being a First Person Shooter and instantly I imagine a war game. I imagine the big explosions and fighting along side other people. When I hear FPS, I don't think about anything that describes Metroid Prime except for the fact that I see through the character's eyes and use a gun.

Anyway, I'm loving the games, it's actually got a pretty cool local multiplayer if we ever get a chance.