Meat Boy, Walkthrough and Review

Meat Boy is a quick paced, action platformer game, as you search for the Band-aid girl!

Play as Meat Boy, (Obviously, a piece of meat!) as he embarks out into the forests and through factories to find his beloved Band-Aid Girl! The story goes that an evil professor takes Band-Aid Girl, and you must find her! The storyline reminds me of Super Mario Bros, for the Gameboy Color, your so close to rescuing Band-Aid Girl every times, but she always is taken away at the last second!

Meat Boy is one of the more difficult games, and the controls don't help ether, unless you get used to them, (which really doesn't take too long). Since it so hard, that's what really inspired me to earn that Impossible achievement, it was a tedious game, no doubt about that, but no matter what, it was addictive and a terrific overall. Usually, a difficult game would, make a player give up, because it's too tedious or strenuous, but there's a charm to this game, once you start playing you won't want to stop!

The enemies, being blades, salt, lava, and the list continues, are set up, so that if you don't time your moves correctly be prepared to be sliced and diced, or be someones Thanksgiving roast! I'd worry more about the blades than the lava or salt, just because you have to time everything perfectly, and they tend to be in groups!

I really enjoyed how the gameplay flowed in Meat Boy. The whole game was terrific, although sometimes tedious, it keep me with something to do for days, full of fun and delight! Meat Boy, by far is my favorite platform game, just because I loved it, hated it, it was a mix of emotions, anger and enjoyment of a slick, tedious platform game! The reason why I say ''tedious'' is because, unless you have the reflexes of a cat, this isn't going to be your average 3 hour game, it going to be your not so average 2 day game, full of trial and error, and dying every 30 seconds. This may be due to my experience with the controls or maybe it's the fact that I played for every band-aid, which was still enjoyable, though the person that plays this game and skips two out of 5 levels to beat the game in a hurry is not going the experience the same thing as me.

The graphics are stunning! You can't find much better graphics than this, that is, for a flash game of course. The first time I saw them, I was shocked! I really couldn't believe my eyes, they were wondrous. The thing that shocked me even more is that this game was made with, just about 50 to 60 sprites, (though the background is another story) just goes to show that the game doesn't have to have too much variety, and sweet objects or levers and switches, it just has to look good enough to separate it from the overwhelming crowd of flash games now a day.

The music a fast paced, drum, guitar music, I honesty have no idea what instruments they are or even what category of music you would put it in, all I know is that it sounds good, though it's seems like a 30 second loop, which can get quite annoying. In all reality, turn off the music if you want to have better reflexis, the quick paced techno, rock music will only make the game seem quicker, trust me. Anyways, the music is great, works well with the game, but turn it off if you can't stand it or, as I just stated, realized my therory.

The controls, a much talked about topic of Meat Boy, ... are not sloppy, but definitely could use some fine tuning, though this may have been part of the challenge of the game. Obviously, the controls separate this game from the all the other platformers, but sometimes, not in a good way. According to many people, and Edmund, (the game creator) it is highly recommended that you play this with a Xbox 360, or the original Xbox controller to help improve the controls. I know it would be sweet to play with an Xbox controller and stuff, but seriously, the game creator, Edmund, makes a flash game and then instead of tuning the controls he wants you to use an Xbox controller, it makes no sense. So definitely the controls need a lot of fine tuning, just like an old violin, it won't work well unless you make it work well!

There seems to be no exact difficulty ramp in Meat Boy, unless you count level one to level 5, everything past that is basically the same difficulty, hard. I know there is a couple of levels labeled ''Expert'' though the levels that I actually had trouble with, band-aid wise were some of the earlier levels, such as in Chapter 2, the Factory, I had quite a time with level 9, ''Bipolar''. More than a few times I had more difficulties with some of the earlier levels compared to the ''Expert'' and more advanced levels. So, from my experience there isn't too much of a difficulty ramp in Meat Boy, though each level is unique and difficult, in it's own way.

If you say replay-ability, the first game that comes to my head is Meat Boy. There are 24 band-aids to collect, which the secret ending was removed due to it being inappropriate, (Read the full description of Meat Boy, on Kongregate if you really must see it). There are a couple of hidden characters, unlocked after reaching a set band-aid amount, my favorite character would, by far, have to be Castle Crasher guy, after collecting 4 band-aids (if I remember correctly). There are also 3 more characters after the Castle Crasher guy. These small things such as different characters is what makes a game stand out, make a game original and enjoyable.

All in all, Meat Boy is a terrific game! I absolutely love the graphics, the music and all the small, original touches to the game, like different characters. Definitely play Meat Boy if you have an extra, 2 days to spare, (Hey, least it's not as long as Gemcraft!).

Here is a walkthrough to all 24 band-aids:
(I went back to beat the game, today and beat it in 30 minutes, though getting all the band-aids took a couple of hours. Note: This is from a person that has played and beat Meat Boy multiple times. Good Luch, and I hope this walkthrough helps you a bit!)

Chapter 1, The Forest

Band-aids are on levels:

Level 3, Going Up
Level 5, Windows
Level 7, Daredevil
Level 9, Damage Control
Level 12, The Buzz Cut
Level 14, Cliffhanger


Chapter 2, The Factory
Band-aids are on levels:
Level 3, Salt Falls
Level 4, Flying Meat
Level 6, Shafted Meat
Level 9, Bipolar
Level 11, White Gold
Level 14, Breakout

Chapter 3, Hell
Band-aids are on levels:
Level 1, Easy Peasy
Level 2, Lava Awareness
Level 7, Touchy Feely
Level 9, The Floater
Level 12, Hell House
Level 15, SATANICA!

Expert Chapter
Band-aids are on levels:
Level 1, Urban Decay
Level 4, A Simple Jump
Level 5, No Touching
Level 6, The Kicking Machine
Level 7, Civilized Worm
Level 10, Sky Pup