Mini-Review: Is ‘Splosion Man Explosive Enough?

Picture this, your in a laboratory, you’re a science experiment that has gone horribly wrong and all you can do is explode!  Or as you would like to put it ‘splode for short…

This is the basic story line for ‘Splosion Man, the new game from developer Twisted Pixel that puts you through fifty levels of explosive action and great fun.  So your trying to escape from this huge laboratory and your only means of escaping is by ‘sploding.  With all four face buttons on the 360 controller assigned to to this explosive maneuver it sounds pretty simple to control.  And it is….

The beauty of this game truly lies deep in the level design, with each level as challenging as the last – and then some.  Every now and then you’re introduced to either a new obstacle, such as electric beams or revolving platforms, or a new enemy to take out.  The game spreads these new additions out very well, meaning you aren’t going to get too bored with some of the unfortunately repetitive environments.

As the levels are very well designed I found from time to time a real challenge in trying to accomplish the same section over and over, and failing miserably. But if you keep dying at a certain point of the game, you can choose what is called ‘the cowards way out’ which lets you skip the level.  All good you might think, but you have to do the next level in a pink tutu.  Lovely!  The game has a scant three bosses scattered about its fifty levels, and personally I found these bosses to be a bit of a chore more than anything.  With their repetitive catch phrases and their just irritating patterns of movement I was glad to get them out of the way when I did.

Graphically the game is pleasing to the eye and if you’ve ever played The Maw you would recognize Twisted Pixels style straight off the bat.  But as I said earlier the environments of each level seem pretty repetitive after about an hours playing.  This is a huge crazy laboratory we are talking about and they could of gone off in all sorts of directions with the visuals, but instead they’ve stuck to the same style every level.  That aside, the game also has some great attention to detail if you consider the main character for instance.  Even though he just looks like a crazy man on fire the whole time, they have taken into account the way he moves through the levels.  Instead of just running in a straight line, he has a variety of different motions which happen at random whilst running through the level.  For example he may be running like a monkey on one occasion, or running with his arms up with a crazy maniacal expression on his face the next.  They’ve also taken this idea into account for his ‘splode’ animations and well as when he is zipping through the air.  Overall, impressive work with what limited assets they’ve used.

The sound is also well designed and ‘Splosion Man‘ himself is a joy to listen to when he is speeding through the levels, but they have also seemingly used sounds from The Maw which to some may smack of laziness. But there’s also some other great audio work to behold and some of it keeps getting stuck in my head when a certain enemy appears.  Which enemy? ‘ll leave that to you to find out.

Pluses
+ Excellent level design with nice crisp visuals.
+ Good, simple control scheme.
+ Great difficulty increasing scale from one level to the next.

Minuses
- Little to no variation in level design with regards to graphical elements.
- Re-use of assets from The Maw seems somewhat lazy and disconnects you from the ‘new’ experience.
- Boss battles are more of an annoyance and did I mention that there are only three???

Final Verdict: If you’re looking for a decent to good platformer to pass the time until your next ‘AAA’ release then I’d say get ‘Splosion Man.’  If you can get over the little issues, and I know I can, then this is 800 Microsoft Points well spent.

‘Splosion Man’ is available now from Twisted Pixel on the Xbox LIVE Arcade service for 800 MSP.