Super Meat Boy

It is said that practice makes perfect. In Super Meat Boy, you really have no other option. Levels in this retro-inspired quirky platform game are brutally unforgiving to missteps and hesitations, and although each of them can be completed in thirty seconds or so, some took me over an hour to master. Yes, this innocent looking Xbox Live Arcade title is one of the most challenging games I've played, and possibly the toughest one from this side of 2000. It owes its demand for patience and discipline to a bygone era of video games when space was limited on cartridges and game chips and games had to be made difficult in order to last a long time. It's no secret that video games have gradually gotten drastically easier and more guided over the past decade or two; some of the newest Wii titles have a mode where you can literally let the game beat levels for you as you just sit back and watch. Super Meat Boy is not that type of game at all. What as most remarkable about my experience with it was my overall lack of rage and frustration. I'm a moderately busy guy with a plethora of unbeaten games to get through, and I often find myself with little time for try-agains and do-overs. Yet something about Super Meat Boy kept me coming back for more (and more and more). In downright masochistic fashion, with sweaty palms and nervous breathing patterns, I only got angry with myself when the game threw me seemingly impossible curves. And in those few instances where I was able to overcome a level's many obstacles through experience - probably around 5% of the time I'd say, having averaged about twenty deaths per level easily - I have to admit, I felt such a reassuring sense of accomplishment. While most games today get me pissy and irritated with simple issues like shoddy controls or small graphics glitches, I was absolutely on board for this entire hellish nightmare of trial and error, and a big part of my urge to continue in spite of so many failures was simply how rewarding it was to finally beat these various levels. The game was just fun enough to keep me from growing frustrated, and I can assure you that that's a whole lot of fun. All the same, I'm so very relieved to have this one all set and out of the backlog.