Dr. Fetus` Mean Meat Machine is out now brining a hilarious slice and dice decision maker to the Super Meat Boy Series.
Sometimes it’s fun to play the bad guy, but turning the tables on the Super Meat Boy franchise takes a lot more ingenuity than you’d imagine. However, Thunderful, Headup and Team Meat have managed to reinvent the high protein platformer with a brand-new puzzler. Dr. Fetus` Mean Meat Machine is out now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC for $9.99 / €9.99 and brings together bloody mayhem, a traditional puzzle matching concept, and the vicious need for revenge that an evil henchmen oozes. Set after the events of Super Meat Boy Forever, this new spin off puts players int eh role of Dr. Fetus. In an attempt to build its own uber nemesis for the aforementioned meat bag hero, this villain has taken to cloning Super Meat Boy’s DNA. It’s splattered all across the franchise, after all. However, only the best will do and the test trails that ensue are oddly interactive. To weed out the trash from the premium biological arrangements, you’ll need to overcome a series of levels, backdrops, and boss fights that look suspiciously like a twisted Tetris.
What unfolds across hours of animated action is a slice and dice scenario of very unexpected proportions. Essentially a drop-down match ‘em scenario, this play on the classic Tetris or Dr. Mario gameplay comes fully rendered in Super Meat Boy red. Bright animated primary colors are front and centre. This test lab looks plenty familiar, and the musical doodling of RIDICULON balances jovial with retro leanings. It’s all easily identifiable as something born of Team Meat, and that’s the point. While the format of Dr. Fetus’ mean meat Machine is nothing like the platforming chaos of other fleshy outings in this library, it’s oddly welcoming. The plethora of ideas that await might not be an exact clone of previous Super Meat Boy adventures, but they are reassuringly familiar, right down to the bloodied spikes and meaty squelches of the Dr’s unforgiving gene splicing.
Gameplay on controller or keyboard also manages to meld that mix of old and new down to a tee. Previous outings produced a fast-paced platforming adventure, perforated by unrelenting and messy death. You can expect exactly the same sort of treatment in this new direction. What initially presents as a bejewelled or Tetris inspired drop and match, quickly veers off into the charmingly ridiculous after a few initial stages. After quickly getting the hang of simple rotation and movement controls, the nefarious overlord running this operation turns to environmental traps, obstacles, ghosts, and all sorts of themed mechanics to cull the less capable genes. Although over 100 masterfully hand-crafted levels await, the essence of the game never falters.
Matching lines of at least 4 similar colored cells in any direction fill up a meter that should complete the level but could also potentially change the level loadout. Match enough genes and this might blow up some blocks, release more spikes, or produce a flaming hazard thing to turn up the heat.
This constant shift and a relatively short set of stages keep up a furious pace without being overwhelming. Even at the game’s busiest, with the background music upping the tempo to keep your nerves on edge, there’s never any fundamental penalty for failing. The in-game timer might keep ticking and your score won’t be as high if a single cell touches steel, but it is merely a bloodstain on the carpet. Fail, and everything resets to go again, and you’ll hopefully already have reached a checkpoint.
That might sound overly forgiving, but Dr. Fetus` Mean Meat Machine was never meant to be outlandishly difficult until later levels. There’s a solid progression curve that gradually makes things more intense in a variety of fashions. Form shrinking down the space available, to adding more enemies, and the odd gargantuan mechanised death machine, it’s all about quick paced variety with a reasonable sense of difficulty. On occasion, you’ll find yourself optimizing for planned multiplies and chained bonuses, but that’s precisely where experience and difficulty are set, in personal improvement ad bigger scores.
This isn’t going to draw eager eyes away from the new Final Fantasy release, but Dr. Fetus’ Meat Machine is a bloody delight. Get Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine is out now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC (Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store), at a base price of $9.99 / €9.99 minus a 10% launch discount. A demo is available on all PC platforms. Check out the official website before you get grinding.
