Beyond the satisfying chaos that comes from playing well, players also get rewarded with gamer pictures, a ‘hardcore mode,’ and even a premium theme (in addition to achievement points) for timing their jumps just right to ‘splode quickly through each level. After you’ve finished ‘sploding through the single-player levels to your heart’s content, the multi-player provides another set of 50 levels that you and up to three others can navigate through together locally or over Xbox Live. These levels are designed such that co-op maneuvers like dual ‘sploding and ‘splode tossing are absolute necessities if you wish to succeed, but this, in turn, can also be quite frustrating considering the game’s unforgiving difficulty.
While these stages are certainly doable, it seems like the best way to go about taking on the multi-player would be locally, as any sort of connection problem will spell you and your friends’ certain doom on the later stages. Fortunately, the game does have a feature for those players that get stuck on any of ‘Splosion Man’s many tough spots. If you die multiple times on the same section of a stage, a pop-up titled ‘Way of the Coward,’ informs the player that they can skip to the next level from the pause menu, allowing less skilled players to see the game through to the end. However, as a form of humorous punishment, level skipping results in a tutu appearing on ‘Splosion Man in addition to a level clear time of 999 minutes and 999 seconds. As far as the visuals go, ‘Splosion Man has a very distinct cartoony look that works well with the game’s sense of humor and overall premise.
‘Splosion Man careens down laboratory hallways spouting gibberish with his arms spread like an airplane whilst ‘sploding a variety of scientists and robots into piles of meat and gears respectively. While the player never ventures outside of a lab-like environment, everything within them animates well, placing ‘Splosion Man in the ranks of the best looking Live Arcade games available today. Although the game can get frustrating, ‘Splosion Man is still a quality title that is easy to recommend, especially to people that enjoy games like Cloning Clyde and other puzzle platformers. With its great visual style, simple mechanics, quality level design, and goofy sense of humor, Twisted Pixel has created a game that makes even its most maddening parts a good time. For all this at a $10 price tag, there is really no good reason not to get ‘Splosion Man.
