on Super Meat Boy 3D
archived from backloggd. originally posted on 04/04/2026.
absolute unmitigated garbage. the worst platformer i’ve played from the 2020s by far. a flanderization of all the cute&edgy flash-isms of the first Super Meat Boy.
the platforming in this is just about catching cycles. Meat Boy is too controllable and more sticky than slippery, so they decided to make levels not focused on obstacle traversal but on moving objects with differing speeds and no sense of rhythm. it feels too bad to describe. you got analog speed control but only 8 directional movement. you got an air-only dash that can give you wildly different bursts of speed depending on how long you press it down. you got the fixed camera that makes the platforming illegible. it’s fucking garbage to play. doing walljumps and wallrides by holding up on walls positioned on the far side of the Z-axis is the worst offender: you can’t gauge distance and, considering most of the platforming takes place midair, not even the drop-circle can help you well on those circumstances.
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the most blatant example of how dependent this game is on hazard cycles comes on the last world, which pays homage to Donkey Kong Country’s Bramble Blast with those timed barrel blasts. the gameplay climax of this game is catching a movement cycle man. what the fuck.
doesn’t help that, with all the speed variation you can have with the airdashes, the now-useless sprint button (you just hold it down through the whole game or lose hazard cycles), and different z-axis microadjustments, it’s fucking awful to gauge how exactly the levels intend you to get the ‘perfect cycle’, which you’ll often need to either finish some levels or get A+ speed rankings on them. good luck to all the freaks that decide to 100% this thing.
i love Super Meat Boy to bits. even when it’s playing pranks on you it’s still a chaotic 2D platformer that gives you a lot of room to improvise solutions, in part due to the super slippery movement. i hate Super Meat Boy 3D. you can see how bad this is even conceptually through the blood trails, which used to cover entire levels in the OG game because of the different ways you tried to play each level.
here, you’re gonna paint one path: the one that lets you catch the next hazard cycle. have i talked about the gravity orb mechanic yet? it appears in the last world and is completely unreadable in 3D. it has a flat-looking effect around it, so you can’t gauge how far it is on the Z-axis. it also requires you to hold down the jump button to gain upward momentum, but only if you approach it from a jump. any other spring or wind will just make you float up like normal. it also interacts very badly with the airdash, the thing you’re meant to combo out of when jumping through gravity orbs. jesus.
we’re now getting shitty cash-grab sequels of indie darlings. what a world we live in.
