Super Meat Boy
System: Xbox 360
Developer: Team
Meat
NA
Release: October 2010
Super Meat Boy
is a crash course in balls-to-the-wall berzerkerism and trying again
in spite of the odds. Dying feels somewhere between 99-99.9% of this
game; something it lovingly reminds you of by playing all of your
attempts on a stage at once when you finally beat it. Scores of
little, hopping, optimistic meat beings are put through the grinders,
exploding in a mix tape of squishy demises until your one success
remains at the end.
Are
these ballets of carnage a cheap shot at your lack of skills or a
badge honoring your perseverance? It probably depends on what kind of
player you are, but thinking about it recently made me surprisingly
philosophical for such a corporeal game.
Imagine
every day of your life plays out at the same time, just like a replay
of Super Meat Boy.
What would we see? Now certainly we won't start in the same spot
every time, depending on moving to new places, waking up with no clue
where you are and the name “Chris” ambiguously scrawled on a
napkin in your underwear, etc., but odds are there will be a lot of
overlap. Some events, like your morning commute, might look like a
blur of yous. The various beds of your night might look like a
deranged Tetris block of yous for 7-8 hours of each period, if you're
lucky.
Is
that depressing to think about? Again, it might depend on what kind
of player you are. Personally, it's bittersweet. For each
representation of us on these replays, there's a near infinite number
of routes he or she could have gone, mostly depending on our desire
to break routine and break from our imposed obligations. Some of
those choices could have brought us incredible gains. Others, who
knows? They could've put us in the path of a drunk driver, or put
many of our next days out on the street.
Because
when that one “you” of each of us blinks out, it's all over.
Maybe it will be in a bed at a nursing home. Maybe it will be on that
same blurred line we took successfully to work so many days. You can
play the statistics but it's never possible to know for sure.
We're
the opposite of Meat Boy and many other video game characters. While
they expend their lives endlessly for the pursuit of that one time at
the goal, we nurse ourselves along in hope of reaching the goal as
many times as we can. Each new day we receive, in essence, is an
extra life—our reward for surviving yesterday's level. But if we
don't live with that Meat Boy berzerkerism sometimes, are we truly
winning?