Pink-splosion: The Ms. ‘Splosion Man Review

The obvious homage in the Ms. ‘Splosion Man’s name only scratches the surface of the bizarre and maniacal nature of this anticipated sequel to ‘Splosion Man.  While having played the original game is not a required prerequisite for “Ms.” it does hold the basic template that its sequel features…’sploding!  Part puzzle game, part twitch based platformer, Ms. ‘Splosion Man builds on the original in many meaningful ways, just don’t expect for it change you mind about the franchise.

Like the original your character has one move, exploding.  Exploding allows you to jump, wall jump, attack and bounce off enemies.  Using these tactics, you have to navigate through side-scrolling 2D platform levels, like a twisted Mario Bros. game.  At first play the ‘Splosion Man formula is easy enough.  Anyone with classic NES/SNES era side-scrolling experience can jump right in.  However, very quickly the Ms. ‘Splosion Man experience turns from incredibly accessible to manically difficult.

The physics of the jumps and explosions are predictably clumsy and your character never seems to jump quite high enough to easily clear any jumps.  When you complete a platforming puzzle you do so by the sparks on Ms ‘Splosion Man’s ass.  This creates a level of tension that will turn off alot of impatient gamers looking for a friendly romp through a retro style 2D game.

One of Twisted Pixel’s strengths is their uniquely bizarre meme friendly style of art and character design.  Most of the character models are carried over from the first game and new enemies and mechanics add more depth to the gameplay.  Ms. ‘Splosion Man, as a character, is the biggest standout.  On the surface, she looks like a girl ‘Splosion Man wearing a bow a la Ms. Pacman, but during gameplay she is a crazed super-girly tween that’s seemly obsessed with girl centric pop culture.

As you run and splode with her, she routinely spouts one liners from chick flicks and female pop songs.  Everything from “…you shoulda put a ring on it!” to “You Complete Me!” and my personal favorite “Shut the Front Door!” are repeated dozens of times.  Ms. ‘Splosion Man mines every corner of stereotypical women’s entertainment.  If you keep the character still for more than zero seconds, she starts mimicking famous dances like the stanky leg and the macarena.  Real care was put into making the experience ridiculous, and even though the one liners are repeated a bit too often, they still have a stupid charm.

The layout of the game has changed significantly.  Rather than selecting a level from a lifeless grid of numbers, they are laid out on a map Super Mario Bros. 3 style. There’s countless unlockables and some levels have multiple exits.  These things are hugely welcomed changes to the formula.  Rather than the entire game being spent in the confines of a lab, like the original, Ms Splosion Man explores larger scoped external environments.

Again, a welcomed change, but something about the coloring of many of the backgrounds paired with the pink tint of your character makes it hard to follow exactly what’s happening on screen.  This wasn’t an issue in the original game because Mr. ‘Splosion Man is a bright orange/red mix and his environments were all grey, white and black.  I applaud Twisted Pixel for going all in on the “this time its a girl” mentality, but a pink character on a pink background in a high speed explosion fueled chase is going to be hard to follow visually.  I only bring it up because it happened so frequently in my playthrough.

Another change that immediately excited me was the checkpointing of boss battles.  The previous ‘Splosion Man bosses were pretty difficult and if you died, the penalty was pretty harsh.  The bosses are still pretty hard, but now once you progress through certain parts, you begin at your checkpoint seamlessly.  Overall though, Ms. ‘Splosion Man is harder than its predecessor and most of the levels have a par time that only extremely high level players will be able to touch.

The things added to the ‘Splosion Man formula don’t change the basic playability of the game.  The core of the game is, for better or worse, very much identical to the original.  Multiplayer returns, with an awesomely named mode called “2 Players, 1 Controller” that allows one player to play the multiplayer levels with one gamepad.  Everything about Ms ‘Splosion Man is bigger than the original and aside from the aforementioned problem with your character disappearing in the background, its a marked improvement all around.

If you liked ‘Splosion Man, you will love Ms ‘Splosion Man, but I don’t expect this to have an appeal any wider than the original because of its extreme difficulty.  Value wise, its the yin to the recently reviewed Child of Eden‘s, yang.  Where Child of Eden was $60 for 1:30 of play time, Ms Splosion Man is $10 for upwards of 8-10 hours depending on your skill level and desire to play multi-player.

Verdict:  Trust Me, check out the demo first.