Top 50 Video Games: Number 46

Stats of Import
Platform: Xbox 360
Absurdly Specific Genre: Kinetic Creationist Defense Platformer
Difficulty: 7 (it gets pretty crazy in the end, but patience and repetition made it work
Beaten: Yes. The ending ranked as my 47th favorite gaming moment.

I guess I didn't realize when I said on Monday that 'Splosion Man would be on the games list "soon" that it would actually be showing up next. Funny about that.

Platformers are a nickel a dozen. If all you wanted was a platformer, the XBox Indie section has somewhere around a billion of them (some of them are pretty awesome, but Sturgeon's Law is in very harsh effect). Inventive platformers? That's a different story.

'Splosion Man tells the story of a man made out of fire who can propel himself into the air by exploding. He can explode three times before he needs to recharge by standing on the ground or refueling himself via explosive substance. There is but one control to be learned.... SPLODE.

You get an achievement for trying to change your control scheme. That's a joke, of course.

It's one thing to have a fairly unique central gimmick, but 'Splosion Man did so many things with it, and was just fun to play. It just seemed like everyone who was involved in making the game was having a good time. Humor was omnipresent, from the little jingle that plays whenever you pick up one of the obese scientists to the aforementioned un-sane cutscene that plays at the end of the game.

'Splosion Man started out easy, but the learning curve ratcheted up just about perfectly. By the end of the game, you've got absolute razor-thin timing puzzles to be solving, testing the limits of your reflexes. Yet it never gets too frustrating. If you got stuck on a particularly challenging section, you just felt compelled to finish it.

And there certainly were... challenging sections.

I went into 'Splosion Man expecting a couple of hours of entertainment, followed by me getting bored. Instead, it turned out to be a rare gem. If Ms. 'Splosion Man can live up to half of the ingenuity and originality of the first game, it'll be a classic.