‘Ms. Splosion Man’ Review – Splodin’ In Style
Saying Twisted Pixel’s Ms. Splosion Man has a unique personality is like saying Beowulf has a lot of words. With more explosions than a Michael Bay movie (and easily a better love story than Twilight), this high-octane platformer for the PC, Xbox 360 and iOS devices is a fireworks display of personality and energy, bursting with action and a sparkling sense of humor.
The game picks up right where its 2009 predecessor, Splosion Man, left off. While the geniuses in the Big Science laboratory congratulate themselves on the successful capture of Splosion Man, a freak lab accident results in the creation of Ms. Splosion Man, a bubbling pink cocktail of gleeful insanity. After breaking free from captivity, Ms. Splosion Man must use her amazing ‘sploding powers to traverse a perilous landscape of sadistic scientists and experiments gone wrong in order to rescue her bombtastic boyfriend.
Madness is pretty much Ms. Splosion Man’s middle name. Every aspect, from gameplay, to plot, to the titular character herself, is completely and unabashedly bonkers. Essential platformer mechanics and quirks from the first game, like exploding instead of just boring old jumping, are still in place, but this time the amps are turned up to eleven – possibly even twelve. Harder, better, faster (and yes, stronger) than the original, the game throws everything it’s got at you from the moment you press “start.”
Any game with the word “splosion” in the title would be difficult to resist – harder still if you already appreciate the mad brilliance that powers Twisted Pixel – but before diving in and taking a big gulp of delicious crazy, be warned: difficult is, in this case, a very key word. Several level solutions require expert hand-eye coordination and timing skills straight out of a Mission Impossible film. Like Mission Impossible, however, the game also packs a whole lot of action and entertainment into each and every mission – so even when you fail (a lot), chances are you’ll be grinning while you do it.
Just watch out for the levels marked red – these are the extra painful ones, the ones that might drive you to commit real homicide. You are allowed to skip levels after a certain amount of attempts, but instead of wearing a pretty pink tutu (like in the first game), your punishment is to gain an exceptional amount of weight in a very unfortunate place – like, enough to rival the Kardashians.
The world of Ms. Splosion Man feels like it sprang from the imagination of a sugar-addicted twelve-year-old with a higher-than-average IQ. Neon bright and comic book colorful, Ms. Splosion Man travels beyond the familiar laboratory interiors from the first game, hopping from hovercraft to hovercraft above a futuristic metropolis one minute and surfing through an exotic beach getaway the next.
The real fun of the game, however, is Ms. Splosion Man herself. She’s a little reminiscent of Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic – in fact, I bet they’d get along famously – but with twice the energy and an extra helping of silly, if you can imagine. (And Pinkie Pie never committed mass murder, as far as I know.) She destroys everything in her path with giggling gusto, and all the while she spouts an endless stream of pop culture references; apparently, her brain contains a cosmic catalog of allusions that would put the Trivial Pursuit champion of the universe to shame. She never shuts up, and she’s absolutely impossible not to fall in love with. She can twinkle-toe and moonwalk with the best of them, and though some of her more retro jokes may be lost on younger gamers (their loss), her wildly feminine gestures and cheerful lack of respect for human life add up to one of the most dangerously amusing female characters ever to grace the gaming ‘verse with her presence.
With as many as fifty levels each in single-player and multiplayer mode and two possible endings to achieve, Ms. Splosion Man is no brief stroll through the park. It is a lengthy journey, and it is challenging – but it makes every second worth it. Ms. Splosion Man is available for purchase for just $10 via the official site, while the original Splosion Man can be found on a separate site.
