Splosion Man

Splosion Man

Xbox 360 celebrates its Summer of Arcade through July and August, with exclusive download games that include this smouldering charmer.

We thought we’d better check in on Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade to see if it’s everything promised. Over the next month or so we’ll see five exclusives in some form or another – games that won’t be available on PlayStation Network for a limited time, or even not ever at all. Highlights will include Marvel vs. Capcom 2 next week (two weeks exclusive), Trials HD on 12 August and then Shadow Complex on 19 August, the latter two being exclusive to Xbox 360 for the foreseeable future.

This week it’s “Splosion Man” from Twisted Pixel, the creators of popular Xbox LIVE Arcade game The Maw. Splosion Man will arrive on the PlayStation Store 12 months from now. Straight up we have to say that PS3 owners aren’t missing out on too much, though as a technical marvel Splosion Man is something to behold for just 800 Microsoft Points – roughly £6.

Splosion Man himself is at your command. He’s made of molten something-or-another and has the ability to explode at will, a maximum of three times in rapid succession. Thus armed and long-legged you guide Splosion Man through the labyrinth of an underground science laboratory, getting revenge on the scientists by blowing them to pieces… that resemble cuts of meat from the family butcher.

There’s a bit more to it than that. Heading down samey corridors requires bouncing off walls to reach higher ledges, and sometimes those dastardly scientists have laser beams and other nasty business pointing at Splosion Man. Hence he’ll need to use his sploding powers to work away around them. Sometimes Splosion Man can grab hold of an overweight scientist to use him as a human shield. Most of the time you’re looking for canisters to serve as grenades, or rocket Splosion Man horizontally or vertically to avoid spiky surfaces or rivers of luminous gloop.

After 15 levels of progressively more difficult puzzle-like scenarios you encounter a boss level – a gigantic robot that rains down missiles and fires lasers from its eyes. He looks awesome, but as with just about every other section in the game it’s pure trial and error… and instant failure if you get badly hit. If you die enough times (and we suspect that you will) there's an option to skip to the next level. Interesting.

With 50 single-player levels to go at, also available to explore in co-op with friends, we reckon on about three or four key battles to separate the repetitive, banging-your-head-against-a-brick-wall style gameplay that you can only suffer in small doses. In small doses Splosion Man makes you smile.

As a quick experiment to prove that we’re not becoming miserable about trad platformers, we downloaded “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” from Xbox LIVE for comparison. Sonic 2 was first released in 1992 for the SEGA Megadrive. Splosion Man looks very impressive. But when we loaded up Sonic 2 and begin riding those roller-coaster inspired levels riddled with secrets and the chance to push the brilliantly conceived blue hedgehog to his high speed limits, we realised that looks aren't everything. Splosion Man is all show and little substance, expertly produced but sorely missing some play-testing to reveal what works once, and what becomes really boring the 1000th time you need to use it… in the first 15 levels that all start to look exactly the same.

You might have more patience after spending 800 Microsoft Points, but we're putting Splosion Man back on ice for a few days to remember when games played better than they looked. We dare say we'll warm to him again but for now we're just sore from too much sploding.

3 out of 5