Today's Xbox Games Showcase saw the reveal of Super Meat Boy 3D, a new entry in the series that transplants our protein-packed hero into the third dimension. The original Meat Boy was always notable for its art style as much as the brutal challenge, and that's clearly been the challenge here: I like what they've done, even if I'm not quite ready to say I love it.
This feeling wasn't universal in the PCG Slack channel, with some finding the new aesthetic a little too clean and jolly, but I kinda think they've got it right. Meat Boy's trail of blood looks icky and sticky, he moves with the alacrity I associate with the character, and the deaths are just funny. Good thing too because, going by the breakneck pace of this trailer, you're probably going to be dying a lot.
Meat Boy himself looks a little, well, beefier, and the trailer's focus is on showing that the environments have all the comedy deadliness of the 2D games: razor-sharp spinning wheels, slicing blades everywhere, and instantaneous death always one misjudgement away.
We get glimpses of various levels, and as well as the unforgiving environments this seems to have a little more focus on boss fights. We see Meat Boy taking on several mini-bosses, as well as some comically large bosses with gigantic chainsaws and the like.
Does the world really need a new 3D Meat Boy? Hell why not: I'll take it over yet another extraction shooter, and it does look like this captures some of the charm of the original (let's not talk about that awful auto-runner). Super Meat Boy 3D is due for release in 2026 on PC.
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