I remember in 2009 when Splosion Man came out, I thought that the guys over at Twisted Pixel’s had really brought a gem onto Xbox Live Arcade. Two years later and they’ve done it again but this isn’t just a rinse and repeat cycle, this is a new experience. Ms Splosion Man is what Ms Packman is to Packman. Faster, better, harder!
The creation of Ms Spolsion Man comes from the celebratory capture of Spolsion Man, where a freak accident makes this female counterpart. She is funny, fast and won’t let anyone or anything stand in her way. She surprisingly has alot of wit and pop culture references that she says as you simply move about in the game. “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” and other songs from the 90’s is some of the lines that caught me by surprise in a good way.
The gameplay premise stands the same where all you have is one button that’ll let you explode three times before having to recharge. Exploding on obstacles, platforms and bad guys is all done with one button, like the first. Where it differs is the level of puzzles and sheer number of environments. Spolsion Man seemed limited and sometimes repetitive with each new stage played but the variety has expanded greatly here.
Something to note is that this game is pretty big and is not something to speed through. Sure its fast and sometimes to fast for it’s own good but that has to do with how fast things are happening on screen. The game will make you go through a number of retry’s because of the difficulty. While not immensely hard in the beginning it is harder then Splosion Man and for those who never experienced that may be put off by it. It is very rewarding to stick it out and get through a stage where it seemed to be taking forever. The game still features the skip action if you die to many times in one stage.
One of the biggest features in Splosion Man was the up to four player co-operative play. Players will be required to use each other to explode through obstacles and platforms in the stages in order to complete them. Like the first one as well it features the no lag countdown so everyone could time out maneuvers without error.
There is little to complain about here, if your a die hard Splosion Man fan this is a no brainer. If you enjoy playing XBLA titles this is one of the best ones and if you like to try something new this will not disappoint in the least. Aside the difficulty curve, Ms Splosion Man looks better, plays better and is a more engaging game then the first. for $1200 Microsoft points its well worth the price tag.
