I have played many games in my life, but so far none as weird and surprisingly fun as Ms. Splosion Man. Since this is my first encounter with the game, I honestly really liked what I experienced (yeah, you might think I have been living under a rock, but even if I had an Xbox 360, the game never picked my attention), and I must say that it was better than expected. Ms. Splosion Man brings a new take on the platformer genre, and that is a huge deal because when you think of a platformer game, the first character that comes to mind is Mario Bros. To make a game stand apart, you need to add a cool mechanic, and this is what Ms. Splosion Man did with the splosion mechanic.
The story in Ms. Splosion Man is pretty wacky and straightforward. The game begins with Splosion Man (the protagonist from the first game) being finally captured. While the scientists are having a celebration party and dancing like there is no tomorrow, one of them spills his drink on top of a control console, creating a chain reaction that ends up in the birth of our explosively charming and wacky heroine thus giving start to the game.
The first part of the game is an interactive tutorial that honestly had me laughing a lot, oh Karen. In any case, once you finish the tutorial you realize that this is a game that only uses one button, but because of that the many puzzles and challenges you encounter along the way, it feels like you need to use your head to make the best use of the three splosions you have at your command. Getting the timing right with some quick reflex areas is a bit tricky but so satisfying once you get the hang of it.
One thing worth mentioning is that Ms. Splosion Man is not right in the head. Her movements are random when walking. Sometimes she moves while tip-toeing. Other times, she walks really fast in a weird locomotion way. There are also times that she moves doing little jumps and even skating. It’s like she is so hyper active that she can’t stay still, and when you are not moving, she just stays there dancing. She is a weird experiment gone wrong all right. I love also that the game is chock full of pop references. In the gibberish that she says, I recognized parts of “Do you want to be my lover” from Spice Girls and many others that add charm and wackiness to the game (if is not wacky enough).
This overall nonsense feels right at home during the different stages that you play through, including blowing up scientists here and there, activating switches to enable you to jump higher, even sliding through rails all makes up to provide puzzles that make the game enjoyable. Is there a woman who doesn’t go crazy for shoes? She goes really gaga for finding shoes hidden in each level (some take a lot of effort to get, but you can’t have her walking bare feet can you?). They don’t do anything that breaks the game in any way; it’s just a cosmetic change. However, for a completionist, finding all of them is a must. Also, there is a really good feature included that if you die several times in a checkpoint you can press the + button at any time and activate a trick that will let you skip the current checkpoint if you been stuck for a while, so its good if you don’t want to “blow up” in frustration and continue the game,
Graphically, the game looks good. I like that either on handheld or TV mode, the game plays smoothly, and there are no hiccups during game play, especially with chain splosions in some puzzles. The boss fights are really fun. I like that some even have quick time events, so it makes the fights more dynamic.
The music is good. It has kind of like a female spy vibe thinking Charlie’s Angels) and goes well with all the nonsense fun going on (I mean why the world is full of scientists). For completionists, there are a lot of pictures, promotional artwork, and videos to unlock with the coins you get at the end of each stage (you get more if you finish bellow or within the time limit). There’s even local and online multiplayer, so the explosive action gets more hectic with more players (as of time of writing I wasn’t able to find anyone online, but I hope this changes and more players join the fun). There is a lot to do and good replay value.
Bottom Line: Ms. Splosion Man arrives with a bang to the Nintendo Switch. It is a really interesting approach to the platform genre with clever puzzles and overall non-stop explosive action. If you haven’t played it like me, I give it a solid recommendation because for a game that released on 2011, Ms. Splosion Man still gives a lot of bang for your buck.
A Review copy was provided for this review.