Super Meat Boy is a clever throwback to 2D platformers of the past, bringing with it a insane sense of humor and an even more insane level of difficulty. As the title character, you set out to rescue your girlfriend Bandage Girl from Dr. Fetus, a fetus in a glass jar and tuxedo. No, I am not making this up. You pursue him throughout over 300 levels, along with hidden warp zones and alternate ‘Dark World’ versions of levels. The levels are chock full of hazards. You can expect to die and die often. At the end of the level, you are treated to a replay of your progress including all the death’s you’ve suffered trying to complete the level. You can unlock characters from other indie video games such as Braid’s Tim and Bit Trip’s Commander Video. Each of these characters has their own unique powers, and some are needed to access the game’s collectables. The game has a unique art style that smacks of retro 8 and 16 bit games, although it clearly won’t be for everyone due to it’s heavy difficulty. If you appreciate hardcore challenges and miss gaming’s classic era, then Super Meat Boy is for you.

This week brings us another Lego game and Brink for most systems. Not seeing any releases that have been heavily hyped. Remember to use the links below to purchase any games of interest to help us out!

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Who puts the future in your hands? Robotix! Robotix!

As a child of about 5 or 6 and later, my mother would often take my sister and I to the local The Video Store. That is capitalized because, as I recall, that was the actual name of the business. Local businesses renting vhs tapes of movies and television was the norm back then, long before national chains like Blockbuster Video moved in and undercut them and even longer before Netflix would establish itself undercutting the national chains and let us not mention YouTube or Hulu just yet. Going to The Video Store was quite the treat. My mother would allow us to rent one or two videos of our choice. It would not be out of the norm for me to rent a couple episodes of The Transformers or Challenge of the Go-Bots. That was my proverbial jam in those days and, truthfully, still is. There was one movie in that children’s section that I really adored and rented many many times that was neither Transformers, Go-Bots, nor any other wildly popular franchise at the time (and there were a lot of them). This 90 minute movie was called Robotix. And that is why today is R for Robotix.

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Gradius: TIA is the sequel to Nemesis, a Game Boy-exclusive entry in the Gradius series. Despite its small scale, it’s just as enjoyable as any console or arcade Gradius. You play as a ship whose loadout you select before hand, and you are tasked with escaping your alien pursuers. Although there is no text, there is a bit of a storyline about escape, and at the end of the game, the hunter becomes the prey as you turn the tables. Strangely, there are several Gradius staples that are missing from the series such as moai statues, a space intro to each stage (each stage seamlessly flows into the next), and classic Gradius music. However, the variety of the game’s 5 levels make up for it, as you face off against increasingly bizarre alien creatures and huge bosses. The soundtrack is also pretty good for a Game Boy title as well. Hopefully this will be one of the first games that will be available when legacy Game Boy Games are made available on the 3DS shop.

To think it was over 5 years ago when I first put out a hands-on feature about this game. With Skryim right around the corner, now is the perfect time to do a follow up. For those of you who missed the hands on, Oblivion is the follow up to ES3: Morrowind, which was one of my favorite games on the original Xbox. As much as I liked Morrowind, it was far from perfect, so naturally when I heard about Oblivion, I was buzzed. Not only would it be a next generation installment of the franchise, the folks at Bethesda Softworks would fix all the issues in Morrowind. When the end product was released, it was a beautiful thing indeed. Not only did Bethesda live up to its promises, it (along with EA’s Fight Night Round 3 which was also released that week) helped to put a definitive end to the “Xbox 1.5” jokes and created one of the greatest games in any console generation.
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Another somewhat slow week in the world or game releases, which I suppose is a good thing considering the PlayStation Network is still down indefinitely. Thor comes out in theaters next weekend, but the video game tie-in will be released this week.

More after the jump!
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Mortal Kombat Trilogy is a home console exclusive version of Mortal Kombat 3, designed for the Playstation and Nintendo 64, with Sega Saturn and PC versions being made available a year later and being ports of the Playstation version (meanwhile, the Genesis and SNES got crappy ports of Ultimate MK3 while the Saturn got a ‘just okay’ version of UMK3). It’s intention was to basically close out the current storyarc, as Ed Boon and company was beginning work on Mortal Kombat 4. It does so in a pretty big way, as Raiden and Johnny Cage (among others) were added to the cast so that players could play as every character who was ever in a Mortal Kombat game. Many of the characters have new moves that were never before seen in any previous MK, such as Baraka’s spinning blades and Kung Lao’s dive. There was a new character, Chameleon (on the PS1) or Khameleon (if you played on N64). This character could randomly switch between any of the palette-swapped ninjas (male for PS1 and female for N64) and adopt their movesets. There are also several battlegrounds from MK2 thrown in. The PS1 version of the game has a few select levels from MK1.
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This Past week, Portal 2 hit stores everywhere. If you don’t have enough money for it, don’t worry, there is another first person shooter/puzzle hybrid you can check out in the meantime. The Ball, developed by Swedish developers Teotl Studios, was originally intended to be a mod to Unreal Tournament 3. Instead, the developers moved it over to the Unreal Development Kit in order to release the game as a standalone package. You play as an archeologist trapped in a cave. You encounter two artifacts: a large round ball and a strange gun which you use to control it. You use the ball to solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and explore the secrets of the underground cavern. The game’s physics makes the puzzles unique, and the Unreal Engine 3-powered graphics make the game look gorgeous. It was entered into Epic’s �Make Something Unreal� annual contest, and was also included in Valve’s �Potato Sack Pack�, a Steam promotion featuring several independently developed games that were discounted and bundled in anticipation of Portal 2’s release. So if you’re done with Portal 2, or just don’t have the money for it yet, pick this up in the meantime.