Puyo Puyo pools of blood
I am not good at Puyo Puyo games — creating chains to rack up points and clear lines is a big part of that type of puzzle game, and it’s not something I’m great at. However, because it’s so important to Mean Meat Machine that heavy lean into combos becomes a curse-filled experience that is enough to pull my beard out.
In a good way, weirdly.
This is the color-matching Puyo Puyo, but it’s filled with the Team Meat bullshit (saw blades, blood, explosions, etc) that people love about those games, and it’s thrown at us in heavy bucketfuls. We need to drop meat cubes down a path, but we also need to avoid the saw blades, lasers, and whatever else is in our way. And we have to do it REALLY FAST. If we manage to drop a cube in the right spot and a saw blade hits it, we don’t lose a life but we do lose that cube that we just so diligently worked to lay down.
It makes us angry. ANGRY!
However, like Super Meat Boy respawning is a key part of the game, and we respawn A LOT. It lets us set up our cubes just a tad but more efficiently the next time, and it keeps going until we FINALLY get the combo and clear the section that we’ve been trying for what seems like an eternity.
Thankfully the stages are set on a world map, with individual biomes and level types to keep things fresh (as much as bloody meat can be) so that we don’t quit because we’ve been playing one mess for so long. The inclusion of powerups helps too, so that we can at least unleash movesets that can help us clear out areas quicker.
This game makes us angry, BUT ALL IN A GOOD WAY. It’s so fast and the resets are so quick it’s not frustrating, it’s just hard. It’s enjoyable, but a bit formulaic (there are better actual Puyo games out). Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine is probably not for those who love Puyo style games, but for those who love and are all in on the Meat Boy phenomenon.
This review is based on a Steam Code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It originally appeared on the June 23rd edition of The SideQuest.
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