Who would have thought that explosions upon explosions on top of more explosions in a video game would be so much fun? Well, that’s what Twisted Pixel’s latest offering, Ms. Splosion Man, is all about. This zany, hilarious platforming game from the brilliant minds at Twisted Pixel takes all of the excellent aspects of its predecessor, Splosion Man, and reinvents and refines these ideas into a well polished and entertaining sequel to 2009′s sploding laugh fest, even with its minor gripes and blemishes holding it back from platforming perfection.

Ms. Splosion Man’s story is very simple. After the capture of last year’s protagonist, Splosion Man, by Big Science, the scientists begin to celebrate. One scientist accidently spills liquid onto a wire that triggers a surge of energy to an experimentation platform where a yellow bow falls into and just like that, Ms. Splosion Man is born. Once again, all hell breaks loose as Ms. Splosion Man runs wild all over Big Science Labs and throughout the world.

The game’s graphics shine throughout this title. Animations are beautifully well done, especially with Ms. Splosion Man’s wild antics. I often caught myself not moving her just to see her hilarious idle animations. The game looks like a cartoon come to life and is much prettier and sharper than 2009’s adventure.

You go out of the lab this time around

I do wish, however, that the game included some visual cues to help the player not lose track of the character when the camera zooms out in bigger levels, especially in multiplayer modes. Sometimes I lost track of where I was in a level, specifically in levels that blasted my character all over the screen. Usually, you won’t run into this problem in single player, but it does get somewhat annoying when playing with a couple of buddies.

Listening to Ms. Splosion man’s hilarious dialogue is instantly memorable. You’ll often hear her spewing references to a bunch of songs from pop culture and is a straight up parody of a stereotypical teenage girl. I can imagine, however, that some people will grow tired of her relentless babbling and will want to keep her mouth shut, especially when replaying levels over and over again (more on that in a minute).

Sploding to the top with a buddy

The game is extremely easy to pick up and play. All you do is move and press any button on the controller to “splode” your character across the screen. That’s all you do. For those of you who played Splosion Man’s first outing, you will feel right at home with Ms. Splosion Man’s game play. If you never got the chance to play 2009’s adventure, Ms. Splosion Man sounds like it’s a walk in the park, but is nowhere near that level of difficulty once you get to the deeper levels in the game. Ms. Splosion Man gets very difficult after you play the first couple of levels and quickly requires the player to solve intricate puzzles and perform master level platforming early on in the game.

That’s not to say that the game gets impossible to beat. The levels and puzzles thrown to you are passable; it’s just that at times, the game sometimes gets annoyingly difficult that you will eventually run into levels where you will have to repeat the same section of a level countless times in order for you to move on. I remember one level where I had to follow a moving platform while sploding myself to upper levels to activate switches to remove obstacles that can destroy it. If I did not move fast enough to activate these switches and time my jumps correctly, I would fall to my death and have to try the section again and again until I got it right.

It’s not that I welcome the difficulty of the game; I actually like the challenge. I just wish that the game didn’t get so difficult so quickly. Luckily, there’s an option in the game after you die a couple of times where you can skip a section of the level to move to the next checkpoint, but you get penalized at the end of the level with a time of 999. Those of you who don’t mind skipping sections in order to pass a level will be fine taking advantage of this option. Others who want to completely beat levels on their own and set records on the leader boards will have to endure some difficulty spikes and frustration along the way.

Aww... She loves my review.

Even with its difficulty spikes here and there, Ms. Splosion Man is still a blast to play. The game includes 50 unique single player levels and 50 completely different multiplayer levels, a ton of extra content to unlock, local and online co-op for up to four players, and an extra game mode called two girls, one controller. (I’ll let you think about what that means.) There’s a bunch of variety in this game, even with its simplistic control scheme, and the humor found throughout the title makes it even more enjoyable.  If there is one game you must buy over the summer, it has to be Twisted Pixel’s Ms. Splosion Man, which is much superior to its predecessor. What are you waiting for? Go on that Xbox 360 of yours and buy it! It’s quite frankly one of the best downloadable games of the year.

Final Verdict – 9/10