My latest video-game addiction has me lost in a dreamworld of never-ending explosions.  The culprit is none other than the inaugural Summer of Arcade game, ‘Splosion Man!

The premise is quite simple; you’re a man of extraordinary explosion capabilities, and you use said capabilities to traverse through 47 platforming levels (with three bosses!) in single player, with a SEPARATE multiplayer (up to four!) co-op game with another 50 levels.  There is no attack button, there is no jump button, there is no reloading or special button.

Just ‘splodin.

The level design does seem to get recycled a bit in the later areas, but the general feel of the game is just pure manic fun.  There is a lot of emphasis on reaction time as you attempt to ‘splode your way out of danger, whether from oncoming spike walls, rising water levels, mad scientists piloting huge running robots, little flying sentries that shoot lasers at you, and more.

The game itself also has a ton of personality to it.  It’s one of those games you could very easily assume that the developers (Twisted Pixel in this case) had way too much fun making.  It’s got a high level of humor, which is very apparent in the general style of the game, the animations of the main character, and not to mention that WHEN YOU BLOW UP SCIENTISTS THEY TURN INTO T-BONE STEAKS, SAUSAGE LINKS, AND OTHER MEAT PARAPHERNALIA (as opposed to big blood clouds and the like).

I’ve already beat the it (it’s addicting), but this is the type of game that’s perfect for doing speed runs.  There’s online leaderboards for the best time in each level, and within each level, there’s a hidden “cake” that usually takes a pretty observant eye to find.

It’s only 800 Microsoft Points, and unfortunately is only on Xbox Live right now, but rumors have it that it’ll show up on the PC (and hopefully other systems) some time in the future. I highly recommend getting it, if not at least getting the demo to try that out.

(There’s better quality videos on Youtube, but I like the following one as it’s one of my favorite levels)