Mutant Mudds

I LOVE this game. I have been following Mutant Mudds since it was first announced in Nintendo Power. GAMEPLAY: The gameplay is flawless. The platforming challenge is perfect. The difficulty curve is just right. Some people may whine about it being too difficult, but like anything challenging the reward is great. ART: The art is an incredible blend of 8-bit and 16-bit. I think they called it 12-bit. :-) The 3D effect when you go into the background is really fantastic. SOUND: The music is authentic NES style music, which might sound bad, but it sounds really amazing. REPLAY: I found this game really addicting. Even now that I have completed it 100% I find myself going back for more. It is just fun to navigate the levels, jumping, hovering, and shooting the Muddies. BOTTOM LINE: Buy it. I joined Metacritic just so I could leave a review for this fantastic game. Bravo Renegade Kid. I look forward to your other eShop games. 10/10

I've been hearing a lot about how Mutant Mudds is the best 3rd party game on the eShop. After playing it for myself, I've come to find it's a very good game, but has a few issues that keep it from true greatness. GAMEPLAY: the gameplay was tight and very solid. With that said, it's jump and shoot gameplay was kind of a letdown after enjoying MSF's and VVVVVV's more unique approaches to the platforming genrÃ. DIFFICULTY: the game is rather difficult (which isn't a bad thing), and most of the time it's handled very well, but in the later levels I noticed that there were some enemies that would attack off screen, and there were also a few "leaps of faith". It was a little disappointing to see the dev resort to those kinds of cheap tricks to ensure difficulty in the later moments. LENGTH: the game is a tad overpriced, but you'll still get quite a bit from this game (especially if you play all the bonus levels). GRAPHICS: it has a very charming retro look, but it's not sure whether it wants to be an homage to the 8-bit or 16-bit era, instead it seems to be a mix of the two that doesn't fully envoke the kind of nostalgic feeling it would have, had it chosen one era more specifically. With that said, the 3D effect is utterly fantastic, and is used to great effect. SOUND: while not the best soundtrack in the world, it captures that retro vibe perfectly. STORY: befitting of the retro era, it takes a very minimalist approach to storytelling. The concept (kid fighting mud monsters with water gun) feels uninspired, and something a child might come up with. CONCLUSION: if you can get past the fact that the game is a little "safe" in design and concept (and the cheap difficulty tactics later on), you'll find a solidly built retro styled platformer that's fun to play.

This is a rather decent game, though it's not quite spectacular. The biggest reason for this is its very short gameplay. The game forces you to replay every level over 2-3 times to truly beat it. This is its biggest flaw; I really feel this game could have been much better with more content. When I first saw the level screen, with all the doors leading off to the various levels, I assumed this was only world 1. But no, that was the entire game's worth of levels. Still, the game has some solid controls, and the graphics are great. I don't think the art style of the game is overly fantastic (it kind of reminds me of the style of Drawn to Life on the original DS), but it gets the job done. It lies somewhere between a retro throwback and a modern platformer. And to the people whining about the difficulty, it's that difficult because it's a retro throwback game, and most older games are very difficult (go play Castlevania 3, then come back and tell me this game is hard.) All-in-all, I think this is a solid, well designed game that fell short of its potential.

This game has a very cute art style. And that's the only thing it has going for it. As another user mentioned on here, this game requires players to practically memorize the moves they will make down to the very last pixel, and that in and of itself does not require any real skill, and thus making this game extremely boring. The movement mechanics also feel too sluggish for my liking. To be clear, I have completed everything there is to do in the game. I did so just to feel like this game wasn't a complete waste of my money.

Boring, repetitive, short, ugly, needlessly difficult, and over-priced. There are better, cheaper games. My son thought it was boring too. Judging by its metacritic score you can make a game with terrible, repetitive level design and as long as its retro its somehow ok.