I really, REALLY hate being negative about games, contrary to my most popular reviews on this site. Who wants to just bitch and moan about how bad a game is? Sure, it’s fun after the moment, but the hours you spend leading up to the review are dreadful. This very fact was tested by The End is Nigh. Coming in from an outsider’s perspective, I was very intrigued by Nigh. A game created out of the stresses that comes with game development? Sounds interesting! And plus, it’s a game created by Edmund McMillen, who created some of my personal favorites! It’s going to be a great time, right?

You can already tell where this is going. I’m sorry, but this has to be the biggest letdown I’ve experienced in gaming so far. I just don’t like The End is Nigh. Coming a few years after Super Meat Boy, the platforming legend that it still is, The End is Nigh feels like it barely took any hints from that game’s design. And it tries. So, SO hard to embody what made Super Meat Boy so special. But it just fails. And no, to clarify, I am not disappointed that this game isn’t a renamed Super Meat Boy 2. What I am trying to say is that it simply fails to lives up to the design quality of the classic that was made by the same developer. And it suffers heavily from that. First off, the level design. I really don’t like it. Not at all. It’s rooted deep in trial and error, which is not a bad design for a game, but compared to other games like it, it’s just not as fun. The End is Nigh has numerous chapters with 20 levels within each, but the skill ceiling is simply far too low to warrant replaying any of them. The End is Nigh barely lets you toy around with it’s level gimmicks, nor does it have satisfying controls for a modern game. While the controls themselves are fine, you don’t have any major abilities to use, so most levels become very generic, and quickly. The level design itself is passable, but I don’t think they were very captivating to play. It’s just going through the same song and dance over and over again. You just grapple onto cliffs, move here, move there, and bam, onto the next stage. It’s a complicated issue, and I don’t even know why I don’t like the levels. There’s no bullshit or anything, but I thought the level design was just too standard. In this adventure, there are little gimmicks in your way, so eventually all of the levels kind of blend in and aren’t interesting at a certain point. Are they challenging? Kinda. Not hard enough to stand out from other more difficult platformers, but I guess it isn’t New Super Mario Brothers 2. But I didn’t pop off when I beat a hard level, I breathed heavy and moved on. This is also more of a personal nitpick, but I wish there was some feeling of accomplishment with beating a level. What if it was like Katana Zero and Super Meat Boy, where you’re shown a replay of all of your runs? Not just unceremoniously switching to the next level. So, if there’s no extrinsic value of enjoyment in the stages, why should you want to replay them? The Tumors. And you’ll want to collect as many of these as you can, which I’ll explain later. The tumor collecting itself also doesn’t feel that great in my opinion. Once again, it’s rooted deep in frustrating game design, and you don’t feel accomplished when you grab one. Nor does securing a tumor feel great. Once again, in Super Meat Boy and Celeste, Bandages and Strawberries weren’t placed haphazardly. There were designated areas to collect them, which furthered your enjoyment (and skills, most importantly) of the game. In Super Meat Boy as well, you actually got shit for completing the game, like new characters and whatnot, not just an achievement on Steam (an issue I have with Celeste but that's beyond the point). But in here, it’s like doing chores on a chore list. It's not as satisfying, and I only exhaust like I did in the main game when I finally secure it. And shockingly, that’s all of my major issues with the game. Yeah, a short list no doubt, but the game never deviates from the norm. By the end of The Past, I was extremely burnt out with the game. When I went back to the first chapter (thankfully you don’t have to backtrack), I lost all hope for the game at that point. And then, the game decided to suckerpunch me in the dick. You know those tumors I brought up? Yeah. Now that’s your fucking LIFE COUNT NOW. I had 30 fucking tumors going in. And there were 20 levels in a single chapter, meaning I had to do each level while dying only ONCE EACH. Seriously, FUCK THAT DESIGN CHOICE. No game I have EVER played in the 21st century has cock-blocked your progression like this. Either have no lives or NOT, especially when it’s not even COMMUNICATED TO THE PLAYER. I thought Super Meat Boy had no lives to avoid players getting frustrated, so where did that design element go? Seriously though, what the FUCK is the correlation between the amount of tumors I got in The Past compared to The Future? This design choice single handedly ruined my opinion of The End is Nigh, and proved my point that this game is so poorly designed. I already wasn’t having too much fun to begin with, but pulling this at the halfway point is seriously sadistic design. Oh, but what if I wanted to go back to collect all of the tumors I needed? I essentially needed to REPLAY THE ENTIRE GAME OVER AGAIN. I’m not even kidding, the Fast Travel only allows you to warp to the beginning of each chapter, NOT the individual levels within said chapters. Why not divide each individual chapter up into 3 to avoid this issue, or better yet let us travel to each level? It’s not that hard. These two design choices killed all motivation to continue. The level design kind of sucked to begin with. I’m not interested in redo-ing the entire game but slightly more irritating.

The End is Nigh was such a letdown to me. I think I’ve explained well enough why I didn’t enjoy it, so I don’t really have anything more to say. Uhhhhhh play Blaster Master Zero ok thanks bye

Edmund really topped himself here. The game not only controls far tighter then Meatboy but one ups it in nearly every way. The graphics are subdued but cohesive and even beautiful at points. The end game makes excellent use of a lives system (take that people who said meat boy made lives obsolete) and manages to make every pick up useful but not necessary. The interconnected levels make secrets far more complex with the player often having to backtrack through levels (which usual requires taking a new path) in order to collection. This is a content rich game with all of that content being of a high standard. There is many different completion metrics and alternate challenge types that make TEIN not only a hard game but a hard game where the player can modify the difficulty in a way far more natural and less patronizing then a poorly balanced difficulty select or micromanaging gameplay menu options.

-Edmund McMillen can't make a better platformer than this and you can't change my mind well maybe Edmund can but that's beside the point.
-Super Meat Boy but for real men.
-"The soundtrack doesn't have to be anything special, we just need a normal video game score".
-The game soundtrack: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
- Yes, I am a masochist. How did you know ?

Better than Super Meat Boy don't @ me

...Alright, I'll elaborate. The Apocalypse has happened, and Rich Evans goes adventuring into a world full of spikes, cancerous flesh and secret areas to find a friend. Anyone familiar with Edmund McMillen's artistic style will be right at home - I'm not repulsed by it, so everything is alright here. Also familiar is the platforming through tight spaces, launching yourself off hooks and ledges, avoiding instakill hazards, sometimes going off the paved road to collect tumors; this one controls a bit slower, but still controls wonderfully other than it being hard to hang on ledges with spikes on them - airborne movement has just the right amount of controls for it, and level design doesn't really fall into dickery territory. Other than the birds. Once you'll see them, you'll know.

What TEIN does really well though is collectibles. There are hidden cartridges unlocking optional retro-styled levels. Collectible-locked optional areas. Locked areas to be unlocked with keys you'll find much later. But among them all, the tumors you find in almost every screen have a simple yet very cool twist to them: in The End Is Nigh's 'dark world' (Because of course this game would have a dark world section!), these tumors turns into your usual video games lives. If you haven't collected much of them, getting through each part of the dark world might be a bit arduous, but it gets a bit easier once you have 200 or so lives to spend.

Also, this game got some good music. Can't go wrong with some good classical music remixes. (And of course Night on Bald Mountain is featured!)

I recommend you play this game.