Mutant Mudds Super Challenge (Wii U) Review

Mutant Mudds Super Challenge largely plays like a sadistic version of its predecessor. Nothing about the core run, jump, and shoot gameplay has really changed. Enemies still remain the same, largely being tough-to-kill obstacles that obscure platforms and passages. Max, the main character, can still use his jetpack to hover in the air for a few brief seconds at a time. For those who've played the original, this really will feel familiar, up to a point.

Right off the bat, the tutorial shows that the level design isn't kidding around this time. Rather than showing what each button does in correspondence with one of Max's actions, it plays more like a mid-game level, requiring perfectly timed actions. Upon reaching the final part of the stage, Max gets electrocuted and gets sent to the bottom of the mountain, and must complete the levels there to climb back up.

Rather than have a strictly scaling difficulty curve, levels all present unique challenges through enemy placement, spike placement, or even just through the timing of the jumps themselves. While they do make for interesting obstacles, a lot of them just end up feeling unfair, given how fast Max needs to reposition sometimes. It often feels like commands need to be input several steps ahead, and with the way Max interacts with enemies and platforms, sometimes death feels frustrating and out of place.

It's easy to tell when death is entirely your fault. Jumping into a pit of spikes generally results in restarting a level, but most people familiar with retro platformers probably aren't going to find that surprising. Where it begins to feel annoying is the minor little hitbox detections, and the odd hovers that just fall short of a ledge. A large part of Super Challenge comes down to learning each stage's nuances through straight repetition, and the appeal in that decreases a fair bit with the long stages with few checkpoints.

In each of the base levels, there's a hidden area in each stage that branches off from the level's main section. In the original title, these stages provided an extra level of challenge and offered extra rewards to those willing to brave their perils. They still do here, but their difficulty doesn't feel appreciably out of line with the base stages. They do require careful planning and timing, which does feel slightly exhausting when the timer is constantly ticking down. It rarely ends up being a problem, but that constant threat is always there, encouraging a brisk pace.

The soundtrack is still very appealing, but is a tiny bit repetitive with the amount of times you'll end up restarting any given level. While the challenges presented are fun, and honestly rewarding to figure out, they're at the point where it's hard to want to keep playing for too long. Levels are long enough that playing for extended periods just ends up draining as you try to surpass the increasingly difficult challenges the game throws at you.