Iron Meat Review (Switch)

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last few decades you may have noticed there are quite a few indie games which are moulded in the ‘Metroidvania’ way. There also a fair few pixel platformers out there but, perhaps surprisingly, there are far fewer run and guns games inspired by the Contra series and other games of its ilk. Indeed, aside from Blazing Chrome it’s been remarkably quiet, that is until now.

The plot of Iron meat is as hilarious as it is basic. There have been some strange experiments going on, on the moon and now an iron hungry meat mass is mutating and destroying everything in a post-apocalyptic future. This is basically an excuse to merge iron and meat together to create horrific monsters to blast like a giant meat train boss with teeth.

Iron Meat unashamedly takes inspiration from Konami’s classic series in the best way. It is tough, but it’s not quite as brutal as Contra or Blazing Chrome, so it at least lets players get used to it before really ramping up the challenge. Levels are creative and well designed and provide a good deal of variety. In a further concession to the difficulty, any unlocked stage can be started from when you die, meaning you can practice the tough later levels without needing to blast through the others first.

As always with games of this type, the controls are key. We are pleased to say that everything here is tight. Your little dude who looks like Robocop is nimble and responsive and it’s also easy to blast in the direction you want to. That’s handy as the later levels require constant and precise movement to survive. As a nice touch your character can be quite heavily customised with unlockable skins and parts as well to mimic some famous characters.

There’s also a host of powerups available that keep blasting fun and you can carry up to two of these at a time. There is another small concession to the difficulty here in that when you die, you’ll keep whatever weapon loadout you weren’t using at the time.

The game looks beautiful as well. There are some amazing, animated cut scenes throughout and the levels themselves are detailed and full of character and touches such as sparks and flickering lights. In this respect the Switch doesn’t seem to be lagging. There’s no evidence of slowdown or poor performance either. Matching the visuals is an adrenaline pumping soundtrack and top level foley. This really is well thought out and presented excellently.

Overall, Iron Meat is a top tier run and gun game. There is an argument that it might be more fun than the recent Contra: Operation Galuga. It’s big, bold and intense but also gives you enough to feel like you can make progress and have a chance against what you are blasting. Retroware seem to have a host of retro inspired games coming and long may it continue if they carry on being at this level of quality.

Overall 8/10