A sequel to the 2009 surprise hit, Ms. Splosion Man is a classic sequel, like the game it nods smugly to Ms. Pacman, in more ways than one. In addition to adding a bow to the character it both expands and improves on the original game.

Expect more platforming, more gibberish humour and a great deal more ‘sploding’. Only this time with added pink.

Ms. Splosion Man is the closest thing to a Nintendo game (other than maybe Raskulls) that you’re going to get on an Xbox. The combination of jumping, timing and puzzles, plus several design choices such as how you choose a level (complete with secret levels and doorways), are obviously adapted from the classic Mario formula. Except rather than jump, you explode to catapult yourself through the air. Such a simple little change, but it adds an amusing and frantic energy to the platforming genre.

The comedy is handled with a machine gun style as Ms. Splosion Man rattles of various girlisms about shoes, kittens and general cute things or throws of song lyrics and dance moves out of the blue. It’s like watching a ten year old fed on red cordial, nitroglycerine and video hits released on the world. You can’t help but chuckle as the character rambles and explodes around the screen.

Ms. Splosion Man can also suffer that terrible platformers curse of trial and error difficulty from time to time. A few levels will test your hand eye coordination to its limit along with your memory with few checkpoints. These types of challenging levels get more frequent as the game goes on. I admit to being pretty poor at platformer games in general so if you’re a veteran you might not find it as difficult as I did. To combat this the level map clearly states how difficult each level is to give you the option of detouring around harder ones (if you’re a big wuss).

The game isn’t particularly deep or lengthy but a challenge mode and a multiplayer coop mode easily double the longevity with the added bonus of different completion rewards for the different modes. It’s clear from simple additions like these that Twisted Pixel want you to love the Splosian Man series as much as they do. And most of the time it’s pretty hard not to Ms. Splosian Man is great fun from start to finish.