As I’m often inclined to say, I’m very much a vintage gamer, so in general I tend to be very open to releases that have some of that old-school flavor to them. I’ll admit that, in general, I’m more inclined to enjoy games shooting for the 16-bit era, but I’ve absolutely played games that have rocked the feel of the 8-bit days effectively as well. In the case of The Meating, the target was more in line with the earlier days. While, to a degree, I can respect the somewhat unique style of play it was shooting for, I can’t say I was terribly pleased with the results.

After a pretty brief introduction to your pretty limited control options, you’ll be thrown into the mix, with the hopes of avoiding death at the hands of roaming skeletons and some odd falling cooked whole turkeys apparently. In general, this is a puzzle platforming experience with a little action thrown in as well. Your moves are initially limited to a charge, headbutt, and a jump that you’re able to extend by flying, but that’s about all the traditional 2-button scheme really allows for. I’ll admit that the differentiating of the hold and release for a small charged attack and tapping for a headbutt seemed unnecessary, and honestly in general that made my attacks feel inconsistent, which was a bit annoying. Throw in what felt like a lack of precision when you’re trying to make small moves, and I felt like I was taking more cheap hits than I should have been.

You’ll later acquire some other skills that will be tied to pressing a direction when you hit a button, but this was another case where the implementation felt a little underwhelming, with it being unclear at times mechanically what the game was expecting of me to get by a specific obstacle or section.This exacerbated my issues with the puzzle aspect of the game, which tended to try to vary what you’d need to do in any given stage. But the lack of clarity on what you should do, and why at times, just made it feel like the game’s direction on what abilities you have and how best to use them was a bit incomplete.

Weirdly, The Meating did actually remind me of older titles I played in the NES era, but not in a particularly good way. Perhaps the goal was to challenge people to take the mechanics they’re presented with and then have them take some leaps of faith to fully understand how everything comes together. In my mind though, I was just eager to move onto something else a little more straightforward and satisfying.