Guacamelee: As Exciting as a Margarita without the Tequila

Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition is a metroidvania style platformer set in a small town in Mexico. As a local agave farmer in love with El Presidentes' daughter, Juan is killed incidentally when he tries to rescue her from a demonic skeleton determined on melding the land of the dead with that of the living.

In the land of the dead an ancient power bequeaths to Juan a mask, which returns him to life as a luchador, and provides him with additional powers. Juan begins his search to rescue his love and the world from the evil charro and his undead minions.

In pursuit of the enemy, Juan begins with only the abilities to punch and jump. Skeletons abound and they can also be grappled and thrown at one another. As the game progresses Juan learns other abilities as is common in metroidvania games. But the problem is, they're all dull.

To obstruct the progress of the player the game employs four types of colored blocks, which can only be destroyed by the proper power. If you've realized that there are also four directions on a D-pad congratulations! The powers are simple a super attack up, a super attack down, a super attack to the side (standing), and another super attack to the side (moving). The game also throws in the obvious (double jump), with the slightly less obvious but not that creative (run up walls).

Occasionally, because of story elements, Guacamelee incorporates some interesting powers. Since the game is about the mixing of the dead and the living, some puzzles require the player to alternate between these two. The difference between them (aside from visual effects) is some terrain (walls, platforms) exist in the land of the living while different ones exist in the land of the dead. At first the power to transverse between the two is provided by objects in certain rooms, but by the end Juan can transfer between the two at the push of a button.

Another curious power is the ability to change into a chicken. This is granted to Juan when he confronts Carlos Calaca (the villainous skeleton) a second time. Carlos casually curses Juan (there isn't even a battle). Unfortunately Juan remains a chicken temporarily until he finds someone capable of removing the curse. Afterwards, he is able to transform back and forth at will. Yet the power adds little to an already simple game. As a chicken Juan is allowed to squeeze through small spaces: that's it!

Perhaps the game would have been exciting if the enemies were challenging. Individually each enemy presents no difficulty. Only by confronting the player with undue hordes in an enclosed area did danger threaten, but this generates only frustration. To advance the difficulty basic enemies received an increasing number of buffs over the course of the game. For instance, some were surrounded by a colorful transparent coating corresponding to one of the four power attackes mentioned previously. The correct power attack removed the shields, afterwhich the enemies would suffer damage as normal. Other rooms contained enemies in both the land of the dead and of living. If Juan was in the land of the living, the enemies in the other would appear as shadows: still able to harm Juan but unable to be damaged by him in return.

Even the bosses didn't feel distinct from their feebler minions though they required slightly more skill to defeat. Of them only the final villain himself presented any difficulty. He required a number of attempts of which I'm not willing to divulge the value (partly because of embarrassment but also because I stopped counting around ten). Yet each defeat did not foster a feeling of challenge but only a sigh of resignation and another attempt. The main problem: his attacks varied in how difficult they were to dodge and how much damage they did. There were three main attacks of which one did a ton of damage but was easily avoidable, one did little damage and was also avoidable, but a third did an incredible amount of damage and was nearly impossible to evade. This was frustrating because instead of using all attacks equally some battles consisted of only one or two. In the many battles I endured, the variety of his attacks was the best indicator for where his health would be when he killed me. After his patterns became easy to spot (around battle five), essentially I was only waiting for the right types of attacks to ensure my victory. Eventually his defeat occurred but because of this experience, there was no feeling of success but rather a cessation of vexation.

If asked what I expected but didn't materialize, it would be a sense of advancement, unique powers, and challenge.

Since this game was highly recognized upon its release by almost every reviewer perhaps there is something of value, unimpressed upon myself.

If anything, not the story, but the visual design both of the land of the dead and the living vibrated with life. Vibrant colors, fantastic style, and dozens of Easter eggs cluttered the background.

The ability to see towns in both the dead world and the living made the travel from city to city endurable, and yet they seemed empty whether full of breathing bodies or silent skeletons. Though cities contained side quests and villagers to speak to they seemed of no consequence. There were probably multiple towns and yet one can hardly remember anything about them or any distinguishing features.

The Easter eggs included well positioned references to Final Fantasy VII, Orcarina of Time, Batman, Mario, Castle Crashers, Strongbad and of course Grim Fandango. Well illustrated and just obvious enough to be noticed, yet reserved enough not to be grating, yet one wonders why so many (for there were many more than just these seven) so much time was spent on including them.

Finally I would like to briefly criticize the music (repetitive decent but by the end I felt I had heard the same song a thousand times, and the games only five hours long) before saying that aside from the combat, story, (and music), the platforming was the one part that felt unique, challenging, and satisfying. Unfortunately most of the platforming was for the bonus powerups and completely avoidable and unnecesssary. Certainly at the final boss all the bonus health was welcome, but until the end they weren't needed.

In the end I couldn't recommend this game except for that it is a short and unchallenging platformer. Certainly there are better ones out there and I hope to review some of them in the future.