After months of Playstation exclusivity, Guacamelee! finally arrives on Steam with the Gold edition. You are Juan Aguacate, a humble Agave farmer who is helping out citizens of Pueblucho set up for the Dio Los Muertos festival in town. That is until your apparent love interest (El Presidente’s daughter) is kidnapped by the evil Carlos Calaca. Making your way through a Mexican inspired world, you must wrestle your way to save the day.
Calaca sold his soul to the devil and because he decided he regretted the transaction, he now wants to control the worlds of both the living and dead by merging them together, which really isn’t beneficial for anyone. Unlike most games, the dead are pretty humble people who like their world how it is and they aren’t too fond of Calaca in any case, since he turned Hell into a disorganised mess. It’s up to you to save both worlds from the mitts of the crazy guy that is trying to ruin everyone’s lives, or lack thereof in some cases.
This game boasts a colourful yet simple art style. As for getting new skills, there is a small neon flashing celebration that is fitting with the game, accompanying the appearance of a boss fight, or when you complete a heart or skull. The two different worlds utilise different colour palettes and subtleties so the worlds aren’t just replicas of each other. The land of the living uses vibrant tones of oranges, while the land of the dead is washed over with blues. The colour palettes aren’t the only thing that changes as you switch between the worlds, buildings that are closed in the living world are open for business for the dead, and statues gain an air of malevolence about them that you didn’t notice before.
Supporting the switches over between the worlds is the music. In the land of the living the music is more upbeat and vibrant, while in the land of the dead it’s more muffled out, sort of like you’re underwater. In the main two towns, the music can get a bit repetitive and annoying after a while since it’s more prominent on these levels.
When they said it was controller recommended, they weren’t joking. It’s a port from the PS3/PSVita, so it’s optimised for a controller over a keyboard. While you can rebind everything onto a keyboard to suit your needs, the reaction time from using the triggers on the controller are much more useful when doing a puzzle that requires perfect timing, or utilising combos in combat.
It has been a while since I have played a game that was frustrating, but the this actually added to the fun of it, making you want to complete a puzzle or the boss even more. Said guardians are well done, although there seems to be a large jump between difficulty for a couple of them. Once you complete the game on normal mode, you have hard mode, so you can play through it again for more challenging play. With the introduction to PC, the Gold edition added in a set of challenges called En Infierno where you can collect medals for your performance in each task. Gaining medals will unlock new costumes for you to use, each having different bonuses.
The costumes are pretty fun, the first two that are readily available are Juan and Tostada, the Guardian of the mask. Juan is more fist friendly, whereas Tostada is a bit more fun (in my opinion) and uses kick combos. You can unlock 3 costumes with money, and a further 3 with the tokens from El Infierno. Each costume has a positive and a negative effect so that your character doesn’t end up being too overpowered.
Combo-ing your way through the game is really fun, using grappling moves and various special abilities to kill enemies. To gain new moves you have to find statues dotted around the world where a goat will bestow a new skill upon you while making passes about dating your mother. He is one of the fun personalities that you meet throughout the game, and if you have a keen eye (you could actually spot them in your sleep) you will find a bunch of memes and references to other games dotted around the place.
Guacamelee! has fast paced combat with some loose tactics for enemies. By the middle of the game when you’ve gotten used to all the enemies and how they fight, shielded enemies are introduced. You have to use the appropriate special move to break the shield, and then kill the enemy like normal. To make it more fun and adrenaline filled you eventually get enemies that only appear in either the living or the dead world and you have to prioritise the enemies you attack. The combat can get a bit tedious at times with few variations through the different kinds of enemies encountered, but it’s not game breaking.
This game is a fantastic addition to the Metroidvania platformer family, it can be very addictive and I haven’t felt like sitting down and completing a game in one sitting in a long time. There’s not too much to fault in my opinion. Guacamelee! does a great job for what it is, the meme saturation in some areas of the game can seem a bit much at times, but thankfully that is only in passing. The smaller references to other games are slightly more enjoyable to be honest.
I had a very fun time playing this, and I would most definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a platformer with a bit of challenge. Patience is required at times, but it’s a fantastic little game.
