As someone who was, and still is, heavily exposed to a world of AAA titles, it feels out of place to step into a retro realm of video gaming. Truth be told – I have never played many retro games neither have I played their modern day reincarnate – ‘indie’ games. So one can imagine how perturbed I became when I was asked to review ‘Guacamelee’, and quite to my surprise it had exceeded far beyond my initial expectations.
A little research into the history of Drinkbox studios, the creators of the game, showed that Guacamelee STCE is actually the expanded version of the original title but this time it was ported to consoles and PC, and it features a ton of new content ranging from new fight moves to new bosses as well as new areas; the usual repertoire of any game expansion, and now it has been brought to the Playstation Plus network as their monthly free game. However due to the lack of any experience with the original, my playthrough of STCE could not be compared to a base rate, thus I will be discussing this game from a stand-alone point of view.
The story that leads Guacamelee STCE is that players take the role of Juan, a simple farmer that has been thrust into the role of a vigilante luchador after his beloved was kidnapped by an evil charro, by the name of Carlos Calaca, and his group of demonic villains. Juan must traverse the various lands that have been directly or indirectly affected by the presence of this great evil, all the while trying to help various bystanders along the way. Now, by what I described, you may think that Guacamelee is woven from the veils of an epic tale but in reality this journey is more humor than epic. The game is ripe with various humorous dialogues, even the villains themselves can’t be taken seriously – this is to say that this was Drinkbox’s idea all the while. The humor is so brilliant that you will try to open dialogue with every NPC just to see what tidbit they have to say. It’s not just the dialogue that evokes laughter but even the characters themselves such as the talking overgrown rooster that ironically doesn’t believe it is a rooster, or that your trainer is goat that transforms into a grumpy old man with a dry sense of humor. Guacamelee does a brilliant job of mixing witty humor with the occasional juvenile jokes, and it’s a winning component for any game that wants to take itself seriously but not to the point that it becomes overwhelming.
Aside from the jokes, the art style of Guacamelee is gorgeous in the most colorful and simplistic ways. It draws inspiration from Mexican art styles amalgamated with a blaze of bright colors to give you a well rendered 2D platform. The game does a superb job of ensuring the various locations are distinguishable be it in the form of lighting, color combination, design, and even types of enemies spawned; it doesn’t feel like a lazy re-skin of the same three prototypes. One could argue that enemy designs are repetitive in terms that some enemies are distinguished just by their color coating – yet my argument to this is that they are technically supposed to be of same type but only vary in terms of how they attack thus the need to coat their colors differently. This coating format works splendidly in combat as it triggers you to use the best strategy against the respective enemy type instead of just mashing all the attacks into one inglorious uproar.
In terms of mechanics and gameplay, the game is quite rock solid on that forefront. There aren’t a slew of attack types – you have your special attacks such as uppercuts and body slams, yet these basics are all powered by a stamina bar that takes a relative amount of time to recharge. Otherwise, the player is limited to the usual single button mashing that sprouts about punches and kicks. Yet in this simplicity, the game creates this interestingly enough complex system of fight styles – an example being that you can punch an enemy three times, uppercut him into the air, then proceed to known him back down and then finally top it off with body slam; and this is just a simple attack combination. As mentioned earlier, it does feels that some enemies are reskinned but it works towards the strategy of distinguishing the same rank of enemies by their color variation, in turn you can know their style of primary attack execution. The biggest takeaway from the gameplay is the puzzles and platforming sections of the game – the game makes you not only just time your jumps and rolls precisely but it also makes you use your attacks in order to traverse the areas – this is seen with the uppercut that helps in getting more verticality or the dashing derpderp (that is literally what it is called) which sees the player send a straight horizontal punch which can double as a feature to air dash.
Yet with such simple mechanics it suffers from the pitfall of occasional response delay which can be disastrous during the platforming sections. Also, it doesn’t help that the special attacks are configured around the combination of pressing O with left joystick being pressed in a certain direction – this kind of setup can cause confusion as the joystick has to pushed in a direction with such precision that 15 degrees up or down can lead you to do something else entirely, and I experienced this mainly during the sections that saw me fight a plethora of enemies in a tight space. As delightful as the color combinations are, it can be heavily strenuous on the eyes due to the fluctuating bright hues – this can be resolved by decreasing the brightness but in effect you take away from the parade of colors that carries the game. Furthermore, the game boasts co-op features and they are fun but in terms of improving game experience it genuinely does not add much, if anything it feels like an ineffectual appendage.
It goes without saying that even with the aforementioned issues the game is superb in every sense of the word. The game does a terrific job of using humor in the right doses along with ensuring that the platforming sections of the game are varied enough so that they don’t feel redundant, and the fighting mechanics are captivating and ridiculously fun because of the combination of ways they can be strung together, it even has a sufficient amount of side activities to keep you preoccupied after finishing the main story. Guacamelee STCE is a game that is so good that I, an advocate of AAA games, would actually pay full price for it. It is one of those games which showcases that sometimes simplicity and humor are a terrific combination.
