Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition Review

[Zera]

Intro: Do you love Super Metroid, but wish it was a beat-em-up set in Mexico? If so, then I have good news. Not only is your oddly specific wish granted, but Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition is one of the best games I've played this year.

Presentation: Guacamelee is a great looking 2D game. Everything is clean, colorful, and well-animated. The environments are detailed and have many layers in the foreground and background. There isn't a ton of music, but what's here is really good and fits the game perfectly.

Gameplay: Guacamelee's basic mechanics are satisfying to use thanks to responsive controls and snappy-yet-smooth animations. Right off the bat you can run, jump, dodge, and perform three hit combos. You can toss enemies into the air or smash them into the ground. Finally, after hitting an enemy a few times, you can throw it into other enemies. The basic throw can be aimed in any direction, but there are also a few wresting moves to use instead, like as a suplex or piledriver. All throws can damage multiple enemies while knocking them down, and you're also invincible while grabbing and throwing.

The initial combat has just enough variety and depth that it never gets too button mashy, but as you progress through the game you'll encounter statues that -

- look suspiciously familiar and grant new abilities. Some of these are mobility upgrades - double jumping, wall jumping, running up walls, and kicking off a wall to fly sideways like the Shinespark from Super Metroid.

The rest of the them are special moves - a stationary headbutt, a rising uppercut, a sideways punch, and a downward slam. These are executed Smash Bros. style - one button, one direction - but what's really impressive is that they pull quadruple duty for Guacamelee's design. They enable increasingly elaborate combos, but they also offer distance and height boosts for platforming. They let you access new areas as you explore the world, and they're even incorporated into the enemy variety, as some enemies have color-coded shields that can only be broken with the correct move.

Guacamelee's final trick is dual world gameplay - you can instantly switch between the worlds of the living and dead. Certain platforms only exist in one world, which, combined with the other mechanics, make some satisfying puzzle-platform sections. Enemies can also appear in one world, and can still hurt you if they're in the opposite world. As an added bonus, seeing how the world changes is simply neat. When switching to the dead world, the environmental details change, the color palettes change, and the music mutates through a distant, otherworldly echo. It's reeeally cool.

Difficulty: Guacamelee is a challenging game, but also an extremely forgiving one. Each area is littered with checkpoints that save your game, refill your health, and let you purchase optional upgrades with the money acquired by defeating enemies. Even spikes, lava, and bottomless pits don't harm you - they just return you to the last safe platform. Checkpoints also let you change into costumes with various buffs and debuffs. These are purchased with silver coins, and both carry between save files.

What's in Super Turbo Championship Edition? Guacamelee: STCE has several improvements over the original game. Enemies have health bars, a feature so convenient I can't believe it wasn't in the original. There's an INTENSO gauge that fills when you hit enemies without taking damage, and using it lets you go Super Saiyan for a bit. To balance this, the second half of the game has elite enemies with bigger health bars, more aggressive attacks, and teleporting. There are two extra areas, Canal de las Flores and Pico de Gallo, which expand the story a bit and add another boss battle. The El Infierno DLC area (literally Hell) is also included, and yes, it's pretty hard.

Value: Like most Metroidvanias, there isn't much to do once you have all the collectibles. However, there's an unlockable Hard mode with significantly increased damage and tougher bosses, and if you have a Pro Controller you can enjoy 2-player co-op play - a feature I've never seen in a metroidvania game before. My completion times for Normal and Hard mode are 12 and 7.5 hours respectively. The game is fast paced and enjoyable from beginning to end, so you definitely get your money's worth for $15.

Flaws? My only complaints for this game are nitpicks, but I'm going to mention them so you're fully informed.

Nitpick #1: Juan is more than capable of aerial combat, but there are only a couple types of flying enemies. Just one or two more would've been perfect to round out the enemy roster.

Nitpick #2: A couple rare enemies like this guy with a HUGE hammer that deals HUGE damage, have attacks that glows purple, indicating they can't be dodged. I think it would've been better to just design harder enemies instead of making the dodge mechanic inconsistent.

Nitpick #3: The invincibility after getting hit is extremely short. After getting back on your feet, you have half a second (if that) to avoid harm. This is not always enough to guarantee you can escape a second attack, especially from those hammer guys.

Nitpick #4: Backtracking for completion can be a bit tedious. In Super Metroid, the Space Jump and Screw Attack let you become a flying yo-yo of death whenever you wanted, and turned backtracking into a cathartic power trip. By contrast, the Goat Fly in Guacamelee is much more limited. On the flip side, the map has way more detail, so you don't need an internet guide to find everything.

Nitpick #5: The villain, Carlos Calaca, is an evil charro skeleton with a cool visual design and music theme. Naturally, he should have a unique final battle that somehow incorporates elements of charreada, because that would be awesome, right? WRONG. Instead the developers got lazy and took a much more generic route - Calaca turns into a big-red-immobile-horned-demon-monster. It's not a bad boss, but it's no Mother Brain...

Conclusion: Guacamelee: STCE is one of those rare games that succeeds at pretty much everything it attempts. It's a ton of fun and I look forward to seeing what DrinkBox Studios makes next. If you like adventure games and/or beat-em-ups, then I can guarantee you'll enjoy Guacamelee. If you're the kind of person that needs "shooter" or "turn-based" in the description of every game you play, or simply hate fun, then you might not like it.

9/10 (Fantástico!)