There’s
an on-going debate amongst video game critics about whether or not games need
to be fun. It’s my opinion that they don’t. There are plenty of games that I
didn’t find fun, but that I found worthwhile for other reasons, Spec Ops: The Line, for example.
Drinkbox Studios’ Guacamelee!, however,
aims to be nothing but fun – unashamedly so, and its singular dedication to
this goal is difficult to fault.
Beginning
in a small Mexican town during the preparations for the Día de Muertos (day of the dead) celebrations, Guacamelee! follows the superhero luchador Juan as he sets out to
rescue the president’s daughter from the villainous, undead Calaca, who plans
to use her in a ritual to merge the worlds of the living and the dead. It’s a simplistic
story, but an excellent script keeps it from feeling stale. Peppered with
Spanish, the writing is snappy, with enough nudges and winks to keep you
grinning.
Guacamelee! is extremely stylish. The art direction is excellent, recalling
a classic Saturday morning cartoon with its bright colours and smooth
animation. Though stereotypical in presentation, it always feels like Guacamelee! is romanticising Mexican
culture rather than deriding it, and the setting is key to the game’s style. Environments
include Mayan temples and cactus-filled deserts, whilst side-quests see you
reforming mariachi bands and collecting enchilada ingredients. The sense of
place is further reinforced by Guacamelee!’s
music. An infectious mix of flamenco guitar, trumpet flourishes, and chiptunes,
Guacamelee! is a game that begs to be
played with headphones. Then there’s Juan himself; making the protagonist a
luchador proves an inspired choice. Juan has an instantly iconic look, and an authentic
moveset consisting of wrestling moves such as suplexes, piledrivers, and
bodyslams. If, like me, you’re a 90s kid who grew up believing WWF was real, you’ll
probably like Juan.
Tonally,
Guacamelee!’s daftness recalls Earthworm Jim, though it lacks the gross-out
humour of the super-suited invertebrate’s games. The zaniness is rarely
laugh out loud funny, but it will make you smile, and the breezy tone lends a surprising
poignancy to the more sombre story beats. Contributing to the game’s irreverent
tone are the references to other games. Rather than arbitrary shout outs, these
are usually contextualised as posters promoting fictional luchadores. So we see
the green leotard wearing El Linko, the
moustachioed tag team of Los Super
Hermanos, and, my favourite, Mega
Hombre. Then there are the game’s ‘Choozo Statues’. A blatant reference to
their near-namesakes in Metroid, Juan
must smash these in order to new unlock powers.
Metroid is a big influence on Guacamelee!’s
structure. The powers bestowed by Choz…, er, Choozo Statues allow you to destroy previously unbreakable barriers and
climb previously unscalable walls, and are therefore crucial to collect in
order to progress. Just like in Metroid, the
drip feed of powers proves extremely addictive, and makes the game’s modest map
seem larger without overwhelming you with backtracking.
The
powers gained from Choozo statues also prove useful during combat. The
uppercut, which propels both Juan and his victim skyward, is especially handy,
as airborne foes are helpless to defend against combos, the use of which is
vital in order to daze enemies and leave them vulnerable to Juan’s most
powerful attacks. Combat in Guacamelee! does
get repetitive, however. Partly this is down to the enemies. Consisting of
folklore monsters like the chupacabra, sombrero-wearing skeletons, and killer
plants (how many games let you suplex a plant?), the rouges gallery is memorable.
The problem is that there are too few of them and too much combat, so it
becomes tedious. Drinkbox seem to be aware of this, and have gone to some effort
to rectify it. Around the midpoint of Guacamelee!,
for example, enemies protected by shields that can only be broken with a
particular attack begin appearing. This is a good way of making you switch up
your style on the fly, but it becomes frustrating later when you have to fight
enemies who can change the type of shield they use at will.
 |
| Did I mention you sometimes fight enemies in two different dimensions at once? Well, you do (Picture: Guacamelee!) |
Guacamelee!’s workable but unremarkable
combat is contrasted, however, with some truly excellent, old school puzzle
platforming. The best sections of the game can only be overcome with a mix of
forward thinking, imaginative use of Juan’s moveset, and incredible dexterity. One
particularly fiendish area sees you using Juan’s ability to switch dimensions in
order to conjure walls into existence. It seems simple, but the catch is that
you have to do so mid-jump in order to kick off the newly materialised wall and
avoid the spinning saws below. Sections like this recall the precision of early
Mega Man, the negligible penalty for
death minimising frustration without blunting the challenge.
(When
I ‘completed’ the above-mentioned section, a chicken appeared – pollos are a recurring theme in Guacamelee! – to tell me I was “half way
there!” I swore loudly, but had to laugh when I ran into another one
immediately afterwards that said, simply, “PSYCHE!”)
Guacamelee! is £10. I spent a lot of
time exploring the map, finishing with 80% completion in just under nine hours,
and I’ll probably return to uncover the last of its secrets soon – a rarity for
me. In an era where you can pay £60 for a game of comparable length, made with
half as much passion, Guacamelee! is
spectacular value for money. Yes, it riffs on an established formula, but it
does such a good job of placing well-worn mechanics in a fresh, vibrant setting
that I didn’t care. A gem.
Nueve de cada diez
No comments:
Post a Comment