Thursday 2 May 2013

PS3 Review: Guacamelee!


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

(that’s 9/10 in Spanish, according to Google translate)

@ludolinguist

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