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Guacamelee! Review |
Being a long-time fan of old-school 2D brawler beat-em-ups, I was excited to hear about the release of Guacamalee! But it remained exclusive to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita for a while after its release with hints of a PC release later. PC being my preferred platform, I patiently waited and in time it did come to PC so I dove in to it with my regular gaming co-op buddy Eugene.
Pretty much every game is better with co-op
The entire game is Mexican themed and you start off as a lowly farmer who’s love is stolen you by an undead villain. Said villain wastes no time in killing you after the kidnapping, but while wandering around in the land of the dead, you come across a powerful spirit that bestows upon you a magical lucha libre mask turning you into a powerful luchador wrestler and returning you to the land of the living so you can go save the girl.
Carlos and his goons are a perpetual thorn in your side.
The first striking thing about this game is the art style which is very angular and cartoonesque. It works well with the humour of the game which is extremely well written often making references to popular memes and cultural icons and many quirky characters that talk a lot of sass to you.
Very meme
The basic game-play is quite normal side-scrolling brawler action for the most part. You unlock new moves over time, but there is not much shockingly new or innovative here. Despite having said that, it is still very tightly put together and satisfying combat with the controls being sharp and fast rarely leaving you in the lurch or feeling like they’re letting you down which they often can in this genre.
Combat is sharp and satisfying
The main highlights are the boss fights which vary from enormous enemies who must have specialised tactics deployed against them to even larger enemies who cannot be defeated by conventional means, but become elaborate chase scenes where you must defeat them with the environment. There are also a number of auto-scrolling platforming sections where you must use your special abilities to manoeuvre your way through and/or evade death. There were some of the most annoying sections and I would happily have done with less of these and more combat.
The platforming sections are some of the games weakest
While playing through this on PC in co-op, we did find it a lot more difficult than we expected it to be. The platform sections in particular where precise timing was required to not die were especially difficult. Nevertheless, we persevered about 80% of the way through the game until we arrived at a boss that we just could not defeat. He was too fast for us. So we went to the internet to see if this irrational speed and difficulty was intentional and if there was a way to adjust it. Lo and behold, we discovered there was a bug in the PC version where if VSync was disabled, the game would run at nearly 3 times its usual speed. We re-enabled VSync and the game returned to normal speed which now seemed ludicrously easy in comparison to the earlier speed so we sailed through the rest of the game with ease.
But the boss sections are some of the best
Guacamelee! Review Summary
Guacamelee! provides lots of reliable 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up action so if you are a fan of this genre and old classics like Streets Of Rage or Golden Axe, you really can’t go far wrong with Guacamalee! Team up with a co-op buddy for even more fun and enjoy the hilarious pollo filled ride. But if you play the PC version, be sure to turn VSync on!