Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition
Released as a free game of the month for Playstation Plus users, Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition by Drinkbox Studios is an updated version of 2013 platformer Guacamelee’s charming story, offering new bosses and consistently exciting gameplay.
Juan was just a simple agave farmer, working in a small village in Mexico and pining after El Presidente’s Daughter. But when an evil skeleton, Carlos Calca, attacks the village and kidnaps her, Juan will have to become the one, channel his inner hero, and fight back against the forces of darkness. In the opening moments of the game, Juan is slain, taken to the Land of the Dead, and resurrected The Crow style in the form of a magical super luchador.
Drawing heavily from both Mexican folklore and platformers like Super Mario Bros, Guacamelee is a throwback to a simpler time of gaming, where the screen is in two dimensions and filled with an assortment of traps and baddies trying to kill you. Guacamelee acts very much like a love letter to Nintendo classics like Metroid and The Legend of Zelda, forcing players to revisit areas with new skills to unlock new branching paths. At one point, Juan is chased by a dragon and collapses the bridge it’s standing on, dropping it into lava, in a scene clearly inspired by how Mario handled his long-time nemesis, Bowser. The villainess X’Tabay even declares that Juan’s love is in another castle.
Despite the homages, Guacamelee always felt like it was trying to carve its own identity by sticking closely to its Hispanic roots. At times, mariachi music breaks out in the background. Players break open piñatas to collect coins and silver they can use to upgrade their abilities and appearance. The Land of the Dead is filled with skeletal creatures resembling Day of the Dead masks. When Juan enters a boss fight, a title card similar to that of a wrestling match will pop up, announcing the fight as for one night only. Touches like these help the game stand out and make it feel more unique than your run of the mill 2D platformer.
The world feels lived in, with villagers going about their daily lives and at times, occasionally asking for Juan’s help collecting chickens or finding a lost band member. Each of the named characters have unique designs that add to their personalities and make them feel well rounded, though some characters come across as better realized than others. Given the step up of the game, Calca and El Presidente’s Daughter receive less screen time than others, but it pays off in the end. With bright vivid visuals and a cartoon aesthetic, much of the game comes off as a lighthearted and fun affair. Guacamelee has two endings, depending on whether the player collects five mask orbs scattered throughout the game, and the regular ending still surprises me. It subverts the usual outcome of games like this, but it doesn’t really gel with what comes before, leaving me conflicted with which ending I prefer.
Battling the forces of the dead, Juan utilizes a range of moves from flaming uppercuts to bodyslams. After damaging an enemy enough, Juan can grab them and chuck them into other enemies, clearing large crowds. Throughout the game, a goat man named Chivo gifts Juan with a range of different powers used to both clear stages and travel to new areas. One of the biggest powers in the game is the ability to travel between the world of the living and the Land of the Dead. Some platforms and enemies will only show up in one world, forcing the player to constantly switch between the two. At one point in the game, I had to jump from one wall, switch between worlds in midair and land on the newly formed platform on the other side.
New to Guacamelee is the ability to play with up to three of your friends through local multiplayer (but unfortunately not online). The other players choose from characters met through the story and help Juan to move forward with his quest, sharing his abilities. Also included is a new boss enemy, El Trio de la Muerte, that’s been incorporated within the existing storyline. All these new elements further help to polish the gameplay experience and make it memorable.
While the gameplay is fun and at times quite addicting, I never found it that difficult or challenging. Some of the bosses were too easy, especially once I figured out their patterns, and with the ability to enter an almost invulnerable state called Intenso mode, Juan feels overpowered at times, especially against weaker enemies. The game tries to remedy this later by introducing enemies with shields that can only be broken using a specific ability. This helps balance the game, but levels still were never too difficult. Another problem I had with the game was that it seemed too short, especially if you’re not tracking down all the game’s collectibles. This is just a small nitpick though, because while it lasts, Guacamelee is the perfect blend of modern and retro gameplay.
