I got Guacamelee! in a Humble Bundle purchase and added it to my library paying it no mind like so many of us do to so many games we get in bundles.

Recently something came over PolyVector and me while browsing through our Steam libraries looking for something to play, and as we both looked at each other hovering over Guacamelee!, we laughed and fired it up to brawl couch co-op style.

This game was a surprise gem! The combo based fighting (button masher) combined with tons of references, secrets, and jokes made for a enchalada filled adventure we weren't expecting. The side quests and hidden treasures are addictive. The art style is playful. The soundtrack is also fun!

If you happen to have this game gathering virtual dust in your library, stop neglecting it and start playing it now! My favorite play mechanic was being able to change into a chicken (later in the game) to navigate the villages and temples.

If you haven't picked this game up yet, STOP WHERE YOU ARE! While I think it's worth a purchase, you should go grab the new Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition instead.

Guacamelee! is a solid action-adventure game. I'm feeling lazy so you know what that means?
BULLET POINTS!!!!!!!!!2

+Combat is good. As you progress you get new moves and can create some wicked combos. It's not at all necessary to win fights, but it's fun to play around with.
+Nice bits of exploration. Each area has plenty of secret rooms, some offering different challenges. The game is well-paced and simply getting from place to place is rewarding.
+As with any Metroidvania worth its salt, Guacamelee! can be played through in a variety of ways. 100%, Low %, speedrunning, etc.
+There are quite a few challenging platforming segments. They make strong use of an ability to switch between worlds and have different platforms appear. Also most of the special moves are used effectively as transportation. It's all very well done.
+Good bosses, though you're probably better off playing Hard mode if you want them to be really challenging.
+Plenty of side-content.

-A couple of optional items are placed in obtuse locations. I'm usually pretty decent at finding stuff in Metroidvanias, but I had to look up a guide to figure these out. More of a nitpick really.
-For 80% of the game, hard mode is basically just enemies doing more damage. The bosses really step it up, which is welcome but can also make the difficulty feel uneven.
-The Chupacabra's sword-stab does a crazy amount of damage. It's like...I don't know..It just really stands out. Oh and yeah this also counts as nitpicking.

-Controller issue. This is an odd one. Basically whenever I hit RT to switch between worlds, there are times when the button gets stuck or doesn't respond. I've read some posts where other posters mention this issue. It's possible that it could just be my controller, but I'm not going to buy a new one when this game and RE6 are the only ones I have this problem with. Besides, this glitch is fixed in the "Super Turbo Championship Edition" of Guacamelee.

I recommend this game.
Oh wait, that's redundant isn't it? I already gave it the thumbs up. Oh well.

This game is the buenoest. I love it so much. Drinkbox is a great developer with a flair for really colorful visual design. (Play Mutant Blobs Attack in case you missed it!!) Also I have a "thing" for Dia de la Muerta stuff, so Guacamelee was a no-brainer. Game sat in my library forever because I didn't have time to play it. It's awesome. Stylish, fun, challenging. A couple of the jumping puzzles are just a *bit* too frustrating, AKA no bueno. And I'm not sure how I feel about all the boss fights. But these are quibbles. I beat the game on normal just in time for the Ultimate Edition's launch on Steam. Also don't miss the Workshop stuff. You can reskin the main character as He-Man, the Punisher, etc. Arriba!

I got the game long time ago in the Humble Bundle and found it while sorting my Game Library.

Originally I only wanted to farm the Trading Cards and gave it a short try, but I just couldn't stop playing and ended with a 5 hour session. This game is now one of my favourite skill based platformers. The difficulty increases at a perfect pace in my opinion. It's also nice that you visit old areas/levels after getting new skills, so you can reach secrets. At some points it's really hard to advance and you need to combine all skills you have curretnly available. I advice you to use a gamepad for this game, with a keyboard it might be very tricky and cause frustration. At least there is a great soundtrack with lots of different songs and they are not annoying when you are trying this one hard jump for the 50th time.

Some things that could imrpove the gaming experience would be more spoken dialogue, it's really alot ot read. Also some cut scenes and splash screens have a really annoying colour flashing, so I needed to close my eyes whenever they appeared before I got an epileptic seizure. :D

As I said earlier, I'm now 5 hours into the game and it feels like I achieveved alot, I would guess I'm at around 80% completion and I can't wait for tomorrow to finish the rest and get all the remaining achievements aswell. The game even has a Cooperation Mode that I will probably never try, but maybe it's interesting for some people.

The 'Super Turbo Championship Edition' (a polished version with some more content) is actually on sale now, so I would go ahead and buy it. Definitely worth the money if you enjoy platformers with a certain challenge.

Guacameelee may well have been the best game I've played this year.

Graphics:
It's also probably the most visually beautiful 2D game I've ever played. With the art taking a hard influence from the art style of such things as Samurai Jack and psychedelic Latin motifs.

Music:
Great upbeat score, electronic Latin is really the only way to describe it.

Gameplay:
This game does not wear kid gloves. It may seem like a simple platformer but there is a lot of depth both in terms of combat and puzzles, and if you want to finish it with 100% or even the good ending, expect to be thrown into the deep end of that depth. A controller with an analog stick is mandatory. It seems to find a nice happy place between difficulty and frustration (it may just be the lack of death from falling). Also the massive quantity of hilarious references will likely keep you entertained.

Overall:
Highly recommended, would DerpDerp again.

Guacamelee is a sidescrolling fast-paced-mexican-themed-action-fest where you play as a luchador who must battle to reunite the world of the living and the dead in harmony. The influence of Super Nintendo all-time classics such as Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid are very obvious in Guacamelee.

The GOOD:

- The graphics are exquisitely beautiful. The bright colors and fun-to-look-at landscapes create a very rich and visually appealing world.
- The action is fast and smooth. You can create some crazy insane combos if you learn how to chain them correctly. It reminded me a lot of Street Fighter where, if you can execute, then you can pull off some very satisfying hurt-filled awesomeness.
- The music is pretty sweet. It is Mexican themed and a lot of fun to listen to. I would find myself humming these tunes randomly without thinking about it. That's when you know it's done well.

The BAD:
- Some of the platforming areas can get really difficult and will require you to have patience and good reaction times. Some people may not enjoy this part as it can get a bit frustrating.
- It is not required, but a controller is recommended for this game. I personally completed the entire thing with a keyboard, so it's definitely not necessary to have a controller if you are comfortabe with a keyboard. Whatever you prefer.
- I can't really think of anything bad about Guacamelee, maybe just a few things to add/improve on. Like maybe making the dojo always open so you can practice combos, little things like that.

As a side note, the boss fights can get pretty difficult. They are are all 100% patterns though and you just need to learn their visual/audio cues and how to react to them. You cannot just try to zerg the bosses, you will die. Have some patience and learn their patterns, react accordingly, and you will take them down in no time!

Overall, Guacamelee is a lot of fun, very pretty, and is definitely a current era title with some influences from classic Nintento. Guacamelee takes about 8-10 hours to complete.

9/10

Please upvote this review if you found it useful :)

Shouldn't have ignored when it stated "controller recommended", got a little pissed the way game started to "hang" every now and then but when i switched to controller it got better and yes the game is funny xD

I found this game to be somewhat adicting. It does have that metroid type gameing feel and play.

Music is catchy and upbeat. I didn't find any slow spots, the music and badies kept things going at a smoth and steady pace.

The graphics are cool and entertaining and offer graphical delight to the game.

I picked this gem up during the Canada Day sale (I didn't realize this was a Canadian Indie game) and I have happy with the purchase.

Guacamelaa is worth a play.

It's not very often that i find a game that brings a smile on my face.

Guacamelee does that and much more with its genuinely ingenious humour(and references), vibrant characters and world, funny but robust animation and challenging platforming and fighting sections.

There's no way one cannot love such passionate work!

Metroidvania done right

As you can see... I've spent QUITE SOME TIME WITH THIS GAME. Ah, man. It's literally one of my favorite games. I found out about this game through a game stream, which led me to find out about Steam and here I am!

As for the game, it's REALLY well done. From the gameplay/combat system, to the music. Oh man, the music! The art to this game, the humor... it's an all around very well developed game and I love it.

I recommend you play this game with a controller. I haven't tried with a keyboard much, but its very comfortable once you get used to the controls of the game. The game can also prove itself to be quite challenging at times... but as you get used to the controls and the mechanics of the game, it becomes easier and very fun.

Please give this game a go. You won't regret it!

There's a lot more to wish from indy hit Guacamelee but one thing the game does right, one thing from which all other game companies should learn, one thing so important that it got me to start writing video game reviews on a hopefully weekly basis, and that's GAME DIFFICULTY.

Game Difficulty is not an excuse to make players redo the whole stage over and over again because you missed a jump. "Difficult" is not adding HP or extra damage to monsters. I swear there are still too many punishing mechanics masked as challenge curves such as forcing the player to wait or rushing to reclaim everything that you've earned in a previous playthrough. "Difficult" makes the player think and plan. "Difficult" should challenge the game developer as much as it challenges the player.

Guacamelee is difficult, especially if you want the true ending, but it's not punishing. I miss a jump, I go back to the last platform, I try again. THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE. THIS IS WHAT EARNS THIS GAME THE THUMBS UP FROM THIS REVIEWER. I never felt like I was wasting any time playing Guacamelee. There's variety in the platforming challenges, introduced by incorporating the special moves that you discover as tools to broaden movement. The Rooster Uppercut introduces double, then triple jumps. The Dashing Derpderp (bad name, I know), brings a horizontal dash and so forth... There's no resource management to worry about (and that's including health management), you just have the platform challenge in its purest form.

I'm old. Thirty-five years old. I've played the old NES platformers. There is absolutely nothing good to remember from any of these games. None. I'm gushing because I remember ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Castlevania, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Ninja Turtles and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Megaman and Guacamalee ISN'T LIKE THAT. Thank goodness. By the way, that's why every review of Shovel Knight has made me wary of it. Briefly considered it, considered the hype, remembered the old days and went NUH-UH.

Ironically, the hard mode of this game is a complete wash. Just more damage from the monsters and more hits required to kill 'em. Kinda breaks the whole point of my review but I really wanted to laud everything else about this game.

It really does seem like a fun challenging platformer with monsters thrown in because of course you need monsters to smash. A whole combo tutorial camp and none of its lessons are ever necessary. A game built around luchadors and then you have this weak ♥♥♥ combat system. It's kind of a bait-and-switch in that regard: the moves you unlock seem to have a platforming purpose first and an enemy bashing purpose second... Artificial purpose at that, what with the introduction of colored shields to force you to use the appropriately colored attack. That's a juvenile way to handle combat. Boss fights centered on pattern recognition? Yes, that is a hallmark from the platformers of old but that doesn't mean you couldn't add some innovation on it.

I ain't mad, and this is coming from a huge wrestling fan who bought the game because he wanted to play a luchador protagonist. The rest of the game made it worth it.

I heard this was Metroidvania, so I gave it a try, and found it SURPRISINGLY AMAZING. It has beat'em up combat that rewards you for keeping enemies in the air with super long combos, and the controls are easy to use and the combat is lots of fun. The level design is reminiscent of the levels in Mark of the Ninja, with shortcuts and extra areas added that become usable when you unlock special powers.

I found the game to be hilarious. It features liberal abuse of stereotypes and cliches of "Old Mexico", and lots references to video games (especially indie games, though obvious Mario and Metroid references feature prominently). You play as a regular dude, made into a powerful Luchadore with a mystical mask, and skeletons are invading the land of the living on Día de Muertos, and the plot basically becomes:

EL PRESIDENTE'S DAUGHTER IS KIDNAPPED! ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO SAVE EL PRESIDENTE'S DAUGHTER?

There's a bit more to it than that, I guess, with chicken transformations and a goat-man and stuff... but the details are unimportant.

The game has a very generous save/respawn system, restarting boss battles instantly upon player death, which is nice. It does make the platforming sections of the game trivially easy, since if you miss a single jump, you instantly respawn back onto the last platform you were standing on (and the jumps aren't even difficult). None of the game felt frustrating or too repetitive to me (the first beat'em up I can say that about; I gave up on Shank a few levels in, for example). That said, I only got the "bad" ending at the end of the game, and I heard that the extra levels required to get the "good" ending are rather challenging.

If you like Metroidvanias, you should play this one. It's awesome.

This game is a pretty solid platformer with unique Mexican theme, good combos, nice but sometimes overdone humour, well created enemy types and some decent gameplay mechanics such as dimension swapping.

The bad part is that the game is not designed for people that don't have over average reflexes and platformer history. Tule Tree became a major problem for me and I couldn't get past it. I did a quick Google search and read the negative comments on Steam reviews and found out that it's not only my problem.

Also another thing to note is even though I used to be able to do every single combo in a Mortal Kombat game on PS2 and could get to some decent Fatality stages, the challenges that Giant Chicken (I don't remember its name) give became undoable after some point.

My Logitech F710 had some minor lag issues throughout the part I managed to complete, which I haven't experienced in any other games I played with that controller, but it wasn't that much of a problem except for hardcore platforming parts, such as in Tule Tree and the game had some problems reading the diagonal movement input.

I can only recommend this if only you're deeply into hardcore platformers or you want to enjoy a somewhat different artistic setting for a low price (I think you might be able to purchase it for $1-1key on trading sites and on different retailers). Otherwise, just stay away from it.

That game is so so nice. Diferent skills,costumes and abilits and very nice i love it and i think it's worht to buy it. When you come on one of the quest you make enable to go in 2 different portals. Sometimes it's make you a bit angry cause you can't do something but it's still nice to play it :D

Wonderful artistic platformer, loads of fun

A very fun and unique take on the metroid-vania genre. Guacamelee! is easy to get into but offers plenty of challenge for those that want it. A word of caution though, when the game does get difficult, you'll want to throw your controller.

Shockingly fun game. Metrovenia style game where you play as Luchador styring to stop an army of undead from taking over the world. Both combat and platforming are really well implimented and special moves are used both for increasing combos and to traverse the enviroment. The artstyle is quite unique.

The humor is hit and miss. There are some great one but there are some which probably won't get a laugh out if you. Also sometimes enemies can get blurred with colourful backgrounds. It happened many times that I got hit because I didn't see enemies attack.

Great art style and fighting mechanics. Some of the platforming is insane, but not impossible. Can't say I didn't scream in frustration a few times, but with some practice I got through to the end. Well worth it.

Challenging metroidvania-like platformer. It shows that the genre is still alive and kicking. The art style is great too. Only downside is that the game is quite short; I'm 7-8 hours in and already close to the final boss.

8.5/10