1. Thomas Was Alone - PC
2. Sam & Max Save the World - The whole season - PC, GOG versions
3. Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space - The whole season - PC, GOG versions
4. Sam & Max The Devil's Playhouse - Episode 1 - PC, GOG version
5. Sam & Max The Devil's Playhouse - Episode 2 - PC, GOG version
6. Sam & Max The Devil's Playhouse - Episode 3 - PC, GOG version
7. The Walking Dead Series - PC
8. Sly Thieves in Time - PS3
Guacamelee - PS3 (Normal difficulty, 100% map completion, all hidden masks acquired, 85% of trophies acquired)
This game has a lot of appeal to me. I like pro wrestling so the luchador thing is cool. I also love 2D platformers and cartoon-like games. After playing the amazing Dust: An Elysian Tail on XBLA last year, it's nice to see a very similar game come out this year for PSN. It's needs to be said though, Guacamelee is not a metroidvania game like many people are calling it. Dust is a metroidvania game, with its plethora of rpg elements and magic spells. Guacamelee is more directly inspired by Metroid without any of the extra stuff that Castlevania brought to the table with Symphony of the Night. No inventory, no leveling, no equipment, no magic attacks. In fact, the game makes some very obvious shot outs to Metroid specifically as you play the game. So of course this means a game where you'll acquire different abilities as you progress through the game and use them to acquire previously blocked off areas as well as hidden areas. This will lead to upgrades and money to buy further upgrades and extra moves, which you'll definitely be needing as the game's difficulty increases.
It's also clearly inspired by 2d beat 'em ups. There's a lot of combat in this game, and you'll have to do a lot of combos, dodges, grabs, and whatnot like any good beat 'em up game. I love that both this game and Dust have rather involved combat systems to make fighting enemies fun, rather than just a means to an end. Guacamelee has much more challenging fights though and a slightly deeper combat system. Fights in Dust are just about being flashy and showing off. Fights in Guacamelee are very much about survival, particularly in the combat arenas and the final stage. Unlike Dust, you have no magic attacks to rely on like you would in a Castlevania style game. It's all straight up melee combat, which means you need a bit more skill. Plus, the game has various tricks up its sleeve to make defeating enemies more complicated than just pummeling them to death. Fights can get pretty tough in this game
The game in general is pretty difficult at times. Some of the platforming sections are nasty, particularly if you try to acquire each of the hidden mask pieces in the game, which is a task similar to getting all the chaos emeralds in a Sonic game. The challenges for getting the masks are much more varied and diverse though. They range from combat challenges, to speed runs, to a maze, and some very tricky platforming sections. You need to get all the masks for a good ending. I did this on my first playthough, so I don't actually know what the bad ending is. The nice thing about Guacamelee is its frequent checkpoints and respawn points. It keeps the game's fairly high level of difficulty from getting overbearing.
Much of the game's challenge comes from how it integrates the living world and the dead world. You'll need to switch back and forth between them a lot to get through a lot of platforming sections and win a lot of the fights. It reminds me of polarity switching in Outland. The way in which the game mixes this up with the various abilities you acquire leads to some very creative and difficult challenges. It'll definitely put both your platforming skills and beat 'em up skills to the test.
The art style is great, as you can see from the pics. Not as beautiful or well animated as Dust, but an impressive looking game with great character designs. There's a lot of cut scenes in the game. They are very low budget scenes comprising of mostly still shots compared to the really nice, fully animated ones in Dust, but there's more of them in this game so it's a fair trade off. The music is a nice mix of mariachi style music with electronic elements. It gives the game an upbeat feel. Unfortunately, there isn't a large selection of tracks so the music can get repetitive. Unlike Dust, there's no voice acting. That's a good or bad thing depending on your tastes. I think it could have given the game a bit more personality, but it's a minor complaint
The story is basic save the girl, save the world stuff, but the characters are great and the game is full of humor and fun references. Pay attention to your environment and you'll notice a lot of fun little shout outs to various things like grumpy cat, Castle Crashers, Zelda, etc. What I find fun about some of the references is that they are filtered through the lens of a Spanish speaking, Mexican culture like pretty much everything else in this game. Like a lot of retro styled, indie games, the game's humor has a certain self awareness that is nice. It revels in being a silly video game and is not afraid to wink at its audience in much of the character and NPC dialog.
It's a great game overall. I like Dust: An Elsysian Tail a bit more, but this game is roughly in the same league and is the more challenging of the two games, but never quite so hard it stops being fun. It is fairly short, even if you go for 100% completion, which takes less time than it does doing that in Dust because the game doesn't focus on the exploration as much as that game does. I honestly don't give a crap about game length though. If a game doesn't drag on and overstay its welcome, I'm happy. I felt like the game had showed me everything it needed to by the time I saw the end credits. I don't like overly long games these days. Less is more. I would give this game a solid 8 out of 10. I probably would rate it higher if I hadn't played the more impressive Dust: An Elysian Tail last year. Also, kudos to this game for having co op, yet not shoving in a bunch of pointless and annoying co op trophies (looking at you Double Dragon Neon). Speaking of trophies, this game has a platinum, which is pretty cool.
I love old school games like this, Dust: An Elysian Tail, and Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit. XBLA and PSN can't get enough of them as far as I'm concerned.
