Guacamelee! Gold Edition

Fantastic game. This is how a platformer should be. As I started up the game, I was a little worried, with it recommending a controller to me. Turns out the keyboard controls are just fine! And you can remap them. The art style is great. The characters are memorable and have personalities. The hit-detection is spot on, and you can get a real feeling of mastery when you get good at landing flashy combos, and taking out all kinds of enemies. You may recognize some references to other games or pop culture.

To all my Linux users out there: if you bought this game thinking you'd be able to play it on your distro with no problem whatsoever, I'm sorry to disappoint you. No issue in installing and launching the game, mind you. But there's no real controller support (aside from Xbox 360 controller - and even that has its own issues) and the audio is completely missing. The only way to get full controller support and audio is by downloading the windows version and launch it via Wine/Proton etc. The game is lovely, the soundtrack is great and it's overall funny - although with a few too many Mexican/Latino stereotypes jokes.

I enjoy the genre, and I played this game after Unepic. Well, it's different, and quite a few things should be known before you buy the game. The controls are very imprecise. And in a game with many plateforming areas, it's frustratnig as hell. But the difficulty is reduced by a very forgiving autosave system, basically if you "die", you restart just before your jump. So basically, You try difficult jumps until you're lucky enough to pass the screen. That's not difficulty, that's chaos. Rage-quit is very possible. The game has secrets, requiring you to backtrack in old areas with your new skills. That's nice and fun but there is a big lack of "shortcuts", the difficult random screens wll still be there and it's the same pain each time. The fights is of the "beat them all" variety. WIth combos, unlockable moves and stuff. A typical move can be "up, D, Q, Q, down, D, Z + press arrow, release Z". And that's the basic moves you have from the begining.. And with chaotic controls and several ennemies, you sometimes have no idea of what you're doing. On the plus side, the graphism are nice, there is a real atmosphere - even if I'm not a fan of pseudo vectorial - flash-like design, here it works nicely. The music is pleasant. The boss fights are challenging - they would be more interesting with better controls, but I enjoyed them. And you recieve new skills frequently, making new puzzles very different. But in the end, this game gave me much more frustration than enjoyement.

A great art style and soundtrack. Deep and exciting combat system with a suit of special moves and tough enemies that keep things fresh all game long. Tight platforming mechanics. Loads of puzzles and hidden goodies to ensure diving deep into this game is rewarding. If all this doesn't sound compelling, I don't know what will. Guacamelee is a great 2D action platformer that rises far above it's price tag as a heavy hitting game that is oozing style and fun action. Old-school influences are infused with modern style to create something truly stupendous that keeps you engaged the whole way through.

Maybe it was the fancy graphic design, that misled me. Somehow I expected a short casual game, but I was completely wrong. It took me 22 hours to finish it 100 %. And every one of these hours was fun and satisfying. Great level design and great movement mechanics.