Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition Review - Luchador(e)

When Guacamelee! released last year, it was hailed as one of the best indie games of 2013. Considering that during those 365 days we were introduced to the likes of The Stanley Parable, Papers, Please and Gone Home, it is no small feat that developer Drinkbox Studios managed to garner a lot of love for its side-scrolling action platformer in a year in which indie games were breaking down barriers, and making us question exactly what constitutes a “game.”

Unlike its 2013 peers, Guacamelee! is unmistakably a game. At first glance, it appears to be somewhat derivative of a number of its more well-established contemporaries. It employs a Metroidvania map, power-ups are contained in Metroid-esque alien statues, there’s a “bubble” system for when your co-op partner dies a la New Super Mario Bros. and the references to other video games come thick and fast. Yes, there’s a “your Princess is in another castle” joke in it, which in a post-Braid world shouldn’t really be implemented in another game ever again.

But Guacamelee! is more than the sum of its parts, and those who gave it a shot last year came to learn that while it didn’t reinvent the wheel, it certainly pumped up its tire and took it for a rollicking spin. So now we have Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition, the game’s first foray onto the PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Wii U, which comes packaged with some extra content to appease both those who missed it the first time around, and those who played it, enjoyed it but need more bang for their buck. So does the bonus content added to this re-release warrant another playthrough?

The biggest new addition to Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition is Intenso mode. Intenso mode allows luchador protagonist Juan to become more powerful and more agile for a limited period of time, with you being able to activate it manually once your Intenso meter has been filled. This meter then fills up the more combos you perform and damage you inflict, and drains if you fail to mount a decent offense. Intenso mode adds a whole new dynamic to Guacamelee!‘s accomplished combat, and it’s now difficult to imagine playing the game without it. Once you’ve entered Intenso mode, enemies go flying across the screen thanks to your super destructive punches and kicks. It’s immensely gratifying and a joy to behold when you reduce a legion of bad guys to little more than a crumple of bones, before breaking open one of the game’s celebratory pinata’s and chowing down on the coins, heart pieces and stamina blocks inside of it.

Aside from Intenso mode, two additional levels have also been added into the mix. A criticism of Guacamelee! was that it was too short, but the added Canal of Flowers and Volcano levels certainly bulk it up. The former is a trip through a lush forest environment, that concludes with you having to fend off waves of enemies whilst on board a canal boat, making for a suitably frenetic combat section. The latter is Guacamelee!‘s lava level, notable for its boss battle with the Trio of Death, a new enemy that has some of the most amusing dialogue in the entire game. The three-headed villain, formed out of a deceased, embittered Mariachi band, also provides the most fun and challenging boss battle in the game, one in which you’ll be required to use all of your accumulated powers. I won’t spoil it for you, but trust me, it’s a treat.

However, what with this only being an expansion upon the original game, old problems continue to persist. The plethora of moves you’re given are each incredibly handy, but this does lead to the trickier combat and platforming segments sometimes becoming a mess as various attacks are assigned to the same button. The dash move in particular is often difficult to pull off by virtue of it only being a slight thumbstick roll away from the controller input that initiates a flaming uppercut – I lost count of the amount of times I succumbed to a platform section which required me to dash to an out-of-reach ledge, due to me accidentally making Juan perform an uppercut instead. The utterly pointless chicken segments, in which you can transform yourself into a chicken in order to make your way through smaller tunnels that are inaccessible by Juan, also remain the weakest parts of the game, and stand only to add another functioning button onto an already cluttered control layout.

Despite it not rectifying the forgivable problems I had with the vanilla game, Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition adds enough into the mix to be worth a second purchase, and is a great pick up for those who missed it last year. This is a solid improvement upon one of 2013’s best indie titles.