Modern game re-releases follow a fairly predictable model. Often labeled Game of The Year Edition and frequently appearing well after an original release, they keep a higher price but buoy the original package with all of the post-release content. If you’re lucky you might also get some behind-the-scenes footage broadcasting insight into the development process – or you may receive some other supplemental content poorly masquerading as a value-add. Either way, Game of The Year Editions and their ilk usually don’t have much for players who happily devoured a game’s content twelve months prior. Unless you missed it the first time or have some ghoulish obsession with everything appearing on the same disc, they’re usually a snooze.
Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition looks to break this trend. Yes, it cobbles together all post-release downloadable content, including all of those wacky (and gameplay sensitive) costumes and the El Diablo’s Domain challenge-room content. DrinkBox probably could have stopped there and called it a day – much like they did with Guacamelee Gold Edition on PC. Instead, as a means to perhaps boost Guacamelee’s debut on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, DrinkBox went the extra mile to retool the game’s difficulty, add meaningful content in the way of new levels and a new boss encounter, and change-up combat with a few tweaks to basic design. Ryan MacLean and Jason Canam, both developers at DrinkBox, greatly detailed some of Guacamelee’s changes in a blog hosted by IGN. That sort of transparency is rare and appreciated, but it’s still fair to question whether these tweaks add or take away from the original product. This may be Guacamelee’s final form, but is it its most powerful?
If you’re not already in the know please check out my review of Guacamelee from last year. If you’d like to skip that and absorb a hastily constructed summery; Guacamelee was what would happen if you replaced Super Metroid’s projectile-based mechanics with melee/grapple attacks, retained the interconnected levels, exchanged the air of alien civilization with the comical haunting of Mexican folklore, and substituted Samus Aran for a psychotically serious luchador named Juan. Toss in a world-switching mechanic, add a flair for skeleton-based enemies, inject a subtle helping of videogame references past and present, and you wound up with Guacamelee. Walking a careful line between homage and original, it was one of the burgeoning “Metroidvania” genre’s best representatives.
One of the first and most obvious tweaks regards Guacamelee’s turbulent series of references. Omnipresent throughout vanilla Guacamelee were backgrounds featuring puns on the meme faces riddled in late-aughts internet culture. Those are almost completely gone, replaced by more contextually appropriate game references or nothing at all. It seems like a relatively minor detail, but those things were dead on arrival never really meshed with Guacamelee’s mission. Other touches, like numerous references to Star Wars, Street Fighter II, and the best Journey reference I’ve ever seen, remain delightfully intact.
Combat basics have also seen a significant push. The clearest example is the addition of Intenso mode, Guacamelee’s riff on the typical character-action “overpowered” ability. Forming combos builds a meter, and once the meter reaches a certain point Juan can go super-saiyan and receive a huge boost in abilities for a few seconds. This translates to a grace period where he can beat ass without much restraint, which is nice for those situations where you’re just about to die and need a boost. Intenso mode even comes with its own upgrades, like recharging health faster or breaking enemy shields quicker. On one hand it’s a little disappointing to see Guacamelee conform to a model firmly entrenched in other games, on the other a giant hammer in the tool belt certainly can’t hurt the game’s impact.
Of higher contention are the subtle changes to enemy encounters. Visible health bars stand as a welcomed addition without much need for criticism, but less so with adjustments to enemy abilities. New to Super Turbo are enemies that disappear and reappear sporadically around a level, as well as four-armed death machines dispensing pink-ish attacks that can’t be dodged. Guacamelee already had its requisite annoying-as-hell enemies in the chupacabra and whatever that thing that spikes up from underground is called, and adding two more to the mix didn’t feel like the greatest idea. As best I can put together, extending the base content stretched Guacamelee’s considerably sparse enemy- loadout even thinner, necessitating additional material for Juan to bust up and destroy. This was the solution, and, while I hesitate to say it’s bad, it’s certainly not paced as well as vanilla Guacamelee (it’s also worth noting that the Javier Jaguar, a fight that required two hours of attempts and took a year off my life in the original Guacamelee, was done in two tries this time around. Whether Javier was nerfed or I’m suddenly some sort of savant is undetermined).
The most visible and most enjoyable update comes with the addition of two new levels. Canal De Las Flores greets the player with disappearing platforms and frequently compliments them with spike hazards. Pico De Gallo takes place inside a volcano and employs lava as its signature addition to Guacamelee’s challenges. Lava in particular is super interesting, as DrinkBox has opted to tie its nature into the dimension-shifting mechanic. In the world of the dead lava is frozen solid, whereas normally it rises and falls in convenient, platform-friendly rectangles. Appropriately managing the difference between the two is probably the best and most seamless addition to Super Turbo. In either case both levels are woven neatly into Guacamelee’s normal progression. If you’ve never played the game before, you’d swear they were there all along.
The same can be said for the new boss, El Trio De La Muerte. Composed of three fused-together musicians and looking like a Guacamelee’d version of Dark Souls II’s The Rotten, these guys (this guy?) cut a deal with lead-villain Calaca to resurrect the final member of their band. For the player this translates out to a couple funny cut-scenes and a rather inventive boss fight. It’s a two-part screen filler that make decent use of wall jumping and, to a lesser extent, the Goat Fly ability. Whereas all of the other bosses focus on managing platforms or appropriating Juan’s special moves, a more environmentally-reliant boss is welcome with open arms. El Trio De La Muerte is exactly what Guacamelee needed.
A few odds and ends are also worth mentioning. Apparently the original Guacamelee only contained one save slot, an omission so incredible there’s actually an achievement for starting a second slot this time around. There’s also an entire new currency reserved just for unlocking costumes. I presume the game’s entire economy had to be reworked considering these coins pop out of piñata’s that formerly, exclusively, doled out ability-upgrade money. That was probably a huge, time-intensive modification the development team sweated but most players will take for granted. A change to cooperative play, allowing the each player to control light/dark world independently, is also theoretically welcomed (I didn’t have the chance to play Super Turbo co-op, but it sounds like a great idea).
In the end, Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition is a few steps forward and a few smaller steps backward. I wouldn’t say changes to enemy dynamics harm the game, but they certainly don’t do it any favors. Everything else stands as a positive, but the fact of the matter is that Guacamelee was already a great game. In an era when re-releases are defined exclusively through an assemblage of post-release content, it’s nice to see a developer make a genuine effort to improve the whole game, not simply bolt parts on and call it a day.
