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Ayo you want memes? You want references? Do you like Family Guy? You want the games of your youth? Are you the type to complain that the golden age of games of gone?

 

Boy have we got the game for you. And let me tell you- it's totally random.

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I just had my first cultural victory in Civ 5 with the Brave New World expansion. It was cool and good and the best bit was when Gogol was born and then wrote Dead Souls in my city. 

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Ayo you want memes? You want references? Do you like Family Guy? You want the games of your youth? Are you the type to complain that the golden age of games of gone?

 

Boy have we got the game for you. And let me tell you- it's totally random.

 

I won't deny that stuff is there, but it's so minor and background that it never bothered me at all.  It's pretty much all contained within the town and dialog with the goat so it's easy to ignore.  I even found some of it amusing, as transparent as it is.

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My biggest beef with the game was the checkpoint system. There's an absurdly difficult platforming challenge, followed by a cut scene then another platforming challenge or boss. The checkpoint returns you either before the 1st part or before the cut scene, which just caused me to abandon it.

 

Checkpoints before an unskippable cut scene are the number 1 cause of me quitting games.

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I never looked at the backgrounds to be honest, so I only noticed the in your face stuff like the Chozo statues. I skipped through / ignored the cutscenes too. My biggest problem with the game was that it has too many mechanics, they had more than enough colours and certainly didn't need to add the dark world. By the end your traversal vocabulary is alright (by virtue of mimicing Super Metroid), but it's not implemented well at all. It's just a giant collection of one off moves, more complex than deep. The platforming puzzles are challenging because there are so many buttons to hit and they just frustrated me. Failing because you're fumbling with the controls isn't fun. It reminds me a bit of Dustforce which I feel suffered from the same problem, it had a jump, a dash, a light attack, a heavy attack and both types of attacks are directional too (can't remember if it's 4- or 8-way). So there's eight buttons you need to hit, it's way too much for a precision platformer. Simple controls with a ton of subtlety is what makes Super Meat Boy an amazing platformer.

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I loved the game, especially the platforming bits, because the combat was the least interesting part, although it was still pretty fun.

 

I'm good at platformers, though.

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I won't deny that stuff is there, but it's so minor and background that it never bothered me at all.  It's pretty much all contained within the town and dialog with the goat so it's easy to ignore.  I even found some of it amusing, as transparent as it is.

 

It kind of flabbergasts me that this was enough to turn some people off from the game.  Pretty sure the vast majority of it just washed over me without me even noticing it.  It was a blast in co-op, had a few bullshit moments (the hardest of the platforming sections were a crazy difficulty spike compared to the rest of the game), but was still better than the majority of other similar games you could get on Steam at the time. 

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I loved the game, especially the platforming bits, because the combat was the least interesting part, although it was still pretty fun.

 

I'm good at platformers, though.

 

Agreed entirely.

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I actually really enjoyed the combat in Guacamelee. I also enjoyed the platforming, but it took me a while to get used to it, because I suck at platforming. The reference humour wasn't my favourite, but it didn't bother me and some of it was cute. I preferred the stuff in the backgrounds to the stuff in the dialogue.

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Never minded the memes/references, but the combat and platforming both irritated me. The character felt a bit "sticky", if that makes any sense, like if you jump it seems almost grudging and you can't jump immediately again after landing - like he got stuck on the floor and has to detach. Same with grappling/throwing in the combat sections.

I mean, I didn't hate it, it wasn't bad, but the way some people went on about it you'd think it the second coming of Christ

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I definitely would not have noticed those were references without being told. After like 5 minutes of staring at it I finally got La Mascara and Mega-Hombre, but I still have no idea who El Destructo or La Bomba are, other than generically a bomb. Bomberman I guess? Does Bomberman have a star on his belt? That iconography looks important.

 

So I'm either the perfect person for this game, or the worst person for it.

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I loved the game, especially the platforming bits, because the combat was the least interesting part, although it was still pretty fun.

 

I'm good at platformers, though.

It's not that it's too hard, I'm fairly masochistic, it's just not hard in an enjoyable way for me. I guess there's a quite large school of mostly console games that focus on somewhat convoluted sequences of button presses (fighting games, character action games etc.) and maybe because I didn't grow up with them they've never clicked with me. Also, I played Guacamelee with a keyboard which I will for once admit is not a good way to play.

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I definitely would not have noticed those were references without being told. After like 5 minutes of staring at it I finally got La Mascara and Mega-Hombre, but I still have no idea who El Destructo or La Bomba are, other than generically a bomb. Bomberman I guess? Does Bomberman have a star on his belt? That iconography looks important.

 

So I'm either the perfect person for this game, or the worst person for it.

 

That took me a second too. It's Destructoid and Giant Bomb, both game news websites.

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It's not that it's too hard, I'm fairly masochistic, it's just not hard in an enjoyable way for me. I guess there's a quite large school of mostly console games that focus on somewhat convoluted sequences of button presses (fighting games, character action games etc.) and maybe because I didn't grow up with them they've never clicked with me. Also, I played Guacamelee with a keyboard which I will for once admit is not a good way to play.

 

Yeah that's fair. I can't remember how I played, but I'm fairly certain it was with a controller. I also played Super Meat Boy with a controller, though. Keyboard for that game was impossible! At any rate, SMB is definitely good because of its simplicity, but I also appreciate a twitchy mechanics-heavy platformer, too. Weirdly, I hate fighting games and character action games!

 

I've not played Dustforce beyond the first level, weirdly enough, even though it looks like I'd love it.

 

CLWheeljack: Destructoid and Giant Bomb (EDIT: oh beaten)

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Wow. I would have never figured that out. I see now that the robot is based on Destructoid's branding, which I guess I've never noticed.

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Yeah, I found myself fumbling the controls a lot. It required you to remember a fairly long sequence of button presses/releases to proceed and that frustrated me to no end. I also didn't enjoy the combat, and I thought the games artistic direction/style was either gross or lacking, but whatever, can't love every game.

A lot of people like it so it's well worth recommending to people, and it has coop (although I never played it) so that gives it a big thumbs up in my book.

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I liked 99% of the game but the very hardest platforming collectible and the final boss fight were too much for me so I bowed out. I'm pretty fickle with ditching games though because I'm not very concerned with following them to completion.

 

I felt like all the hardest bits were optional (aside from the final boss fight because I never care to become good at combat) and I enjoyed the platforming even though I agree that the moveset felt pretty bland and didn't really offer options, it was just that powers were strictly necessary for certain parts.

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I thought the humour was tired and boring, but the gameplay of Guacamelee was so tight and fun that I forgave it. I loved playing that game, so tuning out the stuff around it wasn't too hard.

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I laughed only once at an incredibly stupid joke that I would normally find tasteless.  It was only the fact that it was being said by a goat that I got a laugh out of it.

 

 

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I thought the platforming was actually quite clever at times with the dimension swapping, although I can certainly see why it puts some people off.  I will certainly agree that it's a rather harsh difficulty spike if you were expecting a beat 'em up game.  I just happen to like both those genres so the mixing of the two worked for me.

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Some Visual Novels I did finish this days:

 

Shan Gui: it is a short Chinese VN (kinectic type, so choices), the story itself it, well, very sweet, a bit short, ok. In the end I did even made the badge.

 

Higurashi When They Cry - Chapter 1 Onikakushi: The best way I could tell about this one is "I didn´t see that coming", it´s a really good VN, I confess that was unware of what Higurashi was about or everything around (there is a ton of game and anime) I had bought sometime ago and only now I finally decided to start playing, by the end I was really surprised and can´t wait until the next chapters. Just for the love of all, play with the new sprites,the original ones are horrible.

 

the VN itself start very slow, something you see in many VN, the trick is that here you might have a idea of what maybe is coming on, but this slow pace and the character put that almost tension to rest and when things heat, and believe me, things get heat, this sudden shock and contrast is quite powerful. The first scene where Rena start screaming "LIES!" freaked me out (and the new artist made the scene even better).

 

Man, the Higurashi anime first season is one of my favorite horror experiences of my life, but it was so intense that I never got around to watching the second season. It's the same with District 9, one of the most intense and best movies I've ever seen, I keep on saying I should watch it again, but I'm too chicken.

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Yikes, I didn't realize Guacamelee was that divisive. Yeah it had some dumb referential humor but aside from that, I loved almost everything about it. And yeah it was pretty difficult in some spots but it never took much more than 30-45 minutes to get through some of those spots which I felt was still in that range where it was more satisfying to overcome than it was frustrating. And personally, I loved the music and art style. Maybe I just have bad taste.

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I'm with you, Zeus. I loved that game. Made in my hometown, too!

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I won't deny that stuff is there, but it's so minor and background that it never bothered me at all.  It's pretty much all contained within the town and dialog with the goat so it's easy to ignore.  I even found some of it amusing, as transparent as it is.

The entire premise of the game uses Mexican culture/history as wacky window dressing for their mashup of well-established, but still very much sacred, game mechanics. 

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The entire premise of the game uses Mexican culture/history as wacky window dressing for their mashup of well-established, but still very much sacred, game mechanics. 

 

If you have issue with the appropriation of culture in the game, that I can understand.  I have a somewhat similar problem with the game Enslaved.  I still think that the references and memes in Guacamelee are easily ignored though.

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Not that it justifies any shitty depictions of Mexican culture but I do recall a Bombcast where they talked to the Drinkbox guys about Guacamelee and they talked about how the concept and themes where dreamt up by one of their Hispanic team members who was from Mexico and was really into some of the cultural lore. Supposedly they consulted him on every decision made and worked hard to try to make sure they were depicting the culture in a responsible way. Maybe they still fucked up a little but it sounds like they at least put thought into it.

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