Brannigan

Guacamelee

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Saw this up on steam and grabbed it.  Really love the style of the game.  But fuck does it have crazy difficulty spikes sometimes.  Some frustrating platforming sections.  None of the bosses posed a real threat, just got to the final boss and he destroys me completely.  Pretty annoying.  Again though, really dig the art style and gameplay when it isn't breaking me in half.

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Absolutely loved it!

I think I had more trouble with the tiger head guy than the final boss. I thought those boss fights were really well done, I got annihilated on quite a few occasions but it now felt cheap.

Have you 100% it? The hardest brain melting moments for me was the fighting missions in the chicken gym and those alternating invisible platforms

Other then these ^ I didn't really find the game frustrating, it was definitely a challenge at times but I never got stuck anywhere for to long

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Nah I've literally played it a day, nowhere near 100 percent. None of the bosses gave me much trouble at all, but I can't even get past phase 1 of the calaca fight

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Top tip! I would always jump to the side as calaca appears, you won't get hit by which ever attack he does if you're in the air.

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Yea I finally beat him, honestly 2nd phase took me less time to figure out.  First phase just hits you so fast, there's isn't really any fights that are that quick.  Was just unprepared for it

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I picked this up during the Steam Holiday sale as a flash deal.  I'm having a lot of fun with it so far.  The combat is fun and interesting, the gameplay feels very smooth, and the style is nice to look at.  In a lot of ways it plays like a Metroidvania Smash Bros game.  The only thing so far that's annoying me is getting the combos in the chicken training house.  The special moves knock the guy out of range and I can't complete the chain.  That's a minor annoyance though, one that seems skippable so I'm not going to beat my head against a wall trying to finish it.

 

There are also a ton of references to other games, mostly old school Nintendo.  Some are rather overt (such as the Mexican Chozo statue) while others are a bit more suble (such as an outline of Megaman in a brick wall in one of the towns).  Many of them are posters for luchadore fights and I'm enjoying the way they're portrayed in this style.

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I also love all the references to other games, both old and new, throughout the game's art. And yeah it's kept wonderfully consistent with the luchadore theme.

 

This is also a great coop game, up until you get to the crazy platforming parts. It does help with boss fight difficulty curves as they continue as long as one player stays alive. I quite enjoy the fight mechanics in general. Throwing enemies into each other gives me pretty strong Battletoads vibes.

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I also grabbed this in the sale and have been having a lot of fun with it. These games just trigger some primal game endorphins in me or something, as i logged way too many hours this weekend getting the hidden mask pieces. 

 

There is some Limbo language in the church if you can get up to the belfry, and a Journey guy right before the final boss!

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I also grabbed this during the Steam sale. I really enjoy the game play, but I definitely feel like much of the portrayal of Mexican culture relies on lazy stereotypes, and that irritates me.

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I also grabbed this during the Steam sale. I really enjoy the game play, but I definitely feel like much of the portrayal of Mexican culture relies on lazy stereotypes, and that irritates me.

 

Yeah, there are some things I thought seemed kinda like that, such as the amount of tequila everywhere.  I'm not super familiar with Mexican culture so I don't know how accurate any of it is but I do get the feeling it uses common stereotypes.

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It's a good point to consider for sure. Honestly I can't say either way. On the one hand this is definitely a fetishizing of certain well known cultural tropes, on the other hand it's a protagonist who isn't white! As callous as that is, that's what runs through my head as I play the game. I'm so starved for variety in game protagonists that even one that appears to be lazily stereotypical is welcome.

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Though I think parallels can be drawn with games/movies/books about Ninjas leaning heavily on well worn stereotypes about Japanese culture. It might not necessarily be untrue that there were Ninjas/Luchadores/Day of the Dead skeletons in existence, but the fact that they are the most outward facing element of an entire nation's culture and history and no attempt is ever made to dive deeper or examine modern day non-fantastical cultural realities can seem somewhat insulting.

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What I'm talking about is this phenomenon of cultural fetishization. Like it would seem "crazy" to concept a cyberpunk game set in mexico city, or in south-central LA, it's always gonna take place in some Seattle lookalike, but a day of the dead game comes out and we all expect this.

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I'm really enjoying this game. It's become my game of choice when I just feel like playing something for anywhere between 5 minutes and 2 hours. However, I'm finding a keyboard setup quite difficult to use. It recommends using a controller but there's no way I'm forking out for one. I'm finding the 2nd temple particularly difficult where you have to keep changing back and forth between the two realms as you jump. I'm not sure if it's because I'm not used to playing platformers on a keyboard or if I've got crappy key configurations. 

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I'm really enjoying this game. It's become my game of choice when I just feel like playing something for anywhere between 5 minutes and 2 hours. However, I'm finding a keyboard setup quite difficult to use. It recommends using a controller but there's no way I'm forking out for one. 

 

 

If you have a 360 a wireless adapter is like 10 dollars on Amazon.

 

Has everyone gotten past complaining about the random platforming? If not I would like to bitch some.  Game randomly seems to want to slow progress down for no reason.  I sat down with it one night, with a couple of beers, and really enjoyed myself until there was that entire vertical moving platform that you have to phase in and out of worlds in time thing.  I got through that section and put the game down and haven't gone back in a couple of days.  I liked it until that point though.

 

Also, what is with indie games doing shout outs to each other recently?  It just seems to have suddenly happened one day.

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I actually kinda like the dimension shifting platforming puzzles.  The one that's driving me nuts is the Megaman like one with the disappearing platforms.

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I actually kinda like the dimension shifting platforming puzzles.  The one that's driving me nuts is the Megaman like one with the disappearing platforms.

Fortunately, that part is optional.

It's one of the mask pieces for the secret ending

But yeah, it's absurdly difficult, and not in a way that's particularly fun.

I've basically decided I'm not going to get the secret ending because of that, and the fact that I've heard it isn't even the most difficult one.

 

Anyway, the game is great for all of the reasons people have said already, but something else I wanted to add is, it's a medroidvania-ish where virtually all of the powerups are useful for something other than being a key.

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I actually kinda like the dimension shifting platforming puzzles.  The one that's driving me nuts is the Megaman like one with the disappearing platforms.

 

Didn't get that far before the drunken stupor got the better of me and I decided I still wanted to like the game when I put it down for the night.  Some of the dimension shifting stuff was clever, some of the required stuff seemed a little extreme.  I am all for putting extra secret endings behind whatever walls you can muster, but it sort of felt like the game went for 0 to Super Meat Boy pretty fast.

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What I'm talking about is this phenomenon of cultural fetishization. Like it would seem "crazy" to concept a cyberpunk game set in mexico city, or in south-central LA, it's always gonna take place in some Seattle lookalike, but a day of the dead game comes out and we all expect this.

Rick Deckard spent most of Blade Runner in a hovercar, hovering over parts of LA. So there's that.

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What I'm talking about is this phenomenon of cultural fetishization. Like it would seem "crazy" to concept a cyberpunk game set in mexico city, or in south-central LA, it's always gonna take place in some Seattle lookalike, but a day of the dead game comes out and we all expect this.

I think it's more that people jump to the easy solution than it is anything else.

 

I've certainly never thought of Seattle as easy cyberpunk, though. Is that a common thing? Granted, I don't consume much cyberpunk.

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I agree that the game has some really weird difficulty ramps.  At times it's too easy and then suddenly it's super hard.  I can deal with a game being hard, but it seems out of place here.  I beat the boss, but I don't feel like trying to get all the mask pieces in order to get the true ending because I can tell it's just going to frustrate me.

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Only Tree Tops pushed me over the hump where I shamefully blurted at my monitor. 

 

The endings are pretty wildly different, if you care, but you have youtube. 

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I can see how the "true" ending would be completely different, given the way the "normal" ending went.  Zelda and Metroidvania games tend to be among the few I actively try to 100%, but in this case it's really frustrating in an unexpected and inconsistant way.  I don't want to ruin the overall good impression I have of this game so I think I'm stopping here and I'll probably youtube the ending.

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i 100% it  :davidbrent:  didn't realise there was an alternate ending, i can;t actually remember what the ending was.... you should quit if its causing you distress. baby

 

The mega man disappearing blocks platforming segment and those last few chicken fighting rounds where intense. super challenging stuff, and actually i remember majorly frustrating

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just watched the PC trailer for it, god damn i forgot how good this game was. Dare i say i think this is my goty

 

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