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Guacamelee: Super TURBO Championship Edition | OT | ¡Livin' la muerte loca!
- Thread starter maxcriden
- Start date
I actually had that one, I was missing the one below the ledges to the bottom left of that one. Just never went down there when I initially played.
I have 100% now but the achievement didn't pop.
Jimmyfenix
Member
Yep, 100% everywhere. Gold medals for every location, and my world map says 100%.
GreatMightySymp
Member
Liking the XBO version so far, just started going into the volcano area, guessing I have an area or two left before the end of the game.
The Mario Bros. scene where the dragon fell into the lava was great.
The Mario Bros. scene where the dragon fell into the lava was great.
QuixoticNeutral
Member
I cleared this for the first time on the Wii U after a satisfying binge that took me to 93%. I'm missing the last orb in the Infierno challenges (which may be out of reach as I am just not very good at stringing together big combos for the gold medals) and a handful of pickups I haven't been able to locate on the map, but instead of holding out for 100% I hit the final boss anyway just to see how it would go, as I knew I could always go back to my pre-boss save for more. Let me just say first of all that I had blast with it: the game held my attention from beginning to end, and while I went from being absolutely enamoured with it to a milder enthusiasm in its later hours (for reasons I'll explain below), it thoroughly scratched the 2D Metroid itch that I haven't been able to soothe with any of the other indie titles billed as Metroidvanias.
Notes specific to the STCE, first of all:
1. The second-screen experience on the Wii U reinforced just how sorely absent Metroid has been from Nintendo's line of dual-screen systems. We've had three of them over ten years (DS, 3DS, Wii U), and Guacamelee was the game that came in and showed what a considerable interface improvement it is to have a live, simultaneous map in a game like this. My spatial memory on a room-by-room basis tends to be poor, so being able to navigate on the map while hopping around was a boon I cannot hope to understate. It helped, too, that Guacamelee's maps provided the feedback of completion percentages by zone, making it all the more satisfying to grab the final chest in an area and see the number on the GamePad screen hit 100%.
2. Reading over what was newly introduced to the game in STCE, I'm astounded at how much content that I perceived as central to the experience was originally absent. Pico de Gallo stuck out as a late addition if only because it was a self-contained series of platform challenges with concepts that never returned and seemed a bit linear and disconnected: you go in one end and out the other, and the platforming sections were designed to minimally permit backtracking without really embracing itthere's at least one part where if you traverse backwards and drop from one room to another, and you're on the wrong half of living/dead, you fall instantly into lava. So that whole section felt like a game within a game. That said, I could scarcely have guessed that the Canal de las Flores was wholly new, as it felt like such a substantial part of the game, likely on account of the range of exploration it permitted. Good heavens, the original must have been short.
Now for some remarks on the game as a whole:
Several interesting dynamics emerge from making the powers you acquire over the course of the game a series of movement skills that don't make each other obsolete. That is, none of them make you strictly or statistically more powerful in terms of damage output the way successive beams do in Metroid; apart from health and stamina expansions, the main form of character progression in combat is actually through greater movement/combo versatility. In other words, upgrades to your arsenal raise the skill cap, which means early-game minions stay relevant throughout while more challenging ones keep apace of the player's gains in health/stamina by introducing enemies (and combinations thereof) that demand you to move more fluidly. It furthermore removes the need for clumsy weapon selection by baking the upgrades into the player's standard directional move set.
Howeverand this is why my reservations with Guacamelee didn't truly settle in until late in my runthis detracts from one of the fundamental pleasures of the Metroid format, the versatility of the arsenal and the mystery surrounding unreachable locations, by essentially spoiling the backtracking and exploration. You can infer pretty early on, from all the conveniently colour-coded and directionally labelled blocks, that you are going to get around with block-breaking movement skills in four directions, a double jump, and an analogue to the Morph Ball Bomb: you know exactly which areas you can skip now and exactly when to bother coming back to them later.
Metroid has its share of colour-coded doors along its main routes, of course, but it's much more subtle about disguising optional collectibles and flagging their presence with audio cues without giving away the prerequisites for even attempting to obtain them. In Guacamelee there is rarely any question of trying different solutions to get somewhere. Gates are all clearly marked and the pleasure of reaching chests is entirely in clearing isolated platform challenges, not discovery. The one part of the layout that truly rewarded exploration was the path to the Forest del Chivo orb: the skull switch doesn't give away any obvious location, keeps you guessing by being conspicuously accessible far earlier than its solution, and encourages you to make the full range of your movement options to see what you can reach within the timerand yet the level design is entirely fair in the way it leads your eye to the opening the switch unlocks. More of the exploration needed to work like that.
To be clear, my complaint is not that Guacamelee isn't Metroid; my complaint is that without the mystery of exploration the late-game backtracking for items is rote and predictable. But I'm a little short of 100%, so what do I know; maybe the collectibles I'm missing will change my view. And running up walls and flying sideways indefinitely were both welcome surprises as unexpected exceptions to the rule.
Meanwhile, it's not surprising that the late-game enemies resort to colour-coded shields when the relative sameness of acquired skillsall effectively the same thing but in different directionsdoesn't leave much room for unexpected applications (the classic example I have in mind is killing Metroids with the Ice Beam/missile combo); thus the late-game combat isn't an interaction of tools and foes so much as a test of timing and positioning. Which is fine; I still like the combat on those terms. But its limitations became clear in facing the bosses, who apart from their lively visual design were really just big life bars with the odd environmental hazard. Dodge, match colours, swap between living/deadnone of them stood out as all that different from the goons. (Speaking of which, I don't understand the fuss about Jaguar Javier that I see online: I found him a pushover to the point that a day after beating him I can't even remember what he did. This wasn't Hard Mode, I'll admit, so maybe I didn't have to really learn the encounter. Given his reputation as a forbidding boss, however, I almost wonder if he was nerfed in STCE or if everyone complaining was playing on the PC with a keyboard and mouse.)
I did have one frustration with the controls: perhaps it's the lack of octagonal gating on the Wii U analogue stick, but I found that whereas the game encourages you to move with a stick for both throws and quick reversals of direction, even the slightest directional tilt would register an intended side-punch (blue) as an uppercut (red), which drove me back to the D-pad for breaking shields or high-precision challenges while leaving me dissatisfied with both schemes. (It didn't help, either, that the upward move is diagonal even from a neutral/standing position based on the direction you are facing.) I've never had this problem on another Wii U 2D platformer, not even after playing through all of Tropical Freeze with the analogue stick, so I wonder if there was something fussy in the implementation here. This was definitely a hindrance in some of the trickier Infierno challenges.
I'm being thorough with my criticisms here, but I want to reiterate that I admired Guacamelee immensely. It isn't often that I get so absorbed in a game as to make a close approach to 100% in a dedicated marathon run on the first attempt. It's just that in a subgenre where combat and exploration are inextricably linked via discoverable abilities, the relative sameness of the abilitiesamazing in combination in a fight, not that interesting in isolationdetracts from the exploration's capacity to tantalize and satisfy. And the solution for balancing the two in a game of this modest scope is not clear.
Notes specific to the STCE, first of all:
1. The second-screen experience on the Wii U reinforced just how sorely absent Metroid has been from Nintendo's line of dual-screen systems. We've had three of them over ten years (DS, 3DS, Wii U), and Guacamelee was the game that came in and showed what a considerable interface improvement it is to have a live, simultaneous map in a game like this. My spatial memory on a room-by-room basis tends to be poor, so being able to navigate on the map while hopping around was a boon I cannot hope to understate. It helped, too, that Guacamelee's maps provided the feedback of completion percentages by zone, making it all the more satisfying to grab the final chest in an area and see the number on the GamePad screen hit 100%.
2. Reading over what was newly introduced to the game in STCE, I'm astounded at how much content that I perceived as central to the experience was originally absent. Pico de Gallo stuck out as a late addition if only because it was a self-contained series of platform challenges with concepts that never returned and seemed a bit linear and disconnected: you go in one end and out the other, and the platforming sections were designed to minimally permit backtracking without really embracing itthere's at least one part where if you traverse backwards and drop from one room to another, and you're on the wrong half of living/dead, you fall instantly into lava. So that whole section felt like a game within a game. That said, I could scarcely have guessed that the Canal de las Flores was wholly new, as it felt like such a substantial part of the game, likely on account of the range of exploration it permitted. Good heavens, the original must have been short.
Now for some remarks on the game as a whole:
Several interesting dynamics emerge from making the powers you acquire over the course of the game a series of movement skills that don't make each other obsolete. That is, none of them make you strictly or statistically more powerful in terms of damage output the way successive beams do in Metroid; apart from health and stamina expansions, the main form of character progression in combat is actually through greater movement/combo versatility. In other words, upgrades to your arsenal raise the skill cap, which means early-game minions stay relevant throughout while more challenging ones keep apace of the player's gains in health/stamina by introducing enemies (and combinations thereof) that demand you to move more fluidly. It furthermore removes the need for clumsy weapon selection by baking the upgrades into the player's standard directional move set.
Howeverand this is why my reservations with Guacamelee didn't truly settle in until late in my runthis detracts from one of the fundamental pleasures of the Metroid format, the versatility of the arsenal and the mystery surrounding unreachable locations, by essentially spoiling the backtracking and exploration. You can infer pretty early on, from all the conveniently colour-coded and directionally labelled blocks, that you are going to get around with block-breaking movement skills in four directions, a double jump, and an analogue to the Morph Ball Bomb: you know exactly which areas you can skip now and exactly when to bother coming back to them later.
Metroid has its share of colour-coded doors along its main routes, of course, but it's much more subtle about disguising optional collectibles and flagging their presence with audio cues without giving away the prerequisites for even attempting to obtain them. In Guacamelee there is rarely any question of trying different solutions to get somewhere. Gates are all clearly marked and the pleasure of reaching chests is entirely in clearing isolated platform challenges, not discovery. The one part of the layout that truly rewarded exploration was the path to the Forest del Chivo orb: the skull switch doesn't give away any obvious location, keeps you guessing by being conspicuously accessible far earlier than its solution, and encourages you to make the full range of your movement options to see what you can reach within the timerand yet the level design is entirely fair in the way it leads your eye to the opening the switch unlocks. More of the exploration needed to work like that.
To be clear, my complaint is not that Guacamelee isn't Metroid; my complaint is that without the mystery of exploration the late-game backtracking for items is rote and predictable. But I'm a little short of 100%, so what do I know; maybe the collectibles I'm missing will change my view. And running up walls and flying sideways indefinitely were both welcome surprises as unexpected exceptions to the rule.
Meanwhile, it's not surprising that the late-game enemies resort to colour-coded shields when the relative sameness of acquired skillsall effectively the same thing but in different directionsdoesn't leave much room for unexpected applications (the classic example I have in mind is killing Metroids with the Ice Beam/missile combo); thus the late-game combat isn't an interaction of tools and foes so much as a test of timing and positioning. Which is fine; I still like the combat on those terms. But its limitations became clear in facing the bosses, who apart from their lively visual design were really just big life bars with the odd environmental hazard. Dodge, match colours, swap between living/deadnone of them stood out as all that different from the goons. (Speaking of which, I don't understand the fuss about Jaguar Javier that I see online: I found him a pushover to the point that a day after beating him I can't even remember what he did. This wasn't Hard Mode, I'll admit, so maybe I didn't have to really learn the encounter. Given his reputation as a forbidding boss, however, I almost wonder if he was nerfed in STCE or if everyone complaining was playing on the PC with a keyboard and mouse.)
I did have one frustration with the controls: perhaps it's the lack of octagonal gating on the Wii U analogue stick, but I found that whereas the game encourages you to move with a stick for both throws and quick reversals of direction, even the slightest directional tilt would register an intended side-punch (blue) as an uppercut (red), which drove me back to the D-pad for breaking shields or high-precision challenges while leaving me dissatisfied with both schemes. (It didn't help, either, that the upward move is diagonal even from a neutral/standing position based on the direction you are facing.) I've never had this problem on another Wii U 2D platformer, not even after playing through all of Tropical Freeze with the analogue stick, so I wonder if there was something fussy in the implementation here. This was definitely a hindrance in some of the trickier Infierno challenges.
I'm being thorough with my criticisms here, but I want to reiterate that I admired Guacamelee immensely. It isn't often that I get so absorbed in a game as to make a close approach to 100% in a dedicated marathon run on the first attempt. It's just that in a subgenre where combat and exploration are inextricably linked via discoverable abilities, the relative sameness of the abilitiesamazing in combination in a fight, not that interesting in isolationdetracts from the exploration's capacity to tantalize and satisfy. And the solution for balancing the two in a game of this modest scope is not clear.
Khalifa Jayy
Banned
Double Dippers: Worth it? Played it on Vita prior. Vita is dead. I'd be playing on PS4 now.
Jimmyfenix
Member
Yes oh god yes.
K
kittens
Unconfirmed Member
Definitely. [Edit : Wait, I just remembered I got my copy for free on XB1, lol. I'm not sure if I would have double dipped if I had to pay Regardless, I'm definitely enjoying playing again. All the new content is great.]
H3rTz DoNuT
Member
Do you have all Inferno challenges done on gold? This is required for 100% as well. If you have, then achievement will unlock sooner or later, sometimes they get lost in space and it takes some time for them to click. The longest I waited for achievement to unlock was almost 48 hours.
Khalifa Jayy
Banned
Wait so Europe ps players get an upgrade price cut but US PSN players don't? Seriously? Why?
anonymous_abc
Member
anonymous_abc
Member
Not having played the new version yet. All I can say is that on my third play through on the Vita version he was much easier too, just because my skills hat improved greatly.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
First time ever seeing this game... Just picked it up for my Wii U (since I just finished Child of Light and Transistor).
Kind of excited!
Kind of excited!
Yup. 100% everywhere (every place on my mini map has the golden coin or whatever it is) and I now have all of the achievements except for beat hard mode and collect every collectible (which I've done). I've even got all of the orbs. Not quite sure why it's not unlocking.
Pretty much, i actually found flame face harder this time and i never used to have any trouble with him.
Well I finally finished off Valiant Hearts so I will start playing this (and the final episode of Wolf Among Us) when I get home from work today.
Should I be worried about the challenge achievement for XB1? I think there are still 20 days left to do it. All it says is `Calaca destroyed` and I assume it just means `Beat the final boss` which shouldn`t be too hard.
Should I be worried about the challenge achievement for XB1? I think there are still 20 days left to do it. All it says is `Calaca destroyed` and I assume it just means `Beat the final boss` which shouldn`t be too hard.
N7Commander95
Member
So I cant get the good ending no matter what I do. I think my game is glitched
Just to be sure, i got the orb in:
Just to be sure, i got the orb in:
The Treetops
The Mountains
The Chicken Maze
Forest del Chivo
And that underground mine deathmatch
Your meant to get the final one with the last boss right?
Am I missing one?
The Mountains
The Chicken Maze
Forest del Chivo
And that underground mine deathmatch
Your meant to get the final one with the last boss right?
Am I missing one?
Yes its just beat the last boss. Game took me 8 hours to 100% so you will easily get that.
Edit: Sorry Double post
El Infierno,
Get enough gold medals to open the lift door.
Yep, I got all 7 orbs and the secret achievement.... the game just hates me.
backflip10019
Member
I've heard that neither of these work (though admittedly haven't tried myself). It's too much of a mouthful to launch verbally.
Vampirolol
Member
Just finished the game at 100% on my first run. What can I say? BUY THIS GEM!
This is one area where Playstation voice commands trump Xbox, you're able to say partial game names to start them.
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
Glad to see new people checking this game out. This is the only indie Metroidvania I've thought was really worth a damn. It understands what makes the genre great, but puts its own unique spin on it. Just a fantastic game all-around.
condompickle
Banned
Had a blast playing this game. 7 hrs felt like nothing. It progresses so nicely that you don't get bored. this game has changed my stance on indie games. Sad part is that if it weren't free on xbox I would of never have tried it.
GreatMightySymp
Member
Hoping I didn't run into a glitch...
I had cleared one of those "walls appear, beat these enemies" rooms and accidentally died when trying to break the piñata (usually these rooms have some of the silver coins IIRC). When I respawned it was gone as the game thought I already obtained it.
Am I screwed as far as unlocking the costumes go (i.e. you get enough silver coins to unlock the costumes w/out any extra coins being available)?
I had cleared one of those "walls appear, beat these enemies" rooms and accidentally died when trying to break the piñata (usually these rooms have some of the silver coins IIRC). When I respawned it was gone as the game thought I already obtained it.
Am I screwed as far as unlocking the costumes go (i.e. you get enough silver coins to unlock the costumes w/out any extra coins being available)?
Steverulez
Member
Got all the achievements except for complete the game on hard, figured it would be better if I got on with doing it and getting everything else so I can do my hard play through leisurely when I feel like that.
Great game
Great game
You don't get enough coins for all the costumes in one playthrough anyway, so you're fine.
That's factually wrong. You just tap the key quickly, rather than holding it, just like on a controller. I played about 50% of the original game with a keyboard and I had zero issues with the controls.
taizuke
Member
Silver coins doubled on Hard after every min-room fight so i think is possible to buy all the outfits if your first playthrough is on Hard.
I finished this today and was surprised by how much I liked it. I don't really care for Metroidvania games. I find them too be too bloated, too puzzle-oriented, with mostly boring combat and too much backtracking and map-checking. It's hard for me to put them down and come back later because I always worry that I've forgotten some important clue or mechanic.
Guacamelee hardly feels like a Metroidvania at all though. Yes the progression is item/skill based but there is no stupid XP system and no extensive backtracking over a massive map. There's even a system of teleporters but never once did I really feel like using it. There's a huge navigable overworld but your path through the game is mostly linear and you don't have to revisit very many locations at all if you don't want to.
The combat is really excellent -- with all the pop-ups and grappling moves this really feels like Devil May Cry meets Final Fight (in 2D). I love the crazy abilities you get towards the end, and I'd say the platforming challenges are easily the best of any game in the genre.
Very satisfying, and I'm glad I was bored enough to give it a spin. I was probably going to skip Strider since it's also a Metroidvania, but I think I will fire that up now too and see how it compares.
Guacamelee hardly feels like a Metroidvania at all though. Yes the progression is item/skill based but there is no stupid XP system and no extensive backtracking over a massive map. There's even a system of teleporters but never once did I really feel like using it. There's a huge navigable overworld but your path through the game is mostly linear and you don't have to revisit very many locations at all if you don't want to.
The combat is really excellent -- with all the pop-ups and grappling moves this really feels like Devil May Cry meets Final Fight (in 2D). I love the crazy abilities you get towards the end, and I'd say the platforming challenges are easily the best of any game in the genre.
Very satisfying, and I'm glad I was bored enough to give it a spin. I was probably going to skip Strider since it's also a Metroidvania, but I think I will fire that up now too and see how it compares.
HUELEN10
Member
I asked before, but I'll ask again since I just played the demo on the Xbox 360 and loved it, more than enough to forgive its faults; it's a solid game! When playing single player on Wii U, do you HAVE to use the GamePad? If not, what can you use instead?
The answer to this question is what determines how I buy it!
The answer to this question is what determines how I buy it!
I think short jump worked fine for me. If I recall correctly I played almost the entirety of normal mode (only 360 controller at the start before I switched) using keyboard controls, and all of hard mode. Also worked fine for combo chicken.Since this is the current thread I'll ask here. I use remapped keyboard controls but in this forest section where it notifies me to 'tap' K to hop (I'm using K as the jump key), doing so doesn't change the jump in any way.
The same for 'hold' K to jump tip, and also the following room with 'Shift+L' to travel through wall spikes (using my remappings). None of the suggestions actually work, and I keep dying in the process.
Am I doing something incorrectly?
You might try this remapping that I made just in case it makes a difference: http://steamcommunity.com/app/214770/discussions/0/846960628562042920/
Yeah it makes the game super easy. Used it for majority of normal and all of hard.
It works with Xbox got to "Guacamelee S T C E"
gift of 100 gab
Member
Diablo's suit is great, definitely made the game easier once you've built up your HP meter enough. At the start I felt I almost got one shotted on hard though, lol. Which costumes did people end up using?
In constrast to Strider (which I liked quite a lot), as it was a PS+ game this month, the ease of backtracking - map clearly indicating which areas connect to which and and the functioning teleport system - made it a much more enjoyable experience to go back for collectibles.
In constrast to Strider (which I liked quite a lot), as it was a PS+ game this month, the ease of backtracking - map clearly indicating which areas connect to which and and the functioning teleport system - made it a much more enjoyable experience to go back for collectibles.
I just say "Xbox Go To Guacamelee" and it works perfectly. I never bothered with the subtitle.