Guacamelee!

Basic info
Guacamelee is an action platformer by Drinkbox Studios. It was released in April 2013 for PS3 and Vita and later on for Windows, OS X and Linux. Enhanced version will be released this summer for WiiU, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox 360. I played this on Vita.

My first impressions
I had a feeling this would be a silly game and was not disappointed. I loved the mexican theme and most of all the music! The visuals are refreshingly different from the games I have played before and the controls were easy to understand. The beginning of the story made me chuckle; a bad guy kidnaps El Presidente's daughter and the hero, Juan, must save her, for she is his childhood friend and crush.

Gameplay
At the beginning I felt like the game was pretty easy. At the end I most certainly knew I had been very wrong. The platformer parts sometimes made me grit my teeth, because the timings had to be spot-on or it was a no-go. I'm pretty sure I never got through the platformer parts on the first try, rarely even on second or third try. There are A LOT of different features that has to be used in correct places to move on.

There are many different types of enemies as well, and some techniques work on some enemys, while others don't. I really did enjoy normal fights and got through them pretty easily, but most bosses were tough. I spent about an hour and a half trying to beat the last boss but eventually I did succeed on my own and I am quite proud of that. I played the game on normal, like I usually do, but I found the game pretty challenging and I think I would not stand a chance in Hard difficulty.

The thing I liked about the most was the amount of hidden loot. In some levels I had to search really hard to find all of the chests, but it was very rewarding since some of the chests held pieces of heart or stamina and after collecting three of the same, you get either more health (from the heart) or stamina (from a skull).

Pros and Cons
+ Mexican theme
+ Lots of humor
+ Nice, different kind of visual style
+ Lots of secrets
+ Many special moves and skills

- Very hard at times
- Some problems with the controls
- A bit too simple, Mario-like story (the princess is in another castle)
- Many special moves and skills

Details
The game had a lot of spoofs of popular memes and other games as posters in a city in the game. Being a game with a mexican theme, the spoofs were partly in spanish and it took me a while to notice and understand all of them. My personal favorite was a poster that says: "Me gusta guavas"
with the "me gusta"-face on a guava.

TL;DR-version
Great challenging game with awesome mexican theme and a lot of platforming and some fighting with different techniques. May cause teeth gritting and sore thumbs.

Overall Score
I will give this game an 8 out of 10.

At first some info about Amy

I'm a 23-year old girl who likes to play games, read books and manga and watch a lot of tv-shows. I live in Finland and my native language is finnish, so please excuse me my english.

I started playing videogames when I was about seven or eight and my early years of gaming mostly contained games for kids like Spyro, Crash Bandicoot and Croc. I didn't have a console or a computer of my own back then so my game time was very limited.

I now live with my boyfriend, who is also a gamer, and who owns most of our consoles and games. We have two gaming PCs, Playstations from 2 to 4, a GameCube (with as many as two games), my old laptop, an iPad and both PSP and PS Vita. I nowadays mostly game on Vita since I have many good games on it.

I mostly like to play RPGs, puzzle games and platformers. The things I appreciate the most in games are:
- Nice graphics
- Good storylines
- Lots of "extra" to do
- Good, easy controls
- Beautiful sceneries

In this blog, I'll be reviewing games I have played and perhaps writing other game related posts too. I propably won't be doing many brand-new games since I am not particularly wealthy and I like to buy my games a bit later. My bf sometimes buys games right at launch and I might do some of those games but we'll see.