Guacamelee! is a humorous 2D platformer with a Mexican Día de los Muertos esthetic. Consisting of side-scrolling combat, jumping puzzles and boss fights, the gameplay strikes a balance, being challenging yet fair.

Progressing through the game unlocks new abilities and areas. There are also new enemies and puzzles that provide opportunities to use these newly acquired skills, so the game becomes more complex and harder. Compensating for the difficulty, the game allows you to respawn from numerous checkpoints or whatever ledge you fell from. This prevents frequent deaths from breaking the game’s flow, and allows the player to learn from failure and quickly adapt to overcome a hard part.

I hate excessive dialogue in games, but fortunately Guacamelee! has just the right amount. It has enough to move the story along and even work in some comedy, but it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. This is necessary in a game where parts must be repeated until gotten right. Having to scroll through the same dialogue over and over again just to get to the point you failed at before is an annoyance from an obsolete era of gaming.

Guacamelee! is not without its flaws. It can be a bit repetitive at times and get slightly boring, but it’s not enough to hinder the gameplay significantly, and the soundtrack and colorful animation inspired by traditional Mexican folklore give it a unique style that almost had me buying this game on looks alone.