Guacamelee is easily one of the more entertaining platformers right now, blending Latin tropes with a side-scrolling Metroid-vania experience (and some downright silliness). Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack takes older B-movie tropes and throws the concept into an action/puzzle hybrid. One part Katamari Damacy, one part side-scroller, one part puzzle and a whole lot of chuckling. You start off absorbing random pieces of small garbage on the floor of a college dorm and work your way up to absorbing buildings by the game end – and honestly, who doesn't chuckle at the thought of absorbing an entire city block just by rolling over it?
You control a rather irritable blob who has managed to escape a college laboratory. Your goal is two absorb as many objects as possible in order to be able to enter the next area, stopping you are a variety of environmental problems and puzzle challenges in order to proceed. The initial challenges start off with your typical timed-jump and spatial awareness testing, but will start to incorporate some blob powers such as magnetism and telekinesis to add some complexity. While the challenge curve starts off as a gentle slope and does ramp up significantly towards the end, at no point will you really feel helpless as to how to proceed or forced to check out a You-Tube walkthrough to figure it out.
The art style is a bright cartoony character design, with the scale of the blob making some of the most mundane objects impassible until your size increases. Very charming! The music and sound effects do an excellent job of keeping the experience light and helping lend to the "pick and up and play" nature of the game. A dedicated gamer could probably annihilate their first playthrough in 3-4 hours; but as the levels are only a few minutes long, they really lend themselves to stress relief more than a dedicated gaming experience.
My only negative marks against the game are pretty nit-picky. I found that the incorporation of the blob powers were not as elegant as they were on the PS Vita (obviously because there is no touch screen for the Xbox 360) and so those levels sort of lose some of their fine control compared to the original.
All in all, I really enjoyed my time with the game and do recommend it for those looking for a quick break from reality.
- Tazman
The Good:
- Simple charming platformer
The Bad:
- While a pretty faithful translation, some of the control swaps for controller not as effective as the touch controls from the PS Vita
