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Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition Xbox One Review

Last year, we reviewed Guacamelee! Gold Edition, an update to an already amazing game that added some needed balancing, new content, and a generous amount of DLC. With each attempt, Drinkbox Games generously added more life to the best game we played last year about death, taking what was an incredibly enjoyable adventure even further beyond what we expected.

Now, Gearbox has released Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition, an update that takes the best of that gold edition and gives us the Guacamelee! game that our next-gen consoles deserve. It, quite simply, is the best 2013 platformer not named Super Mario 3D World, and the inclusion of new content promises to keep this game in your home console for a long time. Some changes – like new enemies, bosses in cut-scenes, and challenging new areas – will be instantly noticeable and appreciated. One particular new enemy appears through a black outline, momentarily vanishing and then reappearing elsewhere to annoy you. Add those large changes along with smaller updates like health bars above enemies, and the game begins to shine even brighter. That doesn’t mean everything is perfect – if a platformer’s balance is predicated on the concoction of combat, exploration, and difficulty, the new “Intenso” mode feels akin to picking up a gold star in Mario in every level. It’s helpful and sometimes fun, but it can occur too often and feels like a disruption of the game’s core mechanics. There is the option of not activating it, so any players who feel like it might be cheating can simply ignore the feature. Still, in a perfectly balanced game, it feels forced.

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Beyond that, Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition does everything else as well as might we expect. It remains one of the best and most surprisingly great games of the past few years, and this definitive console edition is the best way to experience the game if you haven’t already taken the Luchador leap. It’s fun, creative, and lasts just long enough to make you wish there was more. This is the definitive version of Guacamelee! and quite possibly the best next-gen game currently available.

9 out of 10