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The game starts off introducing you to the main character, Juan. He is a farm boy from Pueblucho, a town that greatly respects luchadors. Juan goes to help out a man when El Presidente’s daughter is caught in a fire. Juan rushes over, only to find a skeleton by the name of Calaca, has captured her. Juan tries to fight back, but sadly, Calaca kills Juan. In the world of the dead, Juan finds a mysterious luchador mask. He then progresses out of the world of the dead, and obviously, tries to save El Presidente’s daughter from Calaca. This makes for an interesting plot line throughout the game, and is not just a complement to the excellent gameplay that comes along with it.

Speaking of that gameplay, it is arguably one of the best platformers I have ever played. Why it is, is because it actually makes you think, and it can actually become quite difficult. At some points, I had to pull off crazy combos to get to the next platform, and after I had completed them, I felt like a luchador myself. The platforms are laid out perfectly, and I never had a problem with something being impossible or too hard to pass. As the great Goldilocks once said, “It was just right.”

Juan can also beat up baddies along the way. The excellent combat system makes that super fun. Juan can pull off awesome combos, in both the air, and on the ground. It’s fluid, and it just feels right in place with how everything else in the game works. Along with just his punches and kicks, Juan also learns some mystical attacks from a goat-man. These can be used to break objects in the environment or when battling enemies. These have great, funny names attached to them like the Rooster Uppercut, and my absolute favorite, The Dashing Derp-Derp. I just love how the combat works, and it just feels right for the game.

The enemies won’t cause you too many problems (in the normal mode that is), but the bosses will kick your butt over and over again. These bosses will take you many, many times to figure out. Their attack patterns are all so diverse, and finding out how to stop them is even harder. Eventually, when you do figure them out, it feels awesome, and like I said before, like a real luchador.

My only real problem was that the game was a bit too short. My first time through clocked in at 4 hours, and 4 minutes. I didn’t go out of my way for collectibles, or do any of the side-missions on that run-through. However, if you were to play on hard, the game lasts longer (you will have to re-do more parts), or if you did look for collectibles and do the side missions. If you did any of those things, the game could last you 10-20+ hours. Still, I wish there was a little more content to it, even though I really enjoyed what it had.

Humor is where Drinkbox excels the most. There are references to so many things you wouldn’t believe. On the billboards, there are ads for “Mega Hombre”, “Casa Crashers” and even an ad in Spanish for their last Vita title, Tales from Space Mutant Blobs Attack. There are also funny references to other things outside of games, like the meme, Grumpy Cat, or the movie Wreck it Ralph (they put “Bust it Bill”). All of these were hilarious, and the character dialogue and gameplay has even more references and jokes. Guacamelee! had me laughing the entire game.

The art and music are great as well, and fit with the overall aesthetic of the game. The art has a 2D beautiful surface in the front, and some kind of background that pertains to the kind of environment you are in. Like for example, the desert scene has sand dunes in the back. The game looks beautiful on both my TV, and my PlayStation Vita’s 5 inch display. The music is an upbeat, Mexican style. It fits wonderfully, and sounds especially nice when coming through headphones.

Guacamelee! is an all-around awesome game, and anyone with a Vita and/or a PlayStation 3 should pick it up. It’s one of the greatest platformers that I’ve played in a while, and it has all the elements a game needs to be great; awesome gameplay, great soundtrack, good graphics, and a fun story. Guacamelee’s got it all. It doesn’t matter if you’re broke, or don’t have any money, you need to buy Guacamelee. Believe the hype, it’s really that good.

Machinarium is a point and click adventure game; a genre which I usually enjoy playing. It controls very well, and there are many ways to control on the Vita. You can use the front or back touchscreens, or you can control it using the analog stick. All three ways are very fluent, and the game is really easy to control.

The game is simple enough at the beginning, and only require a little of thinking to get through. By the third puzzle though, things start getting very, very hard. In that puzzle, you need to get past a police guard. He doesn’t let you through if you are in uniform; a white hat with a light bulb on top. You find a cone to use as a hat, that part is not that hard. You dip it in a white paint bucket, and there’s our white hat. Now you have to get the light bulb. You can climb up the pole, but it’s missing a rung. This is only a one screen puzzle, so there aren’t many places to look. I wandered around for about 10 minutes, only to realize that I could throw away the other cones, to find a rung to put on the pole. I don’t know if this is my deductive reasoning failing on me, or if this game is just too cryptic. Compared to the other puzzles late in the game, this one isn’t even that hard. For some people, figuring out these impossible puzzles might be super fun, but for some reason I only got past a few on my own without using clues.

I think Machinarium knows how hard it is, because it gives you two forms of clues you can look at in the game; the one-time clue and the walkthrough book. The one-time clue is self-explanatory; it’s a clue that can be used one time. However, these are always very vague, and don’t really give you a great sense of where to go. The walkthrough book is a great source, but it is always a pain in the neck to use. First off, the game makes you do a little side scrolling shoot ‘em up to just get into the book. Then, it gives you a picture by picture walkthrough of what you need to do on that screen. There is one thing that really makes it hard to use, though. Let’s say you walk into the bar part of the main square to do part of a puzzle. You open the book with the mini-game, and realize you have to walk out to get something you forgot. If you go back into that bar again, you have to do the mini-game over again. It gets extremely repetitive, and for those multi-screen puzzles, it’s an absolute pain in the neck.

Even though most of the puzzles are really hard, some of them are still fun, like the games in the arcade level, and other little, fun puzzles scattered throughout the game. They gave my brain a well-deserved break, and were a lot more creative than the cryptic point and click puzzles in the base of the game. I probably enjoyed the mini puzzles more than the actual game, because the mini puzzles were not as cryptic, and easier to understand.

The art and ambiance of the whole game was stunning. The characters in the foreground were all designed beautifully, and the backgrounds and buildings are pretty as well. The story was okay; there really was nothing to it. The little robot you play as is trying to find his girlfriend and he is dealing with some “bully robots” along the way. I wish there was more to the story, but that’s not the reason people would want to play this game, so it probably wasn’t the priority.

Machinarium is an okay point and click adventure with a great art style and some fun mini puzzles, but along with that comes a so-so story and some really hard, cryptic puzzles. If you enjoy extremely hard point and click adventures, you’ll probably get some fun out of Machiarium.

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Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine never wants you to murder. It’s a stealth game in which murder is possible, but it never pretends to be about moment-to-moment action. Rather, it focuses on a scarcely visited contrast to the “murder as you go” stealth genre. Monaco is about the heist. Get in, get the loot, get out–that is the constant beat by which Monaco operates.

Monaco tells a classic heist story of four freshly escaped thieves, eager to get out of the country to early retirement. This proves to be a much more complicated affair, as what is originally a simple escape of the country branches out into a much messier affair. Throughout the story players will be sent on missions to rescue additional characters, each of whom has it’s own unique ability for sleuthing.

Monaco is played from a 2D top-down view, presenting environments in the form of building floor plans. Line of sight plays a large role in navigation, meaning that anything that your character cannot see is blocked from view. This leads to peeking through doorways, windows, and air vents to gather an understand of your surroundings. Monaco also uses sound to great effect, from subtle conversations between characters, to satisfying footsteps that help reveal guard locations when you can’t see them. Every playable character in Monaco presents its own unique ability, each of which make a certain aspect of stealthy navigation easier. The Lockpick, for example, can conquer a locked door in a fraction of the time of other characters, while the Pickpocket wields a faithful pet monkey that will automatically seek out coins.

Everything in Monaco is done by pressing against objects. You want to unlock a door? Press against it. See a hackable terminal? Push away. It sounds so simple, because it is. It’s such a rudimentary concept that makes all the difference in practice. There are a multitude of tools introduced to the player over the course of the story to mix up the gameplay. Some early examples include the gun, which allows for a quick kill in a hairy situation, at the expense of noise. Smoke bombs are useful for making a hasty escape from multiple pursuers, and the EMP takes out all electronics in the vicinity, including alarms and security sensors. In earlier stages, you’ll only be supplied with one kind of item, often for the sake of teaching you how to use it. In later stages, you’ll be presented with plenty of choice, which provides plenty of opportunity for playing different ways.

Each floor of every stage randomly places coins throughout the area. These are mostly there to evoke a feeling of Pac-Man, but also serve to encourage exploration of stages. Every ten coins collected also scores extra supply of your item, be it a gun or EMP, though unfortunately that is the only way to acquire additional supplies. The game seems really bent on trying to make these coins matter–a feeling further brought about by the game’s alternate storyline. Apart from the first story told from the perspective of the Lockpick, there is a separate parallel story told from the perspective of the Pickpocket. This extended story does a good job of further fleshing out the overall narrative, which is good, because the normal storyline does not stand alone very well. Though with how necessary it is to experience the Pickpocket story, it’s a bummer that they place a sizable gate in front of players to access those missions. To unlock each Pickpocket mission, you must “Clean Out” (collect every coin) two other missions. Cleaning out missions is not always an easy task, especially when you just want to focus on the main objective. It feels like yet another way to make the coins feel important, but it just ends up the act experiencing the full story a hassle.

And while Monaco works very well as a solo experience, you won’t see the best of what it has to offer until jumping into co-op. Co-op grants the ability to have multiple thieves at the same time, significantly increasing your effectiveness in the field. A great example is having someone play as the Lockpick to easily navigate through doors, someone as the Hacker to bring any security to its knees, someone as the Pickpocket to collect every coin along the way, and someone as the Cleaner to knock out any suspicious guards. This is an amount of power that would be plainly impossible playing alone. Levels also don’t scale in difficulty with the addition of players, so there’s never a disadvantage to playing co-op. When you can gather a few friends and effectively coordinate with each other, there’s nothing more satisfying than pulling off the perfect heist.

One of Monaco’s greatest strengths is its distinct visual style. But the style is not just there to be aesthetically pleasing, as it can also contribute directly to gameplay. AI guards have mannerisms that reveal their behavior, and the line-of-sight mechanic challenges the player to learn their surroundings without being able to see them.

Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine perfectly represents what sets stealth games apart from the pack. There’s not always a need for a game inherently about violence. You’re there to get the loot, and get out. And even though a round of Monaco isn’t one of constant moment-to-moment action, it find different and more interesting ways of delivering the same satisfying experience. Monaco achieves magic when a group of friends and I can ghost into a complex, dismantle every obstacle in our way, grab what we’re after, and make like we were never there. And while the unnecessary coin quota can hamper what is otherwise an enjoyable story, it doesn’t do much to make we want to play Monaco any less. Monaco is a simultaneous triumph in stealth, style, and game design, and one that should not be missed.

Motocross Madness is a game worth playing. ‘Surprising’ is the word that has kept resurfacing as I think about Motocross Madness. Given the low expectations I’ve had for games of its caliber thus far, it’s been refreshing to play what is not only a “good avatar game”, but a good game altogether. Above all else, Motocross Madness doesn’t try to be anything it isn’t.

Events in Motocross Madness are broken down into four parts: normal competitive races, rival races, exploration stages, and trick sessions. The most interesting of those are the exploration stages, in which players are dropped into one of many open world terrains and given various objectives of collecting coins, doing tricks, etc. It provides a good change of pace from the other racing modes, as you’re not constrained to a time limit. Trick sessions place you the same open areas as the exploration mode as you fight against other NPC’s to see who can rack up the highest trick score in the time limit.

When you’re not on the track in Motocross Madness, you can use money earned from events to upgrade or buy new bikes, which then qualifies you to participate in higher class events. Problems arise when every new bike purchased starts out at the lowest “E” class, forcing you to repurchase all the upgrades you had on a your last bike. I found the entire prospect of buying new bikes rendered moot by the fact that the first default bike you get is more than capable to complete every event in the game. I completed every race event in 1st place with nothing but a fully upgraded stock bike.

The moment-to-moment bike riding in Motocross Madness works fairly well, but definitely has issues. Drifting is very inconsistent, sometimes leading to a successful slide, and sometimes leading me to a complete stop. The game also tries to add an incentive to crash by giving you some XP depending how “gnarly” the crash is, but the action doesn’t stop during the crash. In this way, it’s not worth it to lose for first place position to get a few extra experience points crashing. Also, the avatar ragdoll animations are comically bad. When Motocross Madness’ driving is working though, it provides a thrilling sense of speed and a pretty enjoyable trick variation. As you gain experience and level up, you’ll gain access to new tiers of tricks to be performed in air: tricks that involve pressing in a direction while holding a corresponding face button. You’ll often have to think about which trick is necessary for the jump, as some tricks take longer than others to perform, but yield a higher boost bonus.

There are total of nine tracks in the game, spanning across three regions. The tracks themselves are surprisingly well designed and varied in terms of layout, and they look pretty great, but they do a poor job of articulating the correct path at times. Often I’d stumble off-track because there was no clear sign or terrain that indicated I was going the wrong way.

Motocross Madness also sports a social network suite called Bike Club. Here you can see your friends’ best times on tracks, stats, medals, etc. You can also asynchronously race friends’ ghosts to beat their score, and or compete directly in real time. These features work well enough, but the entire section feels incredibly half-baked. It becomes pretty clear that Bike Club was an afterthought with its plainness and lack of creativity.

As a racing game, Motocross Madness is a well-made addition to the scarcely populated genre. It has a great variety in tracks and tricks, and provides some good, though fairly limited, replay value with the addition of Bike Club. It has a good share of quirks, no doubt, but they don’t take away too much from overall enjoyment. If past attempts at avatar-focused games have shown us anything, it is that it’s apparently tough to put out a good avatar game. Motocross Madness is easily the best argument for an avatar game to date, and also just a good ol’ racing arcade biker racer. 

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The gameplay is simple, yet wonderful. You move from lane to lane, dodging enemies and barriers, and collecting credits as you go. There are power-ups to help you pass barriers; destroy barriers, and one to steal credits from enemies. They are all basic, but can get hard to see when flying across space at the break-neck speeds you can reach in this game. It can also be a little hard to see upcoming enemies, as they sometimes can blend in with the surroundings, but I think it just adds to the little difficulty in the game.

The “story” mode of the game lets you travel from galaxy to galaxy, imposed with a time limit. Hitting barriers and enemies will slow you down, but most of the time they are really easy to dodge. I only failed to make time once in a level in the latter half of the game. There are about 25 levels, which, if you take every path and do the challenges, equates to about a an hour or so of content. The challenges are really no challenge; they just require you to reach an easy distance on the track. I wish there was more to the story mode, it had lots of potential.

However, there is one mode that can become obsessive, and what I think is the real “meat” of the game. It is the survival mode, where it makes the game like an infinite runner. Once you get far enough, it really gets hard, and it always makes me want to try to beat my previous score. They set goals for you, but I wish there was some sort of leaderboard, so I could strive to beat other peoples’ scores. If you reach these preset goals, you get a ton of credits, which can definitely help you go farther.

The credits I speak of are the in-game currency. You can use them to buy upgrades, new ship skins, and one time shields and such. The ship upgrades are cool, and will definitely help you with that survival mode, but everything else is just okay. However, you cannot use the barrier passes in the survival mode, which stinks, because that’s where I really need them. The ship skins are okay looking (I prefer the original), and the barrier blocks just weren’t doing it for me. The ship upgrades are the only thing I really bought, and are the only things that really did any good for me in trying to make my performance in the game any better.

Everything else about the game is awesome. To the upbeat sort of dubstep-like music, from the beautiful graphics of all the ships and the tracks you travelled on, all the way down to the minute details of the game, like giving population numbers and race percentages for each galaxy. Even though it’s a Playstation Mobile title, you can really tell that Atomicom put a lot of time, detail, and effort into the game.

Switch Galaxy is a great Playstation Mobile game, with simple yet fluent gameplay, a good upgrade system, awesome graphics, and a great soundtrack. The game captured the great sense of speed, aesthetic, and style that Wipeout nailed for years, and it has worked out amazingly. The only thing that’s wrong is that there aren’t a lot of levels for the story mode. This is a great game, and I suggest you go pick it up right away.

The levels are all basically the same. You tap, drag, and release your finger to direct the nuns where to go. All the while, there are portals firing flying skulls at you. Each portal has a different skull, and a different way to destroy/block the projectiles. You destroy those portals by destroying the skull near it, which can be quite difficult and annoying in some levels. There are also flags in each level, each one starting a combat sequence. In these, the camera pans in, and you are given access to your weapons. You then move around every nun separately, the same way you do in the non-combat parts. To attack, you drag your nun’s cursor over to an enemy, and she will attack automatically. This was a problem at times, because the nuns would group up, and I wasn’t able to specify which enemies they were to attack. Some nuns would just stand there, and do nothing. After that, I would just keep swiping randomly, and lose the tactical feel of the game.

You can’t have a game this weird without powers and miracles, right? Each nun has a special power that can be used in the battles for support. They are all  important, as you must use them if you wish to succeed in battle. The other form of powers was the miracles. These could be used at any time in the level, and are activated by drawing out a symbol in the miracles screen. These could be used for attack and support. Even though I didn’t use these as much, both are cool features, and are necessary to battles, and the game as a whole.

The boss fights are easy for the most part, just a larger version of the most common enemy in the world you are in, with advanced attacks. But, the last boss made me want to throw my Vita across the room. Let me just tell you now, that I have EVERY nun up to level 15 (the highest) and the best guns for every nun upgraded to the max. Even still, I couldn’t get the last boss under half health. There is a serious balancing issue or something, and it needs to be patched. Badly.

Speaking of the upgrades, the system is actually pretty cool. You can upgrade the nuns just by defeating enemies, and finishing levels. But, each nun has four guns which are found in golden chests in some of the levels. Each gun has 4 upgrade levels, which improves their fire rate, damage rate, etc. It can also change a bonus effect the gun has, such as poison, or burning. The upgrades are all good, but they still won’t help you beat that dreadful final boss.

Everything else about the game is all pretty good as well. The menus are easy to navigate, and have a lot of color, making them nice to look at. The art styles along with the menus are pleasing, but in-game, everything seems to look flat. The music doesn’t play a huge role, but isn’t very good. It’s got kind of a jazzy soundtrack, and doesn’t seem to fit right with the game.

Overall, even with my gripes about the game, Nun Attack is pretty fun. It has a good combat system, cool powers, and a good way to upgrade you weapons. The games problems (such as the hard final boss fight) don’t completely ruin the good parts. I suggest you buy Nun Attack, you will have some fun with it.