Guacamelee! 2 - lucha de apuestas: MÁSCARA CONTRA MÁSCARA

[strongbadman]

The implication of Grillby being Flame Face's cousin is staggering.

[Dragon Fogel]

So, that spot where you kept having trouble (first reached at 14:17) - the platform the red-shielded bomb is on is one that you can jump through. That also means you can jump *down* through it, which saves time over running back to the lower platform.

[thatguyif]

I think the whole bit where he failed to remember that he can drop under platforms was probably my first serious "yell at raocow" moment this series.

Like c'mon

C'mon

[KobaBeach]

I think the whole bit where he failed to remember that he can drop under platforms was probably my first serious "yell at raocow" moment this series.

Like c'mon

C'mon

and yet he remembers that you can drop under the rope in the puzzle subarea in vip3's X stage, a feature that was never in vanilla smw

really makes u think

[raocow]

well yeah, I'll forever remember that because it got me so hard when I first played it

[thatguyif]

I wouldn't put too much stock into old LPs and what you did

Anyway, at this point, you're nearing mastery of all the skill trees, which hopefully means that, by the time you reach the next area, you can return to the Proving Grounds. But I dunno if you're going to get into that during or after clean-up, soooo...

[Dragon Fogel]

The secret area didn't read as thin-skinned to me so much as "seriously, people are complaining about this even though it's basically all background images you can easily ignore". Even here, where they've intentionally turned up the meme dial extra high, there's no reason to linger and the complaints are way more prominent. Then Uay Chivo acts surprised that you made it through when there were no real obstacles.

I don't think it's particularly funny or adds much to have it in the game, but it seems to be more of "look at these silly things these people say, does this really match your experience of the game".

[strongbadman]

I do think they could've left the bear one out, maybe they didn't need that one to prove their point.

[thatguyif]

By that same token, though, you could argue that with just about any of these memes shouldn't have been there.

I'm in agreement with Dragon Fogel here that it was meant to be seen as this sort of "why are you complaining about stuff in the background" situation. At the same time, with the pandemic basically shutting people in and making them paranoiacs, it's not hard to equally see people like raocow just taking those complaints as being "valid" (which itself has become a cringey term, but let's not talk about that here), and thus see Juicebox's efforts to critique/poke fun of them as offensive. It's hard to be critical at all these days because someone will see such criticism as a slight, insult, or offense. To even get meaningful or creative criticism across often requires diluting the message to the point that it's not even a criticism anymore, thus making it devoid of meaning.

Back in 2018, when this came out and memes, while popular, weren't codified and rigid as they are today, I feel like Juicebox would've been fine. But this is 2022, and things are different.

[raocow]

people are allowed to complain about anything

then spending a secret area going all 'look how not bothered I am by these complaints' just feels weird, regardless of if they are 'valid' or not

it feels very corncob.

[Duker]

going all 'look how not bothered I am by these complaints' just feels weird

That's your projection of the reason, not their actual reason

[raocow]

fair

but like, you get one chance to make an impression and it's the impression it gave me

[Classtoise]

going all 'look how not bothered I am by these complaints' just feels weird

That's your projection of the reason, not their actual reason

I mean, sure? But it feels like the "actual reason" is probably that or "Haha let's make fun of people who didn't like the background memes!"

There...doesn't feel like there's a super mature reason for it, which kind of just makes the devs look childish.

ESPECIALLY if they're pulling from memes that reference some uh...dark shit, like the bear.

Like I feel like a better response would've been a completely blank area, maybe completely music-less, with all these NPCs dressed in fake-fancy clothes sipping drinks and saying these comments. That makes the intent a much clearer "No Fun Allowed" response.

[EllenHouraisan]

Wow, the comment section got really mad over this one, huh.

I find it hard to look at this and think "man, those devs were fuming over those reviews". If that were the case, they probably would've had a Twitter meltdown or something. This to me is more like a tongue-in-cheek way of poking fun at people who laser-focus on one tiny, inconsequential aspect of games that shouldn't really bother anyone. And yeah, it doesn't need to be there at all (if they really wanted to add this, it could have been a joke April Fools temporary patch or something), but I can't help but to think people are being far more outraged than they should be.

Plus "I'll put you in my book and kill you" is a meme in and on itself, so that works out in a meta sense. XD

[Grounder]

This post is less about the memes and more about the humor in general.

I think cranking it up was just a misguided attempt to keep the story from being too bleak?

[Ditocoaf]

Wow, the comment section got really mad over this one, huh.

people are being far more outraged than they should be.

I don't see anyone getting mad? Just, like, "oh, that's sad".

[EllenHouraisan]

I don't see anyone getting mad? Just, like, "oh, that's sad".

Eh, there's definitely a tone of aggressiveness to a lot of the comments, which I think is rather silly.

[helucard]

Ok, that was funny, the moment I saw the reversal of Toru Iwatani's name, I knew there was upcoming pacman shenanigans...

[11clock]

My own response to the dankest timeline back when I first played this game was, “Wait, people complained about the memes?”

This community seems really hateful towards memes for some reason that I don’t quite understand. I personally found this game hilarious and loved the references and memes.

I get that the sequel amped up the references and that my sense of humor is… not normal… but still.

[thatguyif]

I think the issue at hand was the memes used were of the oversaturated memes that dominated the first half of the 2010s. This was before memes became just a stand-in for observational humor (and to a certain extent jokes).

For a lot of people, those memes either sucked or were just published way too often to be funny anymore. So seeing them in the original game (and in the complaining against it) was probably not pleasant.

Me, I was ambivalent.

[KobaBeach]

Honestly both parties look really dumb from a cursory look. Aside from Pedobear (which is a hard sell in the year of our lord 2018), it's just memes. Have specifically raocow's viewers not seen like any of the Japanese romhack LPs? Even ASMT has the Ievan Polkka and several LP injokes forever attached to its universe.

On the other hand, who cares that people find references annoying, might as well wear your heart and shitposting on your sleeve than running the risk of seeming kind of petty like in the Dankest Timeline, depending on how you read it.

[strongbadman]

That first section looked weird, but the rest of that looked really fun, a good successor to the first Tree tops. Observations: This was not the music they used for the first Treetops, they used the boss music for that. The joke here, rather than being "You're halfway there!" After a long gauntlet, was the chicken constantly saying that you were so close to it, just a little further. Him appearing at the edge if the screen was a callback to the first joke, and the player might assume that they really were only halfway there.

[thatguyif]

After seeing the reaction to Dankest Universe...I kind of predicted raocow's reaction to

"Anyway, here's Wonderwall"

. For what it's worth, when I played it initially, I had a good laugh at that line.

I think a factor causing tension here is that I feel Guacamelee! 2 was never meant to be taken seriously at any given moment. When I learned that the setting was the "Darkest Timeline"—lest we forget, a meme that peaked around the time of Guacamelee's release, eventually to be replaced with "we live in a society"—and that there was a Mexiverse (a jab at the Marvel Cinematic Universe and all that weird nonsense), I knew it was going to be extremely goofy. And I feel like scenes such as the chapel scene are themselves much sillier than people give them credit to be. Like...for a game that is chock filled with references, Salvador's origin is full of them as the stereotypical fallen hero story.

Now this is not a harp against people who do take moments of this game seriously. But I think there's this dichotomy in play. On the one hand, if you simply take things at face value and try to latch on to every action as such, you're going to have a bad time in spots like this because you can't deal with the mood whiplash you feel. On the other hand, if you view the game from the standpoint of recognizing the legacy of the first game being silly—which it was—and just view this game as a continuation of that silliness, these moments never really bother you because you don't take the game seriously either.

An additional thought: I mentioned before that Juicebox made Severed between the Guacamelees. Severed, again, is a very dark game, the complete opposite of either Guacamelee. I think, after making that, Juicebox did not want to repeat that experience for their next game, which is probably why they went harder on the references and silliness than the first.

[Crow]

That first section looked weird

the intent was to cancel the wall run with an uppercut instead of a double jump so that you'd have your double jump after the recharge orb, it feels a lot better if you figure this little thing out

imo this platforming gauntlet is way easier than guac 1's equivalent which is weird for how much the rest of this game kicks up the difficulty

[11clock]

After seeing the reaction to Dankest Universe...I kind of predicted raocow's reaction to

"Anyway, here's Wonderwall"

. For what it's worth, when I played it initially, I had a good laugh at that line.

I think a factor causing tension here is that I feel Guacamelee! 2 was never meant to be taken seriously at any given moment. When I learned that the setting was the "Darkest Timeline"—lest we forget, a meme that peaked around the time of Guacamelee's release, eventually to be replaced with "we live in a society"—and that there was a Mexiverse (a jab at the Marvel Cinematic Universe and all that weird nonsense), I knew it was going to be extremely goofy. And I feel like scenes such as the chapel scene are themselves much sillier than people give them credit to be. Like...for a game that is chock filled with references, Salvador's origin is full of them as the stereotypical fallen hero story.

Now this is not a harp against people who do take moments of this game seriously. But I think there's this dichotomy in play. On the one hand, if you simply take things at face value and try to latch on to every action as such, you're going to have a bad time in spots like this because you can't deal with the mood whiplash you feel. On the other hand, if you view the game from the standpoint of recognizing the legacy of the first game being silly—which it was—and just view this game as a continuation of that silliness, these moments never really bother you because you don't take the game seriously either.

An additional thought: I mentioned before that Juicebox made Severed between the Guacamelees. Severed, again, is a very dark game, the complete opposite of either Guacamelee. I think, after making that, Juicebox did not want to repeat that experience for their next game, which is probably why they went harder on the references and silliness than the first.

My favorite kinds of video game stories are ones that don’t take themselves seriously. I personally don’t give a crap about story/lore in a game unless it’s a visual novel (which hardly qualifies as a game to begin with), so when a game can’t take its own story seriously either I tend to appreciate it. Goofy lore reflects my own interests and tastes.

For example, I love how insanely ridiculous Enter the Gungeon is with its gun theme and how far it goes with it. I am also a fan of Ninjatown’s adorably stupid story and dialog (with some of its own meme references to boot).