Spelunky 2

M.

Tl;dr: The game is awful. If you've never played the franchise, buy Spelunky HD, it's a hundred times better. If you've already played Spelunky HD, stay away from this unless you're a masochist with a doctor's degree in too much free time. However, if you've played Spelunky, you are probably going to buy this anyway, so why do I even bother. Problem is, the game is stupidly hard. And not even challenging-but-I-gotta-figure-it-out kind of hard, but this vile screw-you-you're-dead kind of hard. I've considered myself not great, but at least quite decent at Spelunky HD, consistently reaching area 4. Here in 27 hours of gameplay I couldn't get past the first serious boss at 3-1 (which is like, less than the middle of the game's EASY ending at 6-4), and even reaching him is a pain in the ass. The first area, which in Spelunky HD was mostly a walk in the park, here is a stupid lottery due to new, incredibly annoying enemies and traps. And don't even get me started about upgraded jungle. Sure, you get better with time. But the majority of the playtime you spend in Area 1, and frankly, you get mighty sick of it. According to wiki, there are a lot of very interesting (and probably even more lethal) areas after the boss at 3-1. Also, according to the achievements, only 37% of players have made it past. So it's, like, more than half of the players haven't seen 80% of the game. Yeah, talk about difficult. Since it's a review and not just me venting off (haha), I should probably speak a bit about additions to the game compared to HD. Aside from the new enemies and traps (which are not special, just different degrees of annoying), and a lot of new areas (which I haven't yet seen, and statistics says you likely also won't), I see only two substantial innovations. First, the backlayer, which is like a parallel level connected to the normal level through cave entrances. It's an interesting mechanic though I think it's mostly used here in utilitarian way (like placing secret stashes, shortcuts and special areas like the black market), so its potential is not fully disclosed. Second, the mounts. Their benefit is debatable (especially due to the increasingly nightmarish management of carried items, which was already tiresome), but at least they are fun, even if their acquisition usually results in dying sooner in a new, previously undiscovered manner. That's about all the innovation. Probably that's my biggest disappointment - the game just feels like Spelunky HD the Nightmare Mode, rather than a new interesting take on a good game. I'm not sure I'm going to continue to suffer. My Spelunky HD's playtime is clocked at 143 hours. Maybe if I reach that result here I'd at least make it through 3-1. But honestly, that's hardly worth the effort.