Posted July 10, 2012
First off, if you have never played Spelunky, do yourself a favor and download it immediately. It's free! And if you are having trouble, read Spelunky Wiki
Now that everyone is familiar with this wonderful game, I'd like to talk about this XBL version. I sat down to my brother's XBox and gave the trial version a run. I came away pretty impressed. The new graphics are really easy on the eyes. Lots of soft edges and infusions of rich color, it has a shrunken down Saturday Morning Cartoon look to it. It's looks exactly how I pictured games of the future would look when I was a kid playing my SEGA Genesis.
The control is absolutely wonderful and translates to a pad nicely. I've put a lot of hours into the original and I think that the new version just feels better. I committed no accidental trips off ladders, into spikes or off of arrows. The high-speed dash is still appropriately fast, too, so it hasn't become a constant 'hold B' platformer, either. Clearly, a lot of time was spent refining the controls.
All the old monsters and items are here, along with some new ones. The trial version only gives the first set of mines, so I breezed through pretty quick and made a couple of runs. The snakes and spiders seem to move less randomly, now. There are also some new spiders and scorpions to contend with in the first mines. The tutorial has been overhauled as well, and I think it will help newcomers along nicely. There are also some multiplayer modes, though I was foreveralone today so I couldn't give them a run (the deathmatch mode seems very intriguing), but I think that most Spelunky vets will end up skipping the MP in favor of mastering high-score and speed runs.
All in all this is a proper update to Spelunky, and I hope that Mossmouth gives it a proper PC release as I would gladly pay money for it (I feel like I should give them SOMETHING for all the hours of fun I have gotten out of the original). The difficulty is definitely still present and accounted for, so don't worry about a more casual console title here. In fact, the original Spelunky is a much tougher nut than most XBLA platformers, so I am curious to see how that crowd takes to this version. At any rate, I'm done rambling and would love to hear some opinions from other Spelunky fans out there.
Now that everyone is familiar with this wonderful game, I'd like to talk about this XBL version. I sat down to my brother's XBox and gave the trial version a run. I came away pretty impressed. The new graphics are really easy on the eyes. Lots of soft edges and infusions of rich color, it has a shrunken down Saturday Morning Cartoon look to it. It's looks exactly how I pictured games of the future would look when I was a kid playing my SEGA Genesis.
The control is absolutely wonderful and translates to a pad nicely. I've put a lot of hours into the original and I think that the new version just feels better. I committed no accidental trips off ladders, into spikes or off of arrows. The high-speed dash is still appropriately fast, too, so it hasn't become a constant 'hold B' platformer, either. Clearly, a lot of time was spent refining the controls.
All the old monsters and items are here, along with some new ones. The trial version only gives the first set of mines, so I breezed through pretty quick and made a couple of runs. The snakes and spiders seem to move less randomly, now. There are also some new spiders and scorpions to contend with in the first mines. The tutorial has been overhauled as well, and I think it will help newcomers along nicely. There are also some multiplayer modes, though I was foreveralone today so I couldn't give them a run (the deathmatch mode seems very intriguing), but I think that most Spelunky vets will end up skipping the MP in favor of mastering high-score and speed runs.
All in all this is a proper update to Spelunky, and I hope that Mossmouth gives it a proper PC release as I would gladly pay money for it (I feel like I should give them SOMETHING for all the hours of fun I have gotten out of the original). The difficulty is definitely still present and accounted for, so don't worry about a more casual console title here. In fact, the original Spelunky is a much tougher nut than most XBLA platformers, so I am curious to see how that crowd takes to this version. At any rate, I'm done rambling and would love to hear some opinions from other Spelunky fans out there.
