I'm trying very hard to enjoy this game as much as the original, i looked forward to it, i expected a fresh second wind of this design masterpiece, but what i see now is quite disappointing, here are a few reasons:

- The ground feels much more slippery, especially when running

- The shotgun's knock back is twice as strong

- The hang onto ledge tolerance seems greater, which is an annoyance

- The whip is much slower

- Whipping jars no longer kills the enemy inside, making it unsafe to destroy them while running

- Apparently, every object can harm you when they bounce back in your face, even your own bombs, stunning you in the process (and it blew up next to me)

- Crawling to a ledge while carrying an object causes you to drop the object, as supposed, though now the object can bounce back and hurt you

- Enemies who throw you around throw you much further and i think you are stunned for longer, likely meaning certain death

- Arrow traps, god...their arrows are too quick to avoid and you cannot 'safely' jump/climb a ladder just below to have them shoot just above your head, plus you can no longer drop a bomb or rope while out of balance (from standing on the very end of a ledge) in front of them to trigger them and retrieve the item after.

- Tiki traps (bladed totems in the jungle) blades now have a reach of one whole tile, despite the blades graphic looking shorter

- Boulder traps, from picking up a golden skull in the mines, are now far more dangerous, they destroy half of the level and, maybe i was unlucky, 9 times out of 10 it destroyed a shop, plus the boulder now also destroys every item it is path, gold and gems, even the key and chest! Picking up the skull in those levels is pointless

- It used to be possible, though very risky, to get away with theft and murder, now you can't, a merchant will wait for you at the end of every level, no matter what

- Gambling is slow and unexciting

- You can hire a henchman of sorts in some shop, it is expensive and he gets killed almost immediately, what is the point? Plus he'll pick your shotgun without hesitation

- The new enemies are rather powerful and uninteresting, they feel like they should be in the next area. A cobra's spits chain-stunned me, scorpions are harder to deal with than frogs (my arch-nemesis) and don't ever let a tiki man look at you, you'll take his boomerang in the face. Of course this is not so easy to avoid when a tiki man spawns next to you right at the beginning of a level

- New dungeon chunks kind of conflict with the original ones, i saw the key in a place i was absolutely unable to get without sticky bombs, which you do not get very often in the first two levels. I also find myself forced to use bombs or ropes to proceed far more often

- The last shortcut...You need the key from the mines to unlock it, not only you have to carry it through 9 to 11 levels, it keeps you from carrying a weapon and you are forced to skip the [UE], [BM], [A], [H] and [COG] (spoiler-free enough?). So you have to play the 3/4th of the game in a harder way than normal in order to use a shortcut that takes you to the 3/4th of the game with no cash or items, wtf? Considering the 3rd area is easier to navigate than the others, might as well use the 2nd shortcut and have some cash and a few items when you get to the 4th area

Thats about all i can think of for now. Don't get me wrong, games like Spelunky, Faster Than Light and Binding of Isaac are supposed to be brutal and frustrating, yet, even more rewarding and satisfying when you manage to reach the end. I'm not complaining about the difficulty, but all these games still have some fairness in their unfairness, yet it is not so much the case in this new Spelunky.

Maybe if i had not played the original i would enjoy this one more than i do now. Being used to a certain feel as well as old habits are hard to get rid of after 2000 games (with barely 20 wins!). Now if you'll excuse me, i think i will go out of retirement and play another 1000 games of the classic Spelunky...

yeah, overall, I wish that the feel (not to mention the music!) of the classic version had been kept, and that the new version simply had added content! although the new version is brilliant in it's own way, too much was "fixed" that was never broken to begin with..

The shotguns knockback is not bad as before it simply was the ultimate weapon.
The Hang onto ledge over sensitivity is pretty bad.
While the whip is slower it also hits things overhead and i think does not contribute too much of a loss for the gameplay itself other than to create a feeling of input lag especially combined with how hard it is to manage running when for example trying to jump up between single unit platforms.
The whipping jars is annoying because it stuffs up smooth gameplay and often times you are forced into situations where you must defend against 1 enemy while on top of a jar. The original was all about how things worked like they should, this was one of it's main touted features and not being designed to combat an enemy in the afore mentioned instance without rellying on luck of the draw is of poorer design than the original.
The stunning by thrown object isn't much of an issue as it was in the original, but there is seemingly no relativity to stun time or damage. a broken arrow bouncing back at you from a 1 unit size pit as you scramble to get out should not damage or stun you.
The arrow traps are fine they are in fact pretty equivalent with the original in how they work.
The bigger problem with tiki traps are enemies not setting them off and i believe they have had their detection range reduced from the neighbouring square to simply the spike tile (making it very annoying when dealing with frogs).
I also don't agree with boulder traps at present due to the increased range, that is simply not necessary in the game as if you don't get hit by the originals standards your still not going to get hit in the new Spelunky either.
The shop killing by it most definately needs to be toned down as simply put, how can a shop keeper set up in a trap infested temple blame a person they can't see either before or after for a whole screen event that destroyed their shop?
It wouldn't be so much of an issue and i could even get around the whole it crushes every treasure item in it's wake thing, if it didn't just wreck all your progress by sending the shopkeep terminators at you every single level.
Seriously they are the worst mob in the game; i will gladly attack giant spiders and monkeys all day; but the 'speed'/'crack' injected shotgun bunnies... hell no!
Even if the mechanism was changed to have them act within the bounds of a regular spelunky adventurer and having them get sick of chasing you aft 5 levels i would be happy with.
Theres no point to gambling now when they have those wrapped present boxes you can take a chance on.
Yep i didn't bother with the henchman if he's not there to help me keep out the shopkeeper terminators at the end of each and every level he isn't worth the time and effort.
All things considering the scorpion should be a one hit kill, instead of 1 to stun and 4 extra while it wakes up and continues attacking you affair. It quite ridiculous for 1 blow to stun them while you can wail on them all day and they will just wake up while your smacking them about.
Dungeon instancing does seem to be off.

All in all, these things contribute to a game i have a hard time coming back to and don't get me wrong i'm glad i finally get to throw money at mossman (for the original essentially), but a lot of the issues could have been iron'd out with a little beta testing and it's not like they haven't had time and money to do so.

Just wanted to point out that the original game did this as well, with a much larger hitbox too.

For me, the game feels a tad too stiff compared to the original. I assume that once I get over the control differences I'll start doing as well as I did in the classic version (IE finishing the game every time) but there are some annoyances other than the controls such as not being able to drop unlit bombs.

I have yet to play the game, but some of the differences you have posted and the ones I've spotted in LPs of XBLA release seemed interesting, and maybe even for the better. Machete is also slower compared to the original, those tweaks in attacks speed and recoil for shotgun change the balance of the game by forcing the player to be more accurate and cautious with his attacks or avoid enemies. I the original hitting a jar also didn't always kill the enemy, I think this is possibly a good change since this makes the game a bit harder and there's little point in hitting a jar while you run to begin with - it saves very little time and if you are doing a speedrun you skip jars entirely anyway. I the previous game you could also hit yourself with a carelessly thrown rock or arrow (though I think it was more notorious in the beta), still I was pretty disappointed to learn you can't set off a trap by dropping a bomb or a rope while balancing on a ledge.

It's understandable that after thousands of runs you'd have set expectations for the remake in some way or another, but when it comes to me after couple of hundreds of hours spend playing the original I'd rather deal with the changes than spend another hundreds of hours (or force myself) playing the same game all over again.

EDIT: OK, after over 13 hours of play I think the game is BRILLIANT!! Actually, taking into account this game is very much a familiar experience after I spend hundreds of hours with the classic version and I didn't like some of the changes they did here I was expecting to not enjoy it as much anymore, and I couldn't be more wrong. While some of the changes are questionable, like what the did with jars, the lack of bombs/ropes scrolling and the addition of journal that briefly explains the enemies and items which takes away some of the organic feel the original had, overall I think it's a small lose and it does make the design a bit cleaner. It adds enough content to make the game fresh for me again, I like all new items and enemies I've encountered so far after reaching The Tomb levels, plus the graphic design is just excellent. All in all this is the definitive Spelunky experience for me, I see no reason why would anyone who enjoyed the classic release consider it to be an inferior game.

good post. did the ability to open chests/crates without throwing your item (up+whip) not carry over from the original? very annoying

No,you just whip them open.
The chests can be still opened with the up+action,though.

After initially being impressed by the game, I will now join your rant:

- The hanging onto ledges is almost unacceptable. If you compare the behavior to the original Spelunky, in the original, you wouldn't hang onto ledges unless you wanted to ie. you moved into them. Now, you automatically hang onto a nearby ledge. This makes the glove powerup worthless, as you can't move without hanging onto walls constantly.

- The music is horrible. Horrible horrible. The original's music was so great, I'm shocked by how bad the music is in this game.

Andy, Derek.. yo.. first off: great job on 99% of the Spelunky re-release!
(and thanks again for a relatively speedy fix re: the broken menu issues)

That being said:
If only one more thing gets fixed in the next patch, it should be this:

HANG ONTO LEDGES SENSITIVITY. Currently this is SO broken that I am close to asking for a refund - right now am merely holding out hoping a future patch will fix this.

Also, climbing from ladders onto mid-ladder alcoves often does not work as effortlessly as it should.

Find that I'm unintentionally hanging onto ledges so frequently that it becomes a real nuisance, significantly cutting into level-completion times.

...

I agree about the length of the tunes and their variety, but the quality of the tunes cannot compare with the original. The sound effects are cool, but all the music I've heard so far ranges from mediocre to really bad.

...

And the way you reach hell ?
Find item X to find item Y to find item Z then find item K and use all to unlock a place to find another item and then...
Like, really, wtf ?
With all the RNG in this game you have to be lucky enough to collect all of this crap in one clear shot from start to 4:4 and then survive another series of stages to redo everything allover again if you die ?

BS, I have more probabilityes to be struck by a falling metheor than be lucky enough to find so many items in one single run and don't have "stupid things" happening like spawning next to some of those human mobs chasing and trowing my character everywhere, or next to something that happens to trigger a trap that ricochets and knocks back into a spiked pit...

The original might been as hard too sometimes but at least they didn't abuse of the RNG this much.

Worst thing about the game (love playing it, don't get me wrong) is that you can anger the shopkeeper beyond your control with something else happening on screen that you've got nothing to do with. This happened to me several times now. I feel this should be addressed seeing as how much more difficult the game gets when the guy's angry.