Cave drawings on the walls of the Dwelling foreshadow what’s to come, enemies will amusingly trip on bars of gold or discarded arrows, and just in general, characters are much more expressive. Spelunky 2 definitely looks much better than its 12-year-old predecessor – the sprite-based graphics are all 4K-ready and animations are smooth – but rather than making a big, unnecessary departure from the charming art style, Mossmouth instead gave the worlds and inhabitants of Spelunky 2 more personality, and the results are great. Allowing you to have some control over your run based on which areas you want to hit and which secrets you want to try to uncover – once you learn them – is a great way to build on the already incredibly personalized experience of playing through your own randomly generated levels.Įach of those different areas has a completely different and distinctive appearance to it to accompany its own set of unique enemies and hazards. What’s great is that every path offers its own risks and rewards: I’ve had a much higher success rate of making it through Volcana, but find myself better prepared for the later levels whenever I manage to make it through the Jungle thanks to some of the rewarding secrets unique to that level. Runs continue to diverge even further from there in ways that I don’t want to spoil, but rest assured, each area is jam packed with its own set of mysteries, NPCs, and hidden exits that all dramatically impact how each run plays out.
With water, this isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s a huge hazard when you’re trying to make your way through Volcana and have to think twice about using a bomb when there’s lava nearby. In Spelunky 2, however, that liquid will spill out naturally and affect whatever it comes into contact with. In the first Spelunky, when you bomb a pool of water or lava at the base, the water just magically disappears, allowing you to safely collect whatever was at the bottom of the pool.
#Spelunky 2 review full
Instead, you start at the Dwelling (which is Spelunky 2’s version of the mines), and from there you’re able to choose where you go next: take the path on the left and you’ll travel to the jungle take the path on the right, and instead you’ll have to contend with Volcana, a new fiery area that takes full advantage of Spelunky 2’s new fluid dynamics system with deadly lava pools that spill out of control with just one errant explosion. It’s also more reasonable than its predecessor in that shopkeepers won’t immediately turn hostile towards you if a random act of God causes trouble in their shop, and you’re given much more light in the notorious dark levels this time around, making them a little more forgiving.īut the biggest difference in Spelunky 2 is that it is no longer a linear progression of levels that has you going from mines, to jungle, to caves, to temple, and for the truly hardcore, to Hell. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s a godsend in a game where your very limited health is persistent from level to level and the only other reliable way of restoring it is by locating and bringing a lovable animal friend to the exit (alive). The most substantial leg up is that, if you’re okay with being a soulless monster, you can bomb turkeys for life-restoring cooked meat. Mossmouth does do a few small things to make the early goings of Spelunky 2 at least a tiny bit easier than the original. You get just the right amount of mid-air control to make pinpoint-accurate jumps with great speed, and just the right amount of leeway on timing to easily make jumps in tight spaces that would be extremely frustrating in a lot of platformers. It helps, too, that the controls are a dream. This feeling of getting better, and knowing that it's not because of anything but your own skills and knowledge, is incredibly powerful, and it makes Spelunky 2 one of the most rewarding video games I’ve ever played.
But even though your character doesn’t get any stronger between runs, your brain is continually armed with new experience that can help prevent that same death from happening again… or at least if it does, you know it’ll be your own fault. “Dying is punishing, yes, as it causes you to restart all the way at the beginning and lose whatever powerful items you might have obtained in your previous life.
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