Too late, suckers! I already have my win using a shortcut.
I don’t think this has been posted yet:
https://scientificgamer.com/thoughts-spelunky-2/
Doesn’t make me very excited to play Spelunky 2, but it did get me to reinstall Spelunky, which I have apparently not played in six(!) years.
Hyper-nerd warning on that link above. I even skimmed it and found the f-bomb!
When he types out all the insta-fail stuff like that, it really does sound pretty awful. My solution was to simply not get hit by any of it. It rarely affected my enjoyment of the game. That still begs the question why it’s in there in the first place.
Great article.
I do think he lacks a little bit of the view of the proper balance (or lack thereof) in Spelunky HD. This is kinda obvious from the fact that he didn’t beat the final boss – he’s not a true veteran, much as he thinks he is.
Spelunky 2 fixed the most glaring problem for veterans of HD – the fact that crime runs made the game too easy. This isn’t the case anymore in 2. But it never addressed the basic problems that lay hidden behind that single issue: that it’s far too easy to gain HP as well as items that trivialize much of the challenge of the game (particularly bombs). The only answer Spelunky 2 provides in this regard is endless instakill opportunities, stun times that spiral into instakills, and new status effects that are essentially instakills. Instead of solving the balance issues in the system, Derek Yu applied situational band-aids. So the article complains about a very real issue, but doesn’t get the reason for it.
I agree with a lot of that article. My enthusiasm for S2 is waning day by day.
They’re actually easier to use than in S1, but he did pick up on the split in behavior: ledges work one way, walls work another. There’s a good reason for that though. He just didn’t take enough time to get used to the new way.
No they really weren’t. Spelunky HD is built around a player-created mental myth. You imagine that the shopkeeper is dangerous, but his AI is really incompetent. Particularly if you start stealing in the black market, there was very little danger, and the fact that you get every single item and a gazillion bombs for free every run makes HD extremely monotonous. There’s still a chance to make a catastrophic mistake, but the game is way too easy due to this issue, and it doesn’t even take much skill.
HD plays really well if you don’t know how incompetent the shopkeeper is, and especially if you don’t know about the black market: it’s then a careful game of trying to make the best with whatever items you happen to come across or find in the shops. The more you know though, the easier and more monotonous the game gets.
Which is?
The gloves in HD are too sticky, making it hard to move around smoothly. This is consistent with HD’s auto-grabbing of ledges. On the other hand, the gloves in Spelunky Classic (the original freeware title) only activated when you pushed against a wall, making it much easier to move around. This was consistent with Classic’s approach to ledge grabbing: no automatic grabbing: move into a ledge in time or fall to your doom. Spelunky 2 attempts to combine the best of both worlds, giving you the benefit of auto-grabbing for ledges, and cleaner movement for the gloves. The price is that you have to get used to two grabbing schemes.
I think that’s true. For the record, I’m not an amazing Spelunky player myself: I never beat the game under 8 minutes (one of the achievements) or unlocked the whole gang of characters (another achievement). I think the level where you played the game is probably the sweet spot. If you learn more about the mechanics of the game - especially about the deficiencies of the AI - the game becomes easier to beat. I don’t think I’m actually better than you at the game so much as I know more about its workings. It’s the knowledge that ruins the challenge, not the skill. This is where the design breaks down. Spelunky 2 had to be made harder not because people were amazingly skilled at HD, but because they had knowledge they could leverage to make the game easier for themselves.
Regardless, the design is odd. The first two worlds are extremely hard – so hard that even the best players in the world will repeatedly die to the complex enemies and their various instakills. But if you make it past those 2 worlds, and particularly if you have a massive number of lives, bombs and items (which you likely will if you go via the Jungle path and make it through), you’re very likely to beat the game. It’s a lopsided difficulty curve.
When is the last time anyone tried Spelunky HD? Good grief. That game looks really … not good now, to me. It plays so bad, too - I’ve gotten so used to 144fps 1440p Spelunky that going back the frames are so rough. The music is still awesome though! But it feels off to play - the movement, the physics, it’s wild how fast I acclimated to S2 I guess.
I play HD once in a while still. Looks great to me, with some exceptions, though the support for higher res is limited. The cavemen completely lack the personality that they have in S2, but the other enemies look just as good. Movement of the HD Spelunker is definitely less smooth though. Even though the game is supposed to be running at 60fps, it feels like it’s not quite there for some reason.
Had an excellent run after a oopsie Daily run - made it very far, even unlocked the next to last character, Dirk! I nearly made it to the optional/hard boss, despite several crazy setbacks (including having a bomb land on me and explode during the Olmec fight - that destroyed my jetpack. I had 28 life and after I landed I assumed I was dead, but I had 2 life left and kept pushing onwards - see the clip below!)
Woo, first victory on my 480th run.
Dwelling, Forest, Killed Olmec, Tide Pools, Neo Babylon, Defeated Tiamat with bombs only.
Got a jetpack on 1-2, never used the ankh. First damage (rather unusually) to an alien on 1-4. Remained law-abiding.
In case it helps anyone calibrate, I’m very experienced with Spelunky 1 (many hell victories) but generally awful at platformers. Spelunky is about the only one I can cope with because planning ahead is more important than execution in the moment or precision of control.
Congratulations!!
Very nice!
To me it’s more about the fact that I don’t have to repeat the exact same layout over and over again. I hate that part of platformers.
Anyone else finding themselves overshooting stomps? Something about the way the Spelunker accelerates super-fast makes it so I still make this mistake quite often, despite having hours and hours under my belt + a secret victory or two. Spelunky HD doesn’t seem to have this issue, but in 2 I keep overshooting my descent in certain conditions.
I’ve done it a few times, but each time I review the footage with Game Bar and sure enough, I’m out of position and just fucked it up. Frustrating, but it’s on me every time.
It’s definitely me messing it up. It just seems like there’s something about the character movement that encourages it. The movement in HD feels more sluggish, but as a result, you also nail the stomps far more easily.