There is a single console running Spelunky 2 in the corner of Sony’s booth at PAX West, and it is by far my favourite part of the show. The queue is surprisingly small, but it’s alive with excited chatter as everyone waiting for their turn talks about the new stuff they can see popping up on screen. It makes for good conversation, too, because there is an awful lot of it. I am a distinctly average Spelunky player but, having spent a lot of time queueing and requeueing, I’ve now seen rather a lot of a sequel that’s familiar but isn’t resting on its laurels.
The first thing that strikes you when playing Spelunky 2 is how it looks – the visuals have been given a series of subtle but welcome improvements, freshening up the art style and overall making it look a fair bit smoother in action. Pushing through a spider web, for example, now has its own animation – the white strands bow around your character’s arm as they force their way through. The characters and enemies have been redrawn as well; the bats have longer ears, the cavemen are more expressive and the spiders are frankly adorable, although I have to say the snakes now look daft where before they seemed menacing.
There are plenty of new enemies on offer as well – there’s a mole that springs out of the ground and comes at you with giant gnawing teeth before running away again, making the initial levels feel surprisingly like a game of cat and mouse. There are also armored lizards that will roll across the floor at you and take a few hits to kill, providing another interesting challenge from the get-go.
Source: Eurogamer Spelunky 2 is a feast of brilliant new ideas