Recent reviews by Chief Secretary of Skate

The game is functionally unplayable for the average player more than half the time due to Valve's incompetence and neglect in combating an almost-decade-old aimbot problem. The game's popularity and player numbers are massively inflated by idle bots farming the game for free money, meaning most of the promotional gifts the game offers go to a select few bot hosters who do not play the game, but still profit from its economy.

I cannot recommend this game to friends and family, as the current state of it is unacceptable.

Fix your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game, Valve.

The Ship is, for the most part, a good game. It's fun with friends and offers an interesting dynamic where you never know who your being hunted by or who you can trust. The game is especially fun with friends. The game has interesting weapons, some compelling mechanics such as disguises and surveillance officers. The game runs on the premise that everyone is a hunter and everyone is being hunted. You have only so long to kill your quarry after the first murderer on the server kills theirs. You can then steal some items off their corpse and even off innocent people you may have killed along the way. The art style is somewhat appealing, and has an almost TF2 look about it. Most of the maps are fun and gratifying to explore and some of the weapons like the poison in a syringe is just damn fun to use. The needs system is for the most part unique and interesting and gives killing your quarry an extra layer of difficulty.

But...

The game has a fair amount of flaws that make it unenjoyable in some spots. The game has a strict "Kill Quarry Only" policy that makes it hard to just screw around and have fun with friends, since, if you kill too many innocent people, you are (indefinitely in some cases) banned from the server. Some of the maps are way too damn big, or are just straight up horrible to play on. The needs, while there for the soul purpose of making your life difficult, are ridiculous sometimes. For instance, why in the hell, when I'm about to kill my quarry, should my character stop everything he's doing and go, "Nope. No way am I killing this guy, until I've read me some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Shakespeare." The Single Player and Tutorial versions that are treated like entirely separate games, are essentially pointless because the game just isn't fun without friends. And don't worry. The game has made it a priority to make it as frustrating and unnecessarily difficult as possible for you to connect with your friends and play the game properly. The in-game server list does not work. You MUST use the one accessed through the Options menu or you can't play with friends.

All in all I do recommend this game, but only if you have friends to play it with.

Spelunky is one of those games that's not for people with anger issues. In fact, looking back, the game does inject these small moments of complete bulls**t, but it seems to be one of the main draws to the game. And I've sunk more hours into this indie gem than any other game I own on Steam. So let's get further into it. WARNING! From here onwards is basically all spoilers!

In terms of gameplay, it at first glance seems like any other rouge platformer. However, this isn't all true. Spelunky utilizes many intersting features such as ledge grabbing, ropes, bombs, and even falling damage (somthing that most will agree is not something that should be in a platformer, but I personally don't mind). But all of these things help highlight Spelunky's main draws which are adventuring and the dangers that accompany it. There are tons of one-hit-kill things in this game, which while annoying at times, you eventually get used to avoiding them over time and they become a minor threat. The one thing you should be worried about in this game is probably the Ghost, and he only shows up after you've spent two and a half minutes in a level (not including boss levels)

Spelunky has an unusually intersting customization feature, and this is where I begin to talk about items and shops. The items are unique. Not a single one is made useless once another is aquired, making gathering as many items as you can always a benefit to you. All gear is appropriately priced at shops early on, and get slightly more expensive as you progress through the game. For instance the shotgun is priced at $15000 by default because it takes out most enemies in one or two hits. The jetpack is the most expensive item (aside from the Ahnk, but I've never had enough money to buy it, so I just steal it) as it allows you to fly around a level to your heart's content, allowing you to go back and get that thing you couldn't get because you fell and have no ropes. Oh, and before I forget, I'll talk about the shopkeepers as well. Now, in Spelunky, you have the option of stealing items from shops or attacking the shopkeepers. However, doing so will result in a few unwanted consequences. The big one is, shopkeepers will shoot you on sight. They weild a shotgun, which does 4 damage, and they do 1 damage with melee. If their weapon is lost, say you get lucky enough to actually knock it away from them, they will pick up any weapon they run into. They also jump around wildly, making them hard to kill, even though they already have the most hearts out of any non-boss enemy in the game. Angering a shopkeeper, on purpose or on accident, will make any other shopkeepers in future levels hostile, and enemies like cobras, if spawned near a shopkeeper, can and more likely than not, will anger him.

Of course I should mention that Spelunky's levels are completely randomized with a few key areas having similar layouts every playthrough. There are specific structures each level is made of or includes, like the abandoned shaft structures in the Mines or the fishing huts/houses in the Jungle or even the stomach containing the Crysknife in the Worm. And speaking of the Worm, there are some very memorable side levels such as the Worm, Haunted Castle, City of Gold, Mothership, and a few others I may be forgetting, each of these with their own unique layout, completely different from the main levels themselves. For instance the Worm is a very long, vertical decending stage.

But there is another secret area that not many can reach. The journey to get there is dangerous and stressful, and once you're there it only gets harder. You know where this is going, right? I'm talking about Hell. Now for those of you who don't know, this is how you get to Hell:

1: Aquire Udjat Eye
2: Find Black Market & Purchase / Steal Ahnk
3: Die in a specific Ice level with a Tiki Head in it to aquire the Hedjet
4: Kill Anubis and claim his Sceptor
5: Use it on the Golden Door to get to the City of Gold
6: Obtain the Book of the Dead and defeat Anubis II
7: Defeat Olmec in a specific spot (indicated by eratic activity from the BotD)
8: Enter Hell using Olmec's head.
9: Grab some tea, and calm yourself, because you gonna get pissed.

I've only been to Hell two times and let me tell you, as cool as it looks, it's really damn hard! I died the first time in lava, and another because of a Succubus, which are false Damsels. You have no way of knowing one from the other, so I recommend to just avoid them altogether. The superboss of the game, King Yama, is, from what I've seen, a pain in the ass. He sends his minions after you, so after dealing with them you have to climb high enough to hit him with bombs or the Crysknife if you were lucky enough to grab it, all while avoiding swinging balls of death and falling rubble. I'm getting stressed out while just writing about it.

Now, with most of the gameplay I wanted to cover over with, let's dive into the presentation because that's what I said and it shall be so. The game has a very interesting choice of design, because behind the cutesy art design, and the sometimes comical enemy design (anything with a belly button, I'm looking at you) it really is a game full of cultists, wrathful gods, illegal trade, gore, and violence. If you really stop to take in all the details in this game, it's not surprising to see how it got it's T rating. A more realistic version would land an M rating almost instantly. But in all honesty, the game does look damn impressive, and with 20+ character skins to chose from, it allows for some very interesting character designs which coordinate well with the games art style. I personally enjoy the fat lady myself. I find it quite entertaining that such a round person is as athletically inclined as an experienced cavern diver (Spelunky Guy) or even a legendary spelunking master (Yang).

The music is honestly, pretty catchy. I always find myself humming along to the Mines theme... Dah nah naaah.... Dah nah NAH NAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!... Sorry. Got carried away there. But not only do they have a sweet soundtrack that, it matches the graphics very nicely. Even the occasional retro tracks it plays feel very... Spelunky.

So all in all, and I'll wrap this up because I've developed hand cramps from typing so much today, Spelunky, while not much of a game you can just pick up and play, is a game I can recommend for everyone, even people who aren't into rouge platformers. The graphics are wonderful, the music is stunning, and with one of the most vague storylines of all, it leads to a lot of fan speculation and the game's fans are more than happy to show their love for the game. Just check out deviantArt or some other art site.

The game has changed the way I look at all games, and in fact, practically brought me back into the realm of PC gaming. I was mainly a console kid growing up. Granted, I had a couple games for my old computer, but I wasn't quite aware of just how much PC gaming had developed until around a year ago. Though I feel I will always play console games more frequently than PC, I'm sure I'll look back on Spelunky fondly as the game that picked me up, brought me back to my PC, opened my mind to other gaming genres, and broke my phone... Yeah...

10/10 With enough practice and patience, and if you need it, some anger management, I'm certain you will grow as fond of the game as I have.