Writing an entry now because this game will take me a while, and I've still got all my initial thoughts floating around. I really didn't know what Spelunky would be like, but the massive praise it received was enough to pique my interest to try something new. If I had to sum it up, I'd say Spelunky is a game about paying attention to your environment, which happens to be deadly trap-and-treasure-filled, and weighing risk vs. reward.
The game reminds me most of Super Meat Boy and other brutally difficult run-fast die-fast 2-d platformers. The levels are quick, you die constantly, death constantly teaches you something new, it's instantly fun and (so far) infinitely replayable. The controls are simple and of the easy to learn, tough to master variety. I was running and jumping with precision early on. I've learned to hang from and jump off ledges just so, to use certain items to climb, float, jump higher and more. But there is still so much I don't know or just plain suck at.
Here's how it works: You're an intrepid explorer trying to find your way out of some ruins. The ruins are divided into various worlds. So far, I've seen the Mines, Jungle and for lack of the proper name, Ice World (which I've seen once). Each world has 4 levels, so there are Mines 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, Jungle 2-1, 2-2 and so on. When you reach the end of a world there is an NPC named Tunnel Man who is trying to build shortcuts between worlds. He'll ask you for items, and if you have them to give, do it. After visiting him 3 times at the end of a particular world, he'll build a shortcut to the next one so you can start there. It's a clever way to do checkpoints.
You have at your disposal a whip and a limited stock of bombs and ropes. Bombs blow things up, ropes let you climb up. There are many other items available for purchase from shops or found in crates and treasure chests, like shotguns, spring boots (for jumping higher), and a compass (which points to the exit). I don't know what half of them do (glasses, camera, spike shoes, cape I'm looking at you). Using items is a matter of experimentation, so I'm sure eventually I'll figure them all out.
Dwelling in the ruins are a wide, wide variety of creatures, most of which try to kill you. All enemies are different, which makes quickly learning what's special about them and how to kill/disable/avoid them very important. For example, in the Mines (which I finally beat last night and unlocked Tunnel Man's shortcut to the Jungle, yaaay!) there are bats that perch upside down on ceilings. They slowly fly toward you in an arc, so you have to time your whip or other weapon such that you hit the bat as it moves along an arc. It can be tricky. Skeletons sometimes arise from bone piles on the ground when you get near. Sometimes bone piles aren't skeletons, but you never know until you get a few steps away. So don't go sprinting toward bone piles! There are a variety of spiders. One kind drops down from ceilings when you move underneath. Then they hop about. Another kind dangles from a web, moving up and down. Another kind, the giant spider, also drops from the ceiling, and then will stalk you relentlessly. I've never killed one of these, and have been killed by them a lot. I will do what I can to find routes around them. I think there are something like 70 or 80 different creatures in the ruins. It's absolutely brilliant learning through observation and trial and error, whether or not you can jump on an enemy to kill it, what items do, the radius of spiders, how many hits a caveman takes, and on and on for every little thing in the game.
But this is why you need to be so aware of your environment. You never know what's coming. You must constantly scan the screen for spiders and bats on the ceiling, monkeys in the Jungle, spitting snakes and traps. OH GOD, the traps. In the Mines, there are arrow traps. They fire one arrow horizontally, and launch it whenever something passes their field of vision. It's taken me a long time to learn to deal with them, but the best way is to find something to toss in front of it so it fires its arrow. If it shoots you, you lose 2 health (you only get 4, and if you die you start all over). You can also jump down past them if you are falling quickly and farther away from them. You'll go down past it before the arrow hits you. I learned each of these points and tricks over many encounters with spike traps, and from watching enemies trigger them! In the Jungle, there are spike traps, which are like totem poles that stick spikes out when you get near. You just have to be real careful when jumping over them or going for nearby treasure.
I really like the randomly generated levels. You'll be playing Mines 1-1 A LOT, but every time you do, it's different. Different layout, different enemies, different items available. Sometimes there are even themes like no light, where you must carry a torch around to see, or "snakes, why did it have to be snakes?" where there are tons of snakes, and the same for spiders. In the Jungle, there is an undead theme that I've seen a few times where instead of regular Jungle creatures, there are zombies and graveyards. It's cool, adds in variety.
There are plenty of other things in the game too that I haven't mentioned, like the different types of shops and shopkeepers, the damsels, how exits work, other items, the chill in the air(!), leaderboards and on and on.
I'm loving this game, but I know it'll take a while to beat it. I'm considering beginning something more story heavy to play alongside it, but we shall see.
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Since no one's ever heard of this, I'll be lazy and copy the dev blurb before writing myself:
"Lurking is a survival thriller game where sound is the only way you see, and they hear your fears.
The game spawned from the core concept of using a microphone input device in a meaningful way for gameplay. We built a system that upon calibration detects your breathing. This audio data is then converted into game visuals in the form of pulses, creating a secondary level of immersion. As such the use of a microphone headset is strongly recommended.
Lurking also features OculusVR(DK1) support which completes the immersive experience."
All of the above is true and it's a creepy little game. When you OR your character make noise (YOU by breathing, yelling, talking and your character by walking, running, throwing objects), sound waves emanate from their source (your source is the character) and basically draw the game's visuals. So if you don't make any noise, it's pitch black.
I sat here and played it alone in the dark, shouting "AAH!" into my mic to make noise so I could see. Honestly a new thing for me to do in a game, haha.
There are enemies, some escaped lab experiments from the story or something, that will quickly kill you if they touch you. You've got to be quiet to as not to attract their attention, but as mentioned, you can't SEE if you don't make noise. So there's a tense balancing act. You will die a lot, but if you can figure out what to do, where to go, and where enemies are, you will have some scary running-for-your life moments trying to beat the enemy to the door you need to get to.
I am impressed. This project is by some DigiPen Singapore students. A friend and colleague of mine is on DigiPen's little professorial judging team and he gets to go to their showcases once in a while. He recommended this to me as his favorite of the bunch this last time, and I pass on the recommendation. Takes half an hour to play through.
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Finished! I can't believe it took us 3 months to beat this. Altogether, we did it in 4 sittings. That's how often we play video games together, haha.
Loved it. I'm officially a fan. I want the 400 Days DLC. I want Season 2. We accidentally watched a trailer for the Season 2 finale and got a little spoiler from an unanswered question in Episode 5 that we just played. It's probably really a big spoiler, but I say little because it's what I suspected, involving a certain character's undocumented death.
I feel the devs were under time constraint and got a little sloppy at the end, as there were a few story points I didn't care for, or that were kind of like uuuh, really? There were also some late-game bugs. At the very end of Episode 4, the game quit accepting input from the controller during dialogue choices. This was for like the last 3 or 4 choices in the Episode, when Lee is talking to the guy on the walkie talkie and deciding whether to go in the sewers alone or who to bring with him after his zombie run-in. It's really serious dialogue and A was really pissed! We also had at least 3 instances in Episode 5 of getting dialogue options that we shouldn't have seen. For example, Crista is obviously pregnant, but our Lee didn't know that. All of a sudden he makes this off-the-cuff remark that she's eating for two, and she's not surprised he said it, like they had established her pregnancy was common knowledge...except they hadn't ever mentioned it. There were a few cases like that, sort of breaks the fantasy by mixing story branches. I don't recall any bugs in Episodes 1-3, so it was weird.
Anyway, loved the way the Season ended. My guess is that the two on the horizon at the end are zombies. We shall see. When is Season 2 going on sale on Steam?!
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"Beat" this yesterday, which is to say that I acquired the Burnout License, which took an additional 40 or so wins. Credits roll here.
Not much to say...the game is fun, but the longer I played, the smaller it felt. Every time you upgrade your license, all the events you've discovered reset, so you can get credit for winning them again. You basically do the same race, marked man, stunt and road rage events over and over and over, driving between the same 8 locations around the city.
The more you win, the more cars you unlock, which is the only real sense of progression besides upgrading your license. But since upgrading your license and acquiring cars requires simply winning the same events over and over, it actually doesn't feel like you're doing much of anything. A fast, shiny, destructible treadmill, really. Case in point: After acquiring the Burnout license, you can get the "Expert" Burnout license by...guess what?...doing ALL the events on the map..AGAIN! Yay!
I did discover the classical music and EA's electronic tracks in the soundtrack, which are a billion times more preferable than the painful pop hard rock that the series sells. Unfortunately I never figured out how to silence "DJ Atomica," the irritating radio host who pipes up with inane comments from time to time. What this game desperately needs is (a) the ability to play your own music, and (b) the ability to silence DJ Atomica. I would enjoy racing around Paradise City so much more if I could do these two things.
I screwed around online a bit, but it's not very exciting. Get dropped in an open world with a few other people and drive around together. You can complete some stunt challenges together and maybe race each other, but nothing I would care to do unless I knew the person.
That's that. What's next in the queue?
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