Posted on: July 24, 2016
Archimidis
Verified ownerGames: 282 Reviews: 8
Stupid platformer. Not a roguelike.
In a nutshell: Just another boring (but overpraised) platformer. Don't be fooled by reviews calling this a "roguelike". Platformers used to be very popular in the 80s, not because there is anything special about them, but because of the hardware limitations back then. It was hard to make anything else, even with machine language. Despite the repetitive nature of the genre, developers in the 80s managed to make some very good platformers. Now, Spelunky is actually nothing but a boring, badly designed platformer, even for the 80s standards. I can recall way better platformers made for 8-bit computers more than three decades ago. So, what else to say about Spelunky? Well, some people call it a "roguelike". It is not. In fact, it's not even a "rogue-lite". If a game is hard, that doesn't automatically make it a rogulike. Someone has to tell people that jumping around and dying often is NOT a roguelike. It's just a badly designed platformer. Although a strict, universally adopted definition of a "roguelike game" does not exist, there are core roguelike features, described in detail in the Berlin interpretation. Spelunky simply lacks most (if not all) of them. Calling this a "roguelike" is, frankly speaking, an insult to the roguelike genre fans. Now, I know it managed to get overpraised reviews. Maybe kids would like it because it is simple by design - difficult, but simple. Even kids would get bored quickly due to the cheap ways developers use to make it difficult. There are many simple games way better than Spelunky. So, what we have here is a boring platformer - and nothing else. Therefore, the final verdict fo Spelunky is a 1 out of 10 - an awful game that's not worth your money, even when on sale. Spelunky would probably be a bad platformer in the 80s, and it's just a piece of crap today. Fans of the platformer or roguelike genres will know what I am talking about. Spelunky-lovers, go ahead and click on "No" below;. As if I care.
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