Spelunky

By and large, I enjoy platformers, no matter how hard they are. I'd enjoy this one more, if it wasn't for two key issues: 1) No controller support. Yes, you can configure your own keyboard set-up (more on this in item 2), but being able to use a usb game control would be fantastic. 2) Certain keyboard control configurations cause surprising malfunctions. For example using 'a' to move left, 'space' to jump, and 'right' to run caused the game to keep me from making running jumps to the left. Changing the configuration resolved the issue, but leaves me wondering what other configuration glitches are elsewhere to be found. Ultimately, I ended up uninstalling twice over these issues, and don't forsee installing it again.

Its just a Donky Kong like game with a lot of freezes and lock ups

I'm a big fan of rouge-like games. The first one I ever played was Amulet of Yendor on a 5 1/4" floppy drive. There are two things, for me, that makes a game of this type enjoyable: One is the constant threat of danger and death awaiting every corner. Spelunky excels over and above in that aspect. After I had died 4 times in 8 minutes and had not been able to complete level 1-1 I understood just how complex and unforgiving this game is. I gave Spelunky a low score, not because I died too much, or not that it's too hard to play. Spelunky is a reduction of a rouge-like. It's missing the 2nd thing that all rouge-likes should have: Character development. There's no off the wall classes with different abilities and weaknesses. There's no real inventory management, or stats, or ways to shape your character. It's just run through, don't stop, don't worry about the avatar, just go till you die. For me a rouge-like game is about developing a character and living out a story. I still remember getting to the higher floors of Amulet of Yendor and opening a chest that blinded me. Or in NetHack when I had the warrior who I thought was unstoppable until I couldn't find any food and ended up eating an old corpse that poisoned me to death. The story that plays out and leads to the avatars death is what keeps me invested. Since it's missing half of what makes these types of games fun for me I rated it accordingly.

The game offers a good amount of variety, saving it from an awful rating. With a few tweaks, this could become a memorable game. Resources are scarce even though they are required to complete the levels. The gameplay simply comes to a halt not due to your skills, but due to lack of resources - a "dead end" condition, something that should never happen in a modern game! There is no Save feature, meaning that no progress is saved other than a journal of the games locations, enemies, and items. A player could have absolutely all of the items in the game and lose simply because of bad game design, with no Continues to complete the journey. On the first few plays, it seemed to be a "joke" game - one that simply couldn't be beaten by design. However you can outsmart the game and make progress. The game seems to find lame excuses to stop your playing. When you reach the final boss, Olmec, it's a souped-up copy of the final battle of Super Mario Bros. 3 on a larger scale. Bad hit detection could end you here, so it's a matter of luck more so than skill that some bug won't kill you. With some work, these issues could be corrected, but it appears to be a long-abandoned game.

It's a fun game, but it wasn't designed with PC in mind. Keyboard controls are difficult to remap, and FPS is capped at only 60.