Spelunky 2 game review: Roguelike perfection

But while swimming through embargoed hardware and frantic news announcements, I keep coming back to a single video game well outside the "next-generation" mold.Spelunky 2 is likely the most "dated" game I'll slap the "Ars Approved" sticker onto in 2020. Primarily, the good news comes in the form of what hasn't changed.If you've never Spelunky'ed before, or if it's been a while, here's a refresher: the object of every game in the series is to progress from the top of a treasure-filled network of caves to the bottom. This fact—combined with how the game's dangerous elements can wipe an entire run in an instant—forces players into Spelunky 2's brutal reality: get your act together, or perish.After my first three hours playing Spelunky 2, I kept remarking to myself how surprised I was by seemingly new monsters, items, and tweaks... Stuff like that.Instead of deleting or redefining tentpoles of the original Spelunky, the sequel exists largely as a reaction to the game's decade of fandom. Die-hard fans have continued playing the original version all these years later, and Spelunky 2 offers fresher stuff specifically for the veteran audience, in ways that organically trickle down to anybody who might stink at the game.In a recent interview with the SpelunkyCast, series creator Derek Yu explained that one key design pillar for this sequel was to make it feel more like an open-world game, where the likelihood of seeing "every" major gameplay element in a single run is less likely.