Spelunky 2 Review – Enthralling Entropy

Publisher: Mossmouth

Developer: BlitWorks

Rating: Teen

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch

“This is the run where I make real progress,” I tell myself. “Last time I got careless, but this time will be different.” With that self-assurance, I descend into the caves of Spelunky 2 for the umpteenth time. Masterfully dodging booby traps and whipping bats, spiders, and snakes before they can steal my health, I make it through the first level with ease. My confidence rises as I pick up a crossbow from the shopkeep. Everything is going according to plan, when suddenly a horned lizard rolls into me, knocking me back and setting off a glorious chain reaction featuring skeletons, arrow traps, and eventually, a spike pit that triggers my demise. I’m frustrated my best-laid plans fell apart so fast, but as soon as the option to start a new run appears, I can’t select it fast enough.

Despite the many times I’ve yelled as my character’s body bounces around like a pinball from scenarios such as that, Spelunky 2 is unceasingly fun. Maintaining the same formula as its predecessor, the engaging roguelike action-platformer drops you into a procedurally generated cave system and dares you to get further than you did last time. The engrossing difficulty and randomization of the world effectively combines with that very desire to do better, providing the drive to take on another round. As you dig deeper into the caverns, you uncover new biomes, like an aquatic-themed area with killer fish and octopuses that are all too willing to end your run. While starting over at level 1-1 can make the experience tedious, multiple visits to the deeper areas grants you the ability to start your run at that point instead. The procedural generation provides nearly endless levels to play through, and the distinct worlds introduce new elements and challenges to keep the experience fresh as you progress deeper into the caves.

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This time around, you can chart your path depending on the challenges you want to encounter. After completing the first area of the cave, do you venture into a lush jungle flooded with monkeys and man-eating plants? Or do you want to brave the volcanic foundry full of explosive robots and fire-spewing ladybugs? I love getting to decide which world to tackle as I reach these new areas, and I’m continually impressed at how different each biome feels from the others.

In addition to being able to choose your path through the caves, Spelunky 2 adds new secret areas you can duck into for treasures, challenges, and even new characters to rescue and add to your community back at base. It’s fun seeing the people you save appear at your camp, but too often these passageways lead to nowhere, causing me to sometimes disregard them since they’re usually wastes of time. This further highlights the main pitfall of procedural generation: While skill clearly plays a large role in your overall success, luck is also a factor as some runs are significantly easier than others. Still, no run is impossible, as Spelunky 2 ensures there’s a clear path to each level’s exit, so I tried to make sure I took advantage of the times fortune favored me.

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While descending into the caves alone is a blast, you can enlist help in the form of NPCs, who are often so aggressive that the best you can hope for is they’ll take down a few enemies en route to causing their own demise. You can also discover helpful mounts like a turkey that can headbutt enemies and glide, a fire-breathing dog, or a lizard that spits bubbles. However, the better company to keep comes from multiplayer, which can now be played locally or online. As you might expect, chaos reigns supreme as you add more players into the mix; don’t expect to make better progress with your friends, but it sure is fun.

Spelunky 2 is as addictive an experience as I’ve played this year. Two-minute-long runs stack to turn into consecutive hours of gameplay, and “just one more try” easily turns into an afternoon of exploring, dying, and trying again. Spelunky 2 is at once captivating, stressful, and exciting, and even now, I can’t wait to once again test my mettle within the cave’s ever-shifting walls.

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Note: This review is based on a pre-release build in which online multiplayer was unavailable.

Score: 9

Summary: Spelunky 2 is an addictive and chaotic experience that builds on the already exciting formula of the original.

Concept: Dive back into the shifting cave system of Spelunky, this time with branching paths, new enemies, and mounts to ride

Graphics: Beautiful environments are a treat to behold, and improved physics make water and lava look great as they slip through holes and cracks in the world

Sound: Helpful audio cues hint at nearby side-objectives, while a solid soundtrack accompanies the on-screen chaos

Playability: Despite its high degree of difficulty, Spelunky 2 is easy to pick up and play thanks to simple and tight controls

Entertainment: No matter how many times I yelled in frustration, I couldn’t wait to jump right back into the ever-shifting caves

Replay: High

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Chorus Review - The Void Of Space

Publisher: Deep Silver

Developer: Deep Silver Fishlabs

Rating: Everyone 10+

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Stadia

Chorus is a madcap barrage of laser beams, missiles, and impossible space combat dodges, boosts, and chases in its best moments. At its worst, it’s bogged down with tiresome and repetitive encounters, frustrating checkpoints, and bland characters. Sci-fi space combat shooters are a niche genre today, so while I’m thankful Chorus exists, much of the game is a relatively linear and mundane slog, punctuated by a few epic encounters here and there that live up to a galactic fantasy.

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As Nara, you’re a starfighter pilot with an incredibly checkered past. The tale is fairly cliche and sometimes obtuse, but Chorus doesn’t ride on its out-of-this-world story. No, Chorus is about gameplay, and when it works, it nails it. Excellent segments play out almost like a movie, where we get to zoom around the battlefield propelled by abilities, dodging lethal blasts left and right and laying down heavy fire on capital starships. Taking down a colossal enemy ship piece by piece, shedding its outer defenses, and ripping through its interior core is a blast, and there are some massive Star Wars vibes when you zoom across the top of a craft blowing up generators under heavy fire. Other highlights include a segment where you’re hopping through dimensions to pursue an enemy ship or ruining a galactic space entity. Similarly, the unlockable abilities in Chorus, known as rites, absolutely shine, giving the player a considerable array of tools that make combat more interesting as the game progresses. With rites, your options increase substantially, from being able to teleport behind your foes for easy attacks or even propel yourself through foes to tear them apart.

In the standard battle-to-battle moments, Chorus suffers. While it has some light elements of open world where you can do side missions for additional loot, the journey is relatively straightforward and, unfortunately, monotonous. Outside of the highlight battles, the encounters are painfully similar and often include elements that add to the drudgery. For example, one mission tasks players with saving several allies from enemy fire and taking out an enemy ship. If you get blown up at any point during the mission, it’s back to the beginning to start the whole process over again, including the mini-cut scenes and chatter. This mission structure is commonplace in Chorus, and it’s a tough asteroid to swallow.

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If all enemy starfighters went down in a few shots, that wouldn’t be a big deal, but the combat is often an elaborate and involved dance of teleporting, dodging, weapon swapping, and more. After losing a few times on the same battle, my energy to proceed was often sapped. Encounters that are timed or involve protecting allies are almost always frustrating, as you can be zipped back to a checkpoint only to have to take on the same enemies again and again until you nail the battle. You may have been battling several ships at once and forced into taking evasive action, but the NPC that you were sworn to protect simply went down while you were busy. When fights involve many units to protect, it can take significant effort and ability synergy to survive, and getting sent back to the start of a mission because of a timer or ally death is highly demoralizing. These issues are exacerbated by regions of space that are stripped down to a series of similar fights, and here I desperately searched for the next big moment to keep my will to continue alight. It doesn’t help that Nara is constantly whispering to herself in some bizarre form of ASMR, but with the entire package riding on gameplay, Nara’s idiosyncrasies were not a big deal.

Chorus has some epic battles that live up to space combat fantasies, but the rote and often arduous trail to get to them is a hard course through the stars to chart.

Score: 7

Summary: Chorus can be an entertaining space combat adventure at times, but the mediocre moments take a considerble toll.

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Monster Hunter Rise Review – Runt Of The Litter

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Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Capcom

Reviewed on: Switch

Also on: PC

Monster Hunter: World was an important paradigm shift for Capcom’s beloved franchise. The well-paced difficulty ramp made progression enjoyable for newcomers, while countless endgame challenges kept expert hunters coming back for more. Monster Hunter Rise’s gameplay often attempts to copy World’s success, which isn’t always a bad thing. Battles continue to be an exhilarating dance with death, gear customization is satisfying, and coordinating hunts with friends makes for awesome fun and unexpected outcomes. Even with the introduction of new mechanics that help amplify these features, Monster Hunter Rise struggles to establish a creative identity of its own.

Encounters with huge and impressive beasts is the centerpiece of the experience, putting your skills with the myriad weapon types to the test. Once victorious, you spend your downtime sprinting around the main hub, upgrading or forging better equipment, nabbing a bunch of pending quests from NPCs, and meticulously preparing for the next hunt. This captures the fundamentals of the fantasy-action series, but Monster Hunter Rise doesn’t venture far beyond that comfort zone.

During the opening hours, the people of Kamura Village are busy preparing for the “calamity,” an army of wild monsters hell-bent on laying waste to everything in their path. As the village’s newly registered hunter, you must slay or capture numerous creatures in the biomes beyond your hometown’s steel gates. As soon as you’re done marveling at the blooming cherry blossom trees and humming along to the gorgeous score, be sure to grab key consumables from your ever-expanding item box, eat a delicious meal at the local eatery for exclusive bonuses, and venture forth into the unknown. This routine has a comfortable monotony that Monster Hunter fans will likely appreciate, but the addition of the “Buddy Plaza” adds a new feature to your return trips.

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The Buddy Plaza is a base of operations for your palicoes and palamutes (cat and dog warriors, respectively). You can send your trusty pets on missions of their own to procure miscellaneous crafting materials, spend currency to train them so that they’ll be more effective in future engagements, swap out their equipment, or hire even more of them by talking to the handler. Buddies are extremely versatile, and Monster Hunter: Rise constantly rewards you for using the plaza’s various facilities. Still grinding for that rare beak or tail? Your palico “meowcenaries” might surprise you with one from a recent expedition. This kind of positive feedback gives the lulls between combat/exploration some much-needed flavor.

The environments are visually arresting, and house entire ecosystems filled to the brim with endemic life as well as hard-to-find secrets. My two favorite locales – Shrine Ruins and Flooded Forest – are littered with the remnants of ancient civilizations; they have huts wrapped in thick vines and sky-piercing pyramids that loom in the distance. While roaming, I often thought about the histories of these forsaken settlements and the people that once called them home. However, my imagination was often all I had to go on, since the lack of meaningful story beats makes the plot fall flat.

A generic tower defense mode serves as a lackluster reminder of the larger narrative; these jarring “rampage quests” involve constructing an array of automated turrets and mountable ballistae around the village’s gates. Waves of monsters clutter the screen and work together to pummel you while also breaking through your defenses. All the enemies are damage sponges, and clearing the arena hardly requires much thought; I often just held the fire button until I was the last one standing. Thankfully, you aren’t required to complete a ton of rampage quests to gain access to Monster Hunter Rise’s main missions.

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You spend most of your playthrough experiencing the classic loop: Battle gigantic adversaries like the feral Arzuros and Lagombi, collect mundane items, and deliver heavy objects to camp. Be sure to explore the nooks and crannies of every map as floating, colorful birds called “Spiribirds” can be absorbed to increase your health, stamina, attack, or defense. These buffs make completing the above-mentioned missions much easier. Don’t want to do all of that on foot? Ride your palamute to expedite navigation or whip out your wirebug to scale cliffsides and mountain ranges in seconds.

Wirebug attacks, called Silkbinds, add a new layer of intensity to the action. When used repeatedly, Silkbinds force monsters into a mountable state. These short combat sequences are all about using a monster’s power against them by ramming into nearby structures for stagger damage or sprinting towards other unsuspecting adversaries to dish out the pain. Wyvern-riding is my favorite mechanic because it adds an exciting burst of strategy to the franchise’s age-old combat system.

Beyond mounting monsters and using the wirebug to wall-run in spectacular fashion, not much else distinguishes Monster Hunter Rise from the installments that came before. It has enough endgame content to keep you occupied long after the credits roll (if you don’t mind copious amounts of grinding) and multiplayer is still the optimal way to play, but the excitement of my early hunts waned before long. Monster Hunter Rise is far from being the next definitive chapter in the series. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a polished-but-conventional adventure with a few small-scale nuances, then you’ll be right at home in Kamura Village.

Score: 7.75

Summary: Monster Hunter Rise showcases its commitment to engaging combat with interesting new mechanics, but these changes aren't enough to differentiate it from previous titles.

Concept: Defend your village from angry monster hordes while spending quality time with your growing roster of lovable palicoes and palamutes

Graphics: Character textures don’t always look great, but the world itself is vivid

Sound: From gentle vocal harmonies to blood-pumping battle themes, Monster Hunter Rise boasts the best soundtrack in the franchise to date

Playability: Zipping through each backdrop with the wirebug makes you feel like a nimble acrobat, and controlling mounted monsters feels satisfying

Entertainment: Fighting different beasts is always a blast. However, the time you spend outside of combat pales in comparison to your epic encounters

Replay: Moderately High

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