Recent reviews by Golden Sharkbilby

One of the most mediocre in the series. It feels like it's trying to be interactive like sister location while also trying to do what fnaf 3 and 4 did with their audio reliant gameplay and management. The lack of camera and visual feedback make replaying this game unrewarding if you wish to seek secrets like in the previous games. Multiple endings are the main reason you'd want to replay the game, but the vast majority are tied to failure, making it feel like yet another shallow feature which could've been much more.

At the very least, it is free, and it ends the story in an impactful way that does not spoil the secrecy in the atmosphere of the other games. The writing is overall excellent, and this extends to the comedic writing of lawsuits and other endings.

More spirits and a glorified marauder as the true final boss for doom eternal. I'm just not going to consider the DLCs canon.

Spirits are so unfair when you suck and unbearably tedious once you're good that it ruins entire levels within the DLCs. The way they work is by haunting the strongest enemy in the arena, but they usually just spawn within the strongest demons initially anyway. They make the affected demon (not hyperbole) 90% more resistant to your weapons and 3x faster. These stats alone make them practically immortal with their insane speed and resistances and it feels like the only counterplay is to waste all your rockets with the lock on from long range or to bhop while microwave beaming the spirited enemies, wasting all of your plasma and probably not even killing them. Close range against them is almost completely unviable against them due to the ridiculous speed buffs and ssg resistances.

I'm not joking when I say that this one enemy ruins both DLCs. Whenever I feel a crave to replay the DLCs, I almost never replay the levels they are present in, and that is most of them.

It's sheet music! What more could you want? You can play it! You can dissect it! You can even listen to it!

Mechanics are poorly explained, that or it's sending very tough enemies on the very first level. Not a fan.

I am scared of what downloading these 126 mbs back will do to my 1tb hard drive. It's free though.

It's an alright game. Alright music, level design, art, great voice acting and even workshop support. But there is no punishment for losing other than having to spend some time at your nearest saved checkpoint, the timers are pretty lenient and it just generally isn't challenging. This game is boring, even for somewhat of a more casual player myself. That or you can get some crazy kaizo levels off of the workshop, or make your own.

Slightly better than payday 3.

The difficulty scaling in this game is awful compared to previous titles and should only be bought if you really want an improved version of 1 or are willing to use mods, which is a shame as nearly every other aspect of this game is amazing.

The first area extremely difficult compared to nearly everything else in the game only challenged by Neo Babylon (area 4) and alternative harder paths such as the volcano or alternate endings, but those are only hard because you'll so infrequently reach those areas and it'll take many tries to properly learn them - which is fair, those are meant to be harder. But having the first area so brutally punishing is laughably terrible game design compared to the perfection of the rest of the game.

The music focuses on different aspects than the first Spelunky's, removing multiple tracks and instead focusing on the overall quality and transitions of the tracks, which works out surprisingly well. But they also gave the first area the worst music - the area you'll likely be spending 90% of your time in unless you use shortcuts (preferably with mods).

The gameplay however is (almost) a huge step up in every regard - all of the stages have their own quests which are all interwoven into one much larger reward, the alternate endings, which I won't cover. Not only that, after every boss there are also two stages to choose between, making the game far less linear than the other Spelunky games. Both with unique rewards, challenges, enemies, graphics and music. Which is a shame, because the harsh welcome of the first area and it having arguably the most important quest item literally drags all of this work down.

Maybe I do "suck" but when your difficulty curve starts extremely high, then flatlines before spiking again, it just screams poor game design.
If you are happy with a bad start that gets far better, this is the game for you. If you are happy to get mods to get past the bad start, this game is for you. But if you don't want to put up with these and are still interested in the game, play the classic Spelunky for free first[spelunkyworld.com] or get the remake of the classic, Spelunky hd. The curves there actually make sense.

A dark, surreal 2.5d point and click walking sim with light gameplay.

If this had about an hour or so more content and some more unique mechanics this would stand as a really solid and distinct indie title to sell.