Cave Story Review


Image credit goes to the Cave Story Wiki , and the Cave Story Tribute Site.

You wake up with your memory depleted, surrounded by cavernous land, inhabited by rabbit looking humanoids; this is Cave Story. The game started out as freeware for Windows, Mac, and Linux, as soon as Cave Story began to gain popularity it began to gain attention from an independent videogame company named, Nicalis. The company began to help Pixel, owner of Cavestory, to input the game into Nintendo's WiiWare services. Later the game had been put onto the 3DS eshop at a price of $10 and soon enough it showed up on the Mac App Store.


The game is set in a cavernous area; the main character has a fatal loss of memory while soon discovering that he is in a village of Mimigas, rabbit looking humanoids that inhabit the land. The Mimigas have been ill-treated by the "Doctor" who has sent out two of his minions to find a girl named Sue, who had been transformed into a Mimiga. The rest is for you to find out....



The game has a basic sidescrolling platform with some unique features during gameplay. The player has the ability to look into the environment, and what I mean is that if you press a specific button (pertaining to what device your using to play the game) Quote, the main character, will look towards the background and what makes this unique is that there are items you can receive and places you can go through that are located in the background, which I haven't seen in most games before. The game has a level system for weapons, each time you shoot an enemy, these little yellow diamonds fall out of the enemy, and if you collect them you will fill your weapon gauge and as you fill it, the gauge will inform you that you have gained a level for your weapon. If the weapon gains a level, the blasts that come out of it will become stronger and stronger, this is necessary for defeating larger enemies. Current weapons found in the game include; The Polar Star (Your initial weapon), A Machine gun, Missile Launcher, Snake, Spur, Bubbler, Blade, Super Missile Launcher, Fireball, and finally, Nemesis. Cave story also has a unique amount of items, items are mostly used to make the player go off on mission to find a specific item in order to complete a certain task, and other times it could be useful for the player themselves. There are also a variety of monsters found in the game, the most commonly found monster in almost all the maps you go to are the "Critters". Cave Story takes a decent amount of time to actually finish it, I'm still not done with it yet.



The controls used to play the game specifically on your DS handhelds are quite simple. You move with the D-Pad and you shoot with either the B or Y buttons. You can look into the background for clues with the down button on the D-Pad. The player can also talk to characters using the A button. I haven't actually tried playing the game on my computer with the freeware version of the game, so I would just assume that you can walk around with your up, down, right, and left buttons, and you may be able to shoot with A, S,Z, or X, not sure though, just guessed. I also don't know the controls for to play the game on your Ipod either.


The visuals of the game resemble an old 2D platform, all the characters are quite pixely and this includes the environments and enemies as well, which gives the game an old fashioned look. All the areas are made with great detail. The music is well made, every place you go to will have a catchy tune that becomes mesmerizing.


Pros

  • Nice Old Fashion 2D Pixel Art.
  • Unique Gameplay.

Cons

  • Constant amount of saving, (When your at a specific part of the game and you forget to save before a mission, you'll regret not saving at that moment.)

Overall, the game is simply amazing; it contains both non-stop action and drama which will keep the player entertained. I highly recommend trying out this game.

Overall

  • Gameplay: 10/10
  • Audio: 10/10
  • Graphics:10/10
  • Story:10/10
  • Overall: 10/10