Cave Story: Choices matter in the end
I finished Cave Story just minutes before I sat down to write this, so the impressions I’ll be sharing are fresh, but not entirely settled. First and foremost, I feel like I just blew up a lot of shit. At the end, you have to fight Misery, The Doctor, The Doctor after the red crystal … Continue reading
Cave Story: Small, but not simple
According to my notes, I’ve spent a little more than six hours playing Cave Story so far, and I’m not quite done. Speaking of notes, while spending six hours in a game isn’t particularly notable — if this were a JRPG, I’d still just be getting my toes wet — the fact that those six … Continue reading
Cave Story: Just some robot I used to know
I’m about to get into spoiler territory here, so You Have Been Warned. Ready? I mean it. I want to focus on one of Cave Story’s charms: the characters. Cave Story is rife with quirky, odd-ball characters. Some are talking rabbits. Others are crazy robots. And still others are people in Cthulu costumes. Each one … Continue reading
Cave Story: Nostalgia, celebration, and exploitation
I have to admit that I am way behind Daniel and Gavin in my playthrough of Cave Story because I have been clocking a lot of hours into Diablo III, which actually makes for an interesting comparison. Like Cave Story, Diablo III is a game that panders to one’s nostalgia, in this case nostalgia for … Continue reading
Cave Story: The zig-zag world
Last week, I promised that this week’s post would be about narrative in Cave Story, but I’m going to put that off a bit, in part because the game is doing a great job of doling out the story bit by bit in ways that are keeping me interested as a player, and making me … Continue reading
Cave Story: Power up
I would say the key to any decent platformer is a variety of fun power ups. Be it turtle shells, rocket launchers, or leaf shields — power ups can make or break a game. And being 100 years old, I have seen quite a few in my time. Much to my delight, the weapon power-ups … Continue reading
Three meditations on Journey
The first time I played Journey, I was a sojourner in a strange land. I started alone, climbing a sand dune to catch my first glimpse of a mountain with a brilliant light glowing at its peak. As I walked toward the mountain, I encountered a glowing mark which wrapped itself around my neck and … Continue reading
Cave Story: Jumping into story
Oh, Kevin, you make me nervous when you talk about Daniel as being “100 years old.” I’m the old man of the bunch, after all, and if anyone ever goes back to those first Final Fantasy VII posts and figures out how old that actually is, I might get my game columnist license revoked. Anyway, … Continue reading
Cave Story: Platform mechanics
For me, platformers have always been nostalgic. Sure, my first videogame console was an NES with Super Mario Bros. 3, but I was too young in those days to have a valuable opinion about it (I know this because my favorite NES game, at the time, was Batman Returns). The first game that made a … Continue reading
Cave Story: Let’s get retro
I do not even want to know how many hours of my life I have spent playing platformer/side-scrolling video games. Heck, months would be a better unit of measurement. I grew up in the Golden Age of side-scrolling games and built up my thumb muscles thanks to the likes of the Mario Brothers, Mega Man, … Continue reading
