Much like with
Tower of Heaven, Cave Story is a game that I started to play in passing much after the hype surrounding it died down. And really, I'm kind of glad I did. I had heard theses games get mentioned countless times, but never really bothered to read about them or play them, and having ignored them for so long puts me in a position to judge them more objectively.
And Cave Story is damn near a masterpiece.
It's gameplay is sort of a combination of Mega Man and Metroid in that the path you take is largely linear, but there are hidden power-ups within given areas that are totally optional.
It looks and sounds like a game that should be played on the NES, and my knee-jerk reaction was to assume that it was just a ploy for retro-nostalgia, which is all the rage right now. But again, like Tower of Heaven, that's not the case. Tower of Heaven was subverting all the tropes of the 2D platformer, so it made since to go back to their genesis, but the choice in Cave Story is much more pragmatic.
Cave Story is a game that was mad by one person. I didn't find this out until I was about half-way though the game and learning that blew me away because it doesn't show in the game at all. It's a very polished game in every regard and the only hiccups come from the fact that I had to play a translation because it was originally in Japaneses, so the (rarely) clunky dialogue isn't even the game designers fault. Not to mention that it's about 3-4 hours long. It's truly mind boggling and is disproves all the videogame industry talk about "recouping development costs" because the game is also entire game is available for free.
The story is far more affecting than it rightfully should be, considering that it centers around a race of bunny-people. That's all I really want to say about that.
About the only complaint that I have to level against the game is that it's a bit tricky to play with the keyboard, so if you have a game pad (Xbox360 controllers can be connected to Windows-based computers and used as game-pads. That's what i did.), I highly recommend using it.
Seriously, just play it. You owe it to yourself to at least try it. It's a good 3-4 hour game that's free! Some full-price retail games came even say that. What do you have to loose?
You can download the game
here and the English patch and instructions
here.
Now, there
is a version of Cave Story available for download on the Wii that's gotten the HD treatment in both the visuals and sound department. It's translation is also different, but not very, from what little I've seen of it. The only reason I would recommend this version over the free version is if you don't have a game pad or 360 controller. 1200 wii points is cheaper than getting one. Plus, it has a few extras thrown in on top of the upgrades. I would still play it with he original graphics and music, though.
If for some reason you are still reluctant to at least give this game a chance,
GaintBomb has a
Quick Look of the Wii version that you can watch (below) before you make your decision.
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