Cave Story+ (2017)

Reviewed on the Nintendo Switch

I feel like reviewing Cave Story is like reviewing Citizen Kane: you're not allowed to hate it, and if you do, you hate any subsequent games inspired by it. That may be a little bit of an over-exaggeration, but in a world where opinion is becoming scarcer and scarcer in place of a unified "you're either with us or against us" mentality, I'm always weary of reviewing a popular product. Cave Story, as far as I'm aware, was one of the original Metroidvanias (outside of Castlevania and Metroid of course) and pioneered the absolute storm of unabashedly unoriginal Metroidvanias we see today littering the switch eshop (thanks Cave Story...). It's a game I've played about six times, and I want to go through those six times and explain my journey with Cave Story, in what will eventually (I hope) turn into a review.

VIRGIN TO PRO-ISH

My first time with Cave Story was way back when I was a little kid. My friend, who had a better insight into the world of video games than I did, took me aside and said "Hey, you heard of Cave Story?"
"No," I said, "But I have now." He booted up his PC, put on Cave Story, and was like "Figure it out." We played it for a bit before I inevitably had to go home for some pasta and an early night (Year 7 meant bed time at 9...) and I sort of forgot about it. That was until my second time! Alright, time two was, for the most part, the same as the first, and I just played it on his PC while he directed me a little more. I got further, and I have to admit I enjoyed myself. Then home, pasta and bed at 9 (I didn't get to go to bed late until Year 10...) My third and final time playing on his PC was again the same as before, except this time I was doing it for a "YouTube Channel" so I hammed up my experience for the camera. Then the Switch arrived. My friend, who loved the game, bought it on Switch and we played it together (because it has local co op). That too was fun, but admittedly less so than the first time. On a whim I bought the game myself (I suppose to culture myself like him) and played it co op with my sister. We got about as far as I had with my friend before the game was abandoned to our new attic. Now... finally, we reach my final playthrough, playthrough number 6.

PLAYTHROUGH No.6

Undoubtedly, if you haven't played Cave Story before, you're probably thinking, "Well this is nice and all, but what the heck are you talking about?" Great question backseat driver, let me finally explain. Cave Story is a side scrolling, platforming, action adventure game akin to Castlevania and the Metroid series (aka it's a Metroidvania). You play as a robot who crash lands into a strange world and you meet a bunch of rabbit people. One of them is kidnapped by an evil figure simply referred to as The Doctor, and you're tasked with finding them. Hang on Mr. Reviewer sir (aww thanks for calling me sir, you're too kind), that is not at all the narrative, it's far more nuanced than that. Shucks, you're right, I guess, I never... actually... completed... Cave Story. 

Okay, now hear me out before clicking away. I played about 6 hours of Cave Story and, having looked up the ending afterwards, I don't think I was all that far from the end. I feel like my opinions are justified because I invested a lot of time into completing this, and I nearly completed it. I just couldn't finish it. Why? I'll tell you why.

Cave Story is frustrating for so many reasons, but I'll break them down for you while I discuss my sixth and final playthrough. I'll discuss gameplay and story (to an extent), and explain the things I like and the things I dislike, kinda like a normal review. 

GAMEPLAY AND THE PERILS OF JUMPING

Cave Story is broken up into distinct levels, which are all unique in their visuals and style. For example, the opening level is in a dingy, claustrophobic cave, whereas the following level is in a bright, colourful and open village. Each level offers, for the most part, a unique way of approaching it. You still go from left to right, but the verticality of each level can differ. However, this game is sooooo repetitive. For all its originality in level design, you are essentially tasked to do the exact same thing in each level, just broken up by a little bit of story in between. Every level tasks you with finding three or so objects to proceed, which usually means a little bit of backtracking every so often. For example, in the fourth or so level (the forest one), you're tasked with building a bomb to break a character out of a building. To make the bomb you need something from a jelly fish, charcoal and I think rubber or something along those lines. Nonsense aside, to get these things you need to make your way across the map, back and forth, to collect them, and then bring them to a certain character. Likewise, in the Egg level just beforehand, you need to activate a bunch of computers, realise a few are not working and find an ID card to get one of the Eggs to work. While each level has you collect different things, and use them for different purposes, it's always felt exactly the same to me, just in a different place. 

Before I complain more, I want to say the few things Cave Story does right. Cave Story has an excellent way of introducing you to its mechanics. It's a simple game with limited buttons required, so the game just drops you in the level and expects you to press every button until you've figured out what most of them do. Then, when you leave the initial room, you can either go left or right. Going right brings you to a dead end, so you know you have to go left. Going that way shows you enemies you can't kill, so you know you have to find a weapon. You keep going left until you find a room with a chest in it, you find a gun, and now, knowing that direction is a dead end, you realise you have to go back to the right to break down the wall that was blocking your path. There's no tutorial or hand-holding, and for the most part I was able to figure out what the game wanted me to do, because its systems are so basic and simple (in a good way). It's the Mario way of introducing players into their game. Give them a simple area/puzzle that's easy to do, but is representative of the rest of the game so when they experience harder versions they know what they have at their disposal to accomplish it. I also really like the shooting mechanics and the levelling system. In Cave Story you don't have conventional levels, like say an RPG. Instead, every time you kill an enemy they drop little gems. Collect enough gems while carrying a weapon and it'll level up. Like in a Shmup, your gun will become more powerful the higher the level and will fire bigger blasts or multiple blasts. If you get hit, however, you lose experience and can lose the level entirely, thus your weapons become less powerful the more damage you take. It's a really interesting way of doing it, and I think the risk, reward system (put yourself in danger to upgrade your weapon, only to perhaps lose more experience because you put yourself in danger) is really cool. 

Alright, let's complain more. First, I'll preface by saying I'm not great at video games, and even worse at Metroidvanias. I've played Hollow Knight for a bit, and I've played Metroid Fusion (for even less of a bit) but that's about it. I'll admit now, I'm just not good at Cave Story. Fortunately, Cave Story is a fairly linear experience, so you always know what you're supposed to do, and you always know how to get there. If I die in Cave Story, it should be my fault, unlike in say Hollow Knight where I'd die because I had no idea where I was supposed to go and accidentally end up in a bunch of thorns. BUT... I'm not entirely sure Cave Story works this way. This may be me, or it may be the game, but every time I jumped and landed, my character drifted a little upon landing. This meant that landing on thin platforms usually resulted in me sliding off it and onto the ground below. There were so many jumps I should have made, but this slight drift upon landing caused me to fall off. It was infuriating and perhaps something only I experienced, but it was a miracle I lasted as long as I did.

I found save scumming to be a complete necessity in this game because of how much I died. When you die, you're brought back to your last save point, so if you get cocky and don't think you need to, or forget to, you can go back really far. The problem was that save points become few and far between until the point where they're almost none existent for far too long. Let me explain why I quit this game. Once you've escaped The Labyrinth (which I'll talk about later), you get back into the village from the beginning and are told to return to the Egg level. There's a save point in the village, but when you get to the Egg level, it's been destroyed, so all the save points are gone. You have to clear out a bunch of enemies, until you get to a big room where two bosses appear. By the time I got to the bosses I had no health and most of my guns were levelled down to level 2 or less (3 is the highest). I could not beat the bosses, no matter how hard I tried. So I stopped. There had been other things beforehand that had made me want to quit, so by this point I was at the end of my tether, but the complete lack of save points meant I had no chance of beating these bosses, and every time I died to them I had to go back to the village. If I missed something, then my bad, but as far as I am aware there was just no way for me to beat these guys, unless I somehow got to them unscathed.

Speaking of bosses, there are some stupid bosses in this game. For the most part the bosses make sense story-wise (you fight the same one about a hundred billion times), but some are there because you need to fight one. As I said earlier, each level consists of the same content. You collect three or so things to progress and then you fight a boss. Some of these bosses are not good. The main one I had a gripe with was the one at the end of the Labyrinth level. This boss is a giant vehicle thing that drives from side to side. If you're hit by its wheels then you take a ton of damage, so the best thing to do is stand on top of its wheels. But the boss is smart, and if you do that it drives from side to side trying to get you to slip off to then hit you with its wheels. That would be fine, but on top of that the boss drives you into electric barriers that do damage, and there are enemies flying about and shooting projectiles at you. On top of that, when you get the boss down to half health it shoots out projectiles that follow you about, and unless you destroy them, more of them appear until the whole screen is filled with the things. To make matters worse, I couldn't figure out how to damage the boss. There's no real indication, and when I figured it out it was by complete accident. I don't mind trial and error, but often in this game it's hard to figure out what you're supposed to do, while you're being bombarded with billions of enemies.

I've probably talked about that Labyrinth level quite a bit, and it's about time I explain it. This was one of my biggest breaking points, and while I persevered, it wasn't long after that I quit. Part of the way through the game you're sent to the Labyrinth by one of the villains. Why? Because she doesn't like you. What bearing does it have on the plot? None. In fact the whole purpose of the Labyrinth level is to escape it. You learn nothing while there until the very very end of it, and the information you do learn is pointless anyway (I'll explain later). But that's not the problem with the Labyrinth level. Oh no. The big problem is the level design. It's awful. When you're dropped in, you're told to go to the top of the level you're in and flick a switch. Easy enough, right? WRONG! This is the most infuriating thing I've ever experienced in my life. It's impossible to reach the top, because you're always being hit off a platform and knocked down to the bottom of the map again. To make matters worse, the music in this level is so repetitive it reminds you how boring this whole experience actually is. Once you get beyond this, you're thrown into more levels with thousands of flying enemies, and every time you go into a building, which you have to do a fair few times, they all respawn when you come out, meaning they're always there, always watching, always murdering. This whole segment feels like it's there to fill time, to pad out the game's already meagre run time. All it accomplishes is making me bored.

STORY, I GUESS?

I have no idea if there is a story. There might be, I just didn't experience it. Which is strange, because the marketing for this game says it has a wonderful story and memorable characters? Even the reviews say this? I don't understand! I didn't complete the game, and after reading up it looks like any semblance of a story is right at the end. And that's fine, I guess, but my problems with the story extend beyond the story itself. Sure, I found it lacklustre, but there is so much worse going on here.

Death. It's a pretty big deal, right? If someone dies we usually have a strong reaction to it. Apparently in Cave Story, this is not the case. There are multiple deaths in Cave Story, each one taking place during a cutscene, but after each and every one of them, you're free to roam about again and told to go to the next area. Your character never says anything about the deaths, and after each one I just left and walked off. There's no emotional pay off, no catharsis to be had, no impact. It's just, "Oh, they died. Weird" and off you go. On top of that, the characters that die I had no interest in anyway. Spoilers for Cave Story ahead, so if you want to skip these, please move onto the next paragraph. The two characters that died are a bunny, who you meet at the beginning of the game, and a robot girl, who you meet part of the way through. With both of these characters I think you meet them twice before they die? Regardless, I didn't meet them more than a few times, and thus didn't get connected to them. The bunny character is the one who is kidnapped, and, in what should be an emotional scene, she's force-fed this red plant that turns the bunnies evil. You then have to fight her as a boss and kill her. But there's no emotion behind it, she just turns into a boss out of the blue and then dies. She doesn't even have a moment where she turns back into a good bunny before her death and apologises or asks you why you did that. She doesn't mid-boss-fight try and turn back, but can't and that's why you kill her. She's just evil, you pop a few bullets in her and she's dead. You meet the robot girl during the third or fourth main location, and she's protecting some bunnies. You fight her because she mistakes you for an evil person, and then she's cool with you. You leave her be after she gives you a little exposition, and then later you meet her in a hospital in the Labyrinth level. Then she reappears later in the same level to help you move a bolder, you fight a boss together and then she sacrifices herself to save you. Eh? What? I don't even know who you are? I learned later that you can actually save her if you complete a bunch of ridiculous prerequisites beforehand, but there was no chance I was doing that. Another character dies, Doctor Booster, I think he's called. He appears out of the blue (after having met him twice before), gives you a jetpack and then dies. You see what I'm getting at. It's a Metroidvania that's trying to tell its story like the games it's trying to imitate. There's no life in any of the cutscenes, just a bunch of people delivering exposition and then dying. You can't get attached to anyone because there's barely any story bits, and then a whole load of platforming. In fact, I'd go as far to say that there's about 5 minutes of story for every hour of gameplay. There's just no way of resonating with characters who you meet for three seconds before they're killed. It's a lazy way of tugging on your heart strings without putting in any effort.

CONCLUSION... FINALLY

There's a reason I told you about my first five playthroughs and it's because when I first started playing Cave Story I was very young. There is a level in Jak 2 for the PS2 in which you have to drive a bike from one area to another in a time limit without dying, all the while guards are pursing you and trying to kill you. I know I beat that level as a kid because I completed Jak 2 when I was younger, but revisiting it now I can't get beyond that level, not because it's really difficult, but because I just can't be arsed to keep dying. My patience as an adult has decreased because I have more going on in my life. Hours wasted trying to beat a boss, or get over some platforming levels, is hours wasted not doing something else like my dissertation or spending time with my girlfriend. As a kid I didn't have any commitments, responsibilities, and even homework was easy drivel. I had time to waste playing difficult games, and I would get over them after spending hundreds of hours on each level. I think Cave Story would have been one of my favourite games as a kid, and I would have spoken fondly about the characters, the story and how I beat all those prerequisites to make sure robot girl didn't die. But now, now I don't have the patience of my younger self, I've experienced more and played better games (Hollow Knight for one.) I have more to compare to Cave Story, just like I have more to compare to Jak 2. I can't invest my time and energy into Cave Story because I don't have any left to give. Cave Story was great when my friend first took me aside and introduced it to me. Sure, I didn't go home craving more, but it was so much fun to sit at his computer and play it while he told me what to do. That stuff is fun as kids. Now, it's boring, and I find myself complaining about drifting off of platforms, and the lack of emotional impact. That's stuff only an adult complains about, not a kid. Play this game if you're young, in fact the switch has local co op so if you share your joy-cons with a friend you can play together, more so than me and my friend were able to all those years ago. I guess if you're a Metroidvania fanatic then you'll probably like it. But for me, it was just not a fun experience, and one that I'll remember, but only ever as that time I hung out with my friend and played it before pasta and bed at 9.