Cave story switch review series#

Cave story switch review series#

Most of the game’s secrets fall into the near-impossible-to-find-without-a-walkthrough category, including the painstaking series of oddly specific actions needed in order to unveil the best ending. Some of the musical effects can be grating, like the shrill cling that power-ups make when they bounce, the endless pew pew of laser weapons, and the unnecessary text scrolling noise-in fact, when you Google “text scrolling noise,” the first few results are complaints about Cave Story. Unearthing this story is a lot of fun, and although it would have been nice to see more of the main character’s past, Cave Story’s subtle narrative is a refreshing change of pace in an era where game plots like to hammer you with ostentatious messages about love and sacrifice.īut Cave Story has its flaws. Like Cave Story’s amnesiac protagonist, you begin the game knowing nothing the plot is gradually fleshed out by your conversations and discoveries on the island. Throw that unforgiving difficulty into the pot with Cave Story’s old-school aesthetics and you get a tasty stew that resembles a NES game, just more polished. Innovative enemies and instant-death spike pits create some frustratingly hard challenges, especially since save points tend to be sporadic and, during some parts, nonexistent. You’ll be jumping and propelling through an assortment of unique stages, blasting away baddies and accumulating power-up crystals to charge up a variety of unique weapons that range from a machine gun to a bubble shooter. It’s been compared to Metroid, Castlevania and Mega Man, but Cave Story takes ingredients from all three. So porting it over to the Wii seemed like the natural step, and it’s the natural system for a game like Cave Story. Single-handedly developed over half a decade by game designer Daisuke Amaya and unleashed onto the Internet in 2004, the game drew loads of buzz and evolved into a genuine cult hit over the years, spawning tribute sites and fan translations.

A challenging platformer that takes you back to the good old daysīefore it became WiiWare, Cave Story was just freeware.