Draken
Well-Known Member
I apoligize for posting this review so quickly after the actual release of the game, but I just finished writing the dutch version of my Cave Story review for a belgian game & animanga website, so I figured I could just as well translate it in English and post it here. Well, on to the review:
In 2004, a japanese fellow going under the pseudonym 'Pixel', released a freeware game he had been working on for over 5 years. He did everything himself at his own calm pace, and the result of his hard endeavours is this beautiful gem of a platformer game: Cave Story. Thanks to Simon Parzer, gamers can enjoy this game on the gp2x as well.
Story
The main character of Cave Story is a robot soldier called Quote, who looks a little bit like Ness from the roleplaying game Earthbound. The first time you play this game, you might think that there isn't much of a story in Cave Story, but as you progress, you'll find out more and more of the plot. The story basically goes as following:
A team of scientists travels to a flying island inhabited by Mimigas (a cute, rabbit-like race) to study them. One of the scientists, however, has bad intentions and starts looking for a helmet that would give him enormous powers. As soon as he finds the helmet, he tries to make an evil army of the mimigas, in an attempt to take over the world. It's your mission to stop him!
Sounds lame? You're in for a surprise! Cave Story has a strong and well written story with a large and fun cast of characters.
Gameplay
The gameplay is best compared with the Castlevania and Metroid series: An action-platformer with roleplaying elements. Expect to run and jump around mazes a lot while shooting a lot of monsters and solving quests. The gravity in Cave Story is pretty low, so when you jump, you basically glide through the air. During the game, you'll receive quite a lot of firearms which you'll need to handle all the enemies. Once you've killed an enemy, it'll likely drop some gold triangles which you can pick up to upgrade your weapons.
There are quite a lot of places where you can save the game and heal yourself, which is a good thing because the game can be quite challenging at times.
Audio and video
Graphics and music are once again best comparable to classic SNES and Genesis platformers like Castlevania, Metroid or Sonic the Hedgehog. The original Cave Story has a resolution of 240x320 pixels, so it fits perfectly on the gp2x. The graphics are detailled and look quite good on the little handheld. There's nothing to complain about in the sound department, there are plenty of sounds effect and the soundtrack is pretty large and lush.
Synopis
Cave Story's pretty much a complete game. There's nothing that could be improved or added to the game, it's perfect as it is. Here you have a commercial quality game with over 20 hours of gameplay and it's freeware. Unless you hate retrogames and only prefer modern 3D graphics (not likely if you bought this handheld), you should try this game out right away.
The GP2X port of Cave Story is excellent. There are two gpe files provided, the normal version is very playable at 200mhz but not quite fullspeed, it requires an overclock of 233mhz. The hardware accelerated version works fine but has the occasional graphical glitch.
Edit: Version 1.1 is released, which runs fullspeed at 200mhz, perfect port of a perfect game.
Download: here.
In 2004, a japanese fellow going under the pseudonym 'Pixel', released a freeware game he had been working on for over 5 years. He did everything himself at his own calm pace, and the result of his hard endeavours is this beautiful gem of a platformer game: Cave Story. Thanks to Simon Parzer, gamers can enjoy this game on the gp2x as well.
Story
The main character of Cave Story is a robot soldier called Quote, who looks a little bit like Ness from the roleplaying game Earthbound. The first time you play this game, you might think that there isn't much of a story in Cave Story, but as you progress, you'll find out more and more of the plot. The story basically goes as following:
A team of scientists travels to a flying island inhabited by Mimigas (a cute, rabbit-like race) to study them. One of the scientists, however, has bad intentions and starts looking for a helmet that would give him enormous powers. As soon as he finds the helmet, he tries to make an evil army of the mimigas, in an attempt to take over the world. It's your mission to stop him!
Sounds lame? You're in for a surprise! Cave Story has a strong and well written story with a large and fun cast of characters.
Gameplay
The gameplay is best compared with the Castlevania and Metroid series: An action-platformer with roleplaying elements. Expect to run and jump around mazes a lot while shooting a lot of monsters and solving quests. The gravity in Cave Story is pretty low, so when you jump, you basically glide through the air. During the game, you'll receive quite a lot of firearms which you'll need to handle all the enemies. Once you've killed an enemy, it'll likely drop some gold triangles which you can pick up to upgrade your weapons.
There are quite a lot of places where you can save the game and heal yourself, which is a good thing because the game can be quite challenging at times.
Audio and video
Graphics and music are once again best comparable to classic SNES and Genesis platformers like Castlevania, Metroid or Sonic the Hedgehog. The original Cave Story has a resolution of 240x320 pixels, so it fits perfectly on the gp2x. The graphics are detailled and look quite good on the little handheld. There's nothing to complain about in the sound department, there are plenty of sounds effect and the soundtrack is pretty large and lush.
Synopis
Cave Story's pretty much a complete game. There's nothing that could be improved or added to the game, it's perfect as it is. Here you have a commercial quality game with over 20 hours of gameplay and it's freeware. Unless you hate retrogames and only prefer modern 3D graphics (not likely if you bought this handheld), you should try this game out right away.
The GP2X port of Cave Story is excellent. There are two gpe files provided, the normal version is very playable at 200mhz but not quite fullspeed, it requires an overclock of 233mhz. The hardware accelerated version works fine but has the occasional graphical glitch.
Edit: Version 1.1 is released, which runs fullspeed at 200mhz, perfect port of a perfect game.
Download: here.
