Game Review: Doukutsu Monogatari (Cave Story) for the Mac and PC

Cave Story (featured on the right) is the tale of an amnesiac guy, and the plight of the strange animal creatures called Mimigas as the Doctor slowly takes them away one by one for his experiments. The amnesiac, not having much choice in the matter, is soon thurst into the confilct between the Doctor and the Mimigas. Only thing, is that the Doctor is a lot more sinister than he seems to be.

Cave Story is the result of more than 5 years of work by a Japanese team called StudioPixel and was later translated by fans into English. As you should be able to see, is NOT a 3D game; it's a 2D game reminiscent of older games. Despite not having all the current "flair" of games like World of Warcraft and Dead Rising, Cave Story is game all it's own and you should check it out if you have a chance. You see Cave Story is an independent freeware game, or in other words, this game was made by a group of people for fun and you can download it of the web (and I'm going to say this twice so you get the point) completley free, COMPLETLEY FREE! The best part of all this, is that Cave Story is a lot more awesome than it needs to be; I'll break down what makes up the game.

Controls respond like a charm, the only problem about the controls are that they are permanetly bondend to the q,w,a,s,z,x keys and the arrow pad (the only way you can change the keys is to use a joystick) and yet the keys being binded like that isn't even much of a problem.

Graphics, you know there are a ton of old 8-bit and 16-bit games out thier and Cave Story still finds some way to make it's dated graphics feel new and unique. Character animations are nicely fleshed out and, save for some recolors, each character you meet has thier own little quirk to help identify them.

Sound, again paying homage to the older days of gaming the soundtrack is comprised of your typical, somewhat scratchy, SNES style music. You won't find a Orchestra here, or the catchy Super Mario Bros theme here, but the tracks still have thier own unique charm and seem to work real well. However, I'm going to leave most of this one up to you, because if you don't like the music you can always turn the sound off.

Final thoughts, I would like to fill you in as to just WHAT to prepare yourself for when you play Cave Story. Cave Story is actually kind of easy and simple when you start out, but don't let that fool you, the game has several moments that are just outright hard, but not impossible. Anyone should be able to pass them with a little perseveriance, and you are givin a very generous amount of time to get used to the game before it really starts to get harder. In fact, some of the really hard moments of the game don't even happen until your near the end! So don't be put off by the fact that it may seem to easy, or too hard, just give it some time because, after all, it's not like you paid money for it or anything.

Cave Story is a very good game, it's light on your computer's memory, it's free, it's available for both the Mac and the PC, and with three different endings it's sure to keep you occupied for some time. So the only thing you have to lose by playing it, is some time. So what are you waiting for? Here's a site that has everything you'll need to get started:

http://www.gameflaws.com/cavestory/

I'd put up a direct link to the downloads, but I'm afraid I might kill someone's bandwith already.

Give it a try, and if you like it tell your friends. They will probably thank you for doing so.