Cave Story+

Truth be told I’ve played about an hour of this game but I want to play some more. I bought the Humble Bundle 4 because of this game. I heard some much about it when it was on the Wii. It sounded like a game that would scratch that retro itch I have. I grew up with Nintendo and super Nintendo so this should remind me of those good times.

Saves really have changed. Auto Saves might be the thing I most take for granted. When you beat a boss the game should just take over and jot down that you beat it and you won’t have to worry about it anymore. Not in Cave Story. You have to wait to get to a save point and you have to remember to go back and save. The rush and thrill of victory needs to be put in the back pocket. You shouldn’t rush out to face the next obstacle only to fall into a pit of spikes because you misjudged the distance of that jump and now you can’t beat that boss again. Maybe the olden days weren’t the best.

This is a fun but tough game, just what you want from an 8-bit game today. I made it to the sand zone, which seems to be around four levels in. Not sure how long the game is but I would come back to this. I like how you level each gun and it becomes stronger. Of course I wish it would stay at those levels but the more you use it and take damage the weaker it becomes. I had a stupid couple of deaths because I didn’t time jumps right. Silly me I would get excited and not think before jumps over insta-death spikes, something you should never do in Cave Story+

The story makes up half the title but it wasn’t thrilling me. You awaken with no memory and hang out with bunny type humanoids that are going to war with a doctor who wants the red flower to turn the bunnies into weapons…I think. Anyway the story was ok, there was an interesting twist about your past but that isn’t why I was playing Cave Story. I wanted to get angry and throw my controller like I use to when I was a kid. Cave Story succeeded in getting that emotion out of me. Cave Story+ is, as of this writing, $9.99 on steam. It is also on Wii, DS and IOS. I highly recommend this indie platformer that made indie platformers cool again.

Weekend Gaming

This weekend I gave up on the backlog and played a game I haven’t played in a long time, Civ 5. They announced an expansion for this game will be out in spring so it made me want to go back in. I’m not very good at this game and I’m not sure I’m playing it right but I sure do have a lot of fun. I recently upgraded my memory and the game runs so much better.

I started up a game with 4 computer controlled empires and next thing I know it’s 5:25am and I’m in a land war with Japan. Time flies while playing this game. You just want one more turn to see how this or that will go and the hours fly by. I wanted to start off a peaceful country but after some threats from my neighbors I decided it was time to crush them. Not sure If this is a good idea because I wasn’t really training army skills but who knows. It wasn’t on hard so I was able to change it up.

I also went back and played a few hours of Beat Hazard. This game is a dual joystick shooter that takes music from your library and creates levels around it. I love this game. You are able to get it on sale for two bucks, it’s a steal. Normally I think it sells for ten bucks which is still a good deal. I like playing music in beat hazard that I normally wouldn’t listen to. Most of the music I listen to makes for really boring levels. So I play a lot of upbeat, dance and pop music and have a blast. It does take a few tries to get back to the difficulty level I was used to but that was to be expected. The visuals are really intense.