CAVES! We’re going into caves this time! No light! Damp rocks! Huge bats! Let’s GO!

Cave Story

I hope I don’t upset you by saying this, but Cave Story, the game that inspired every modern indie game and therefore transformed the entire industry, will be turning 20 next year. I had my own personal moment of crisis when I saw that my most recent Steam achievements in the game were from March of 2013. For 10 years, it’s just been sitting in my library, waiting for someone to finish the job. Well, it’s as good a time as any.

Cave Story presents as a troidlike, but that’s not really true. It’s a largely linear sidescroller where you blast your way through hallways. You do revisit levels on occasion, but that’s because the story has advanced and not because of a new item you found. The narrative is fairly robust, with well-paced reveals. There might be a habit of introducing some weird new element and hoping you go along with it, but there is also juicy drama that newcomers wouldn’t expect from such a cute game. The original version of Cave Story was done by a single guy, and the talent is impressive even today. I’ve always been jealous of solo indie devs who not only design a game but also draw appealing characters and compose iconic tunes. Renaissance folk right there. Cave Story is not as polished as it could be, I suppose. The jumping doesn’t always feel great and the early game has some padding issues. Also, I’ve always been a little miffed whenever your weapon loses power after taking damage. But I enjoy the arsenal of guns that each serve a different purpose. Throughout the game, there are several choices between powering up in the short term versus getting even stronger later on. Even if it’s totally unintuitive in a blind playthrough, I like the hidden depths.

In the end, though, I bit off more than I could chew with Cave Story’s best path. I held out for the best weapons easily enough. After you do that, though, you’re tasked with getting through a harder version of the final stage. That was taxing but doable. Then, regardless of difficulty, you have a four-phase final boss sequence with no reprieve. I was starting to doubt myself at this point, but I soldiered on and eventually made it to the normal ending’s cutoff point. But I was trying to get the best ending, so I hopped down into a further cave to try the super hard gauntlet level. This starts with some devilish platforming around spikes, but I beat Celeste, so no biggie. Then there’s a hallway with randomly falling blocks to take a meaty chunk off your health bar. Annoying, but I could tank through it with some luck. Then, there is a very long corridor with tough enemies, more spikes, and a high level of stress from not wanting to do everything over. I slogged through this section, trying to preserve myself, before I got to a surprise boss fight that annihilated me in two seconds. Then I checked the guide, which noted that the superboss following that has four phases of his own, and I decided the normal ending was plenty good enough for me. If Cave Story was more like Celeste, with very tight controls and constant checkpoints, I would be more willing to try. As it stands, I have more worthwhile uses of my time. I’m slowly getting better about knowing my limits and being better for it. I still have the save if I change my mind, plus the limited healing item I stupidly didn’t use on the normal final boss. So, Cave Story: Still a good game, but more than a little demanding if you want.

Pikmin 2

Pikmin 4 is one of my most anticipated games. After Pikmin 3 was pretty much a perfect execution of the idea, I wanted them to get experimental with the next one, which is exactly what it looks like. Curiously, 4 appears to bring back the cave mechanic from Pikmin 2. So, after yet another playthrough of 3, I thought I would give 2 its due so I could say I’ve played all the numbered entries.

With this game, Captain Olimar becomes one of Nintendo’s most tragicomic characters. He’s just survived a month stranded on an alien planet, and he’s sent back before he can even say hello to his wife and kids. All because his coworkers are incompetent. Anyway, the objective this time is to cultivate Pikmin and retrieve the garbage humanity left behind: things like our fruit, yo-yos, and Duracell batteries. This is pretty realistic, only it should be nothing but Funko Pops. Because there’s no imminent danger of starvation, you have as many in-game days as you need to gather enough treasures and pay off the company’s debt. I wonder if this was a response to criticism of the 30-day time limit of the first Pikmin. Regardless, the time you spend in the overworld, the areas of which are remixed from the original game, is limited. It’s where you’ll grow your army and pick up a few treasures, but the real meat of the game is underground. Here, Pikmin’s RTS gameplay is applied to a dungeon crawler concept. Each floor of the cave will have the same elements, but their exact placement will be a little random each time. This is where you’ll find the toughest enemies, but also the highest volume of treasures to collect.

Now, is this what I want from the series? Not really. While you’re in a cave, time stops. You also can’t grow any new Pikmin while you’re down there. So that’s the whole gameplay loop tossed. With no time management aspect, the caves are highly focused on combat, which I’ve never found to be Pikmin’s strongest suit as a franchise. Things are friendly enough at the start, but by the late-game caves, you are put up against enemies that in function and number resemble romhack levels of difficulty. This being the case, Pikmin 2 funnels you into a very specific style of play. The game saves at every floor, so any time things go wrong, there is no reason you shouldn’t reset the console and try again. If you lose any Pikmin of the new types, which can only be obtained in these caves, you are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t try again. It is tedious, but losing your numbers is only going to put you at more of a disadvantage later, then force you to spend time getting them back. I’m not a fan of dungeon crawlers in the first place, so this was probably never going to work for me.

After you get enough money to pay the debt - which is easy - you see credits roll as Olimar’s partner Louie I guess forgot to get on the ship and is left behind. The objective then changes to saving him. Whether Louie deserves to be rescued is another question, seeing as he’s worse than the literal trash you’ve been collecting this whole time. Sometimes my strong moral compass can be a detriment. At this point in the game, the best advice is to run ahead without any Pikmin and punch creatures to death by yourself. Something is broken with this game. They do give you multiple captains, which is meant to encourage multitasking. It comes in handy on a few occasions, especially in the overworld, but in the cramped caves it does little. Like all of Pikmin 2’s best ideas, it was perfected in 3. So I sent the President running on his own through the last dungeon, ignoring everything, because I needed all my Pikmin for the last boss guarding Louie. It was a slaughter, but I eventually made it through. And… I was put back outside with no fanfare. At this point, I’m confused at what “beating the game” actually entails. I got credits hours ago at this point, but that didn’t feel conclusive, and now Louie is just locked in the ship like he deserves. I guess I’m meant to collect the 70-some remaining treasures, but I don’t want to do that. Especially once I tried the water dungeon with the invincible Nemesis steamroller monster. Out of the first three Pikmin games, Pikmin 2 is the longest, the most punishing, and in my opinion, the least fun. But that’s due to my own favorite aspects of the series being underrepresented. I think the timed treasure-collecting missions in Pikmin 3 are the best thing ever, and there’s nothing in Pikmin 2 that wants you to play that way. Pikmin 3 is basically Pikmin 1-2, so I’m fine that Pikmin 4 looks like Pikmin 2-2. A lot of fans who like different elements than I do have 2 as their favorite. Plus, there has been 20 years of advancement in roguelike design since then. I’m confident that Pikmin 4 will be miles better. After all, it has a doggy.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

Let’s start with how goofy that subtitle is. Imagine if they called a movie Rocky II: The Rise of Rocky. But there are more substantial issues at work. I played the original Max Payne for the first time last year, and it was still a unique and worthwhile experience. The graphic novel presentation, though born out of budget constraints, has insulated the game from aging. The gunplay is solid and the bullet time ability adds empowering flair. And even on the Xbox, there is quicksaving that eases any incoming frustration.

All of this is still present in Max Payne 2, but everything feels somehow diminished. Despite turning half of New York into swiss cheese in the first game, Max doesn’t seem to have suffered any consequences at the start of 2. He is working as a detective in the NYPD which seems to me like a pretense for his gunslinging mania. But after a few run-ins with femme fatale Mona Sax, the rest of the story is the two chasing after each other while dozens of goons fruitlessly try to “Get Payne!”. Is the game strictly about caves? Not exactly. It takes place in and around various buildings. But Max keeps monologuing about falling into big holes, so it spiritually counts. Is the titular Fall of Max Payne really all that, though? Let’s look at the facts. Max starts the story miserable, and he ends it miserable. Because it opens in media res, we know what causes The Fall of Max Payne: Max’s killing of a detective and Mona dying in his arms. Only, the detective turns out to be a bad guy, and Max already lost his family, so get over it, buddy. The whole narrative hinges on whether you buy Max and Mona’s relationship. Which I don’t. Sure, I understand the adrenaline-fueled sex, but they don’t sell an emotional connection, if that’s what they were going for. Even including Mona’s brief appearances in the first game, the pair share the same room for like, less than an hour. And they can’t stop sniping at each other long enough to progress very far. I think Mona’s character could still be interesting if she could shine more. You play as her in two segments, both of which are about saving Max’s butt. She is supposed to have her own motivations, but we don’t see them. Time spent exploring that would be welcome, even if it meant breaking Max’s first-person narration.

I talked about the story more than usual because it’s such a big focus of Remedy’s games. But Max Payne’s other strength is the dramatic combat that emulates John Woo flicks. In the sequel, it’s pretty much untouched, so there is a good baseline of quality. I underutilized bullet time in the first game, so I might have overcompensated this time. I like playing shooters to inhabit an action hero, and on this, the game and I align. However, it’s time to introduce my grand theory about Max Payne 2. Max Payne 2 should be Max Payne 1, and vice versa. Here’s the big issue: I played Max Payne 1 10 months ago, and I still remember tons of moments from it. I can picture fighting through the shipping yard, escaping the government building, and the climactic ascent up the skyscraper where you beat back an army of special forces. I played Max Payne 2 yesterday, yet my memory is a lot hazier. I can still recall some scenes: the fun house, because you visit it three times, and escorting the guy in the mascot suit, because that one’s hard to ignore. But these scenarios are a lot more pedestrian when it comes to their environments. An abandoned building is lacking a lot of drama compared to a satanic nightclub, for example.

The story stakes are higher in the original Max Payne, as well. It deals with government conspiracy and control through a drug epidemic. There are traces of those elements in the sequel, but the real conflict is “scumbags try to get rich.” A lot more appropriate for a first story than a second. I have made the game seem reserved so far, but there is evidence that Max Payne 1’s success led to a higher budget. For one thing, the sequel leans much more heavily on in-engine cutscenes and reduces the number of comic-book sequences. Despite interesting framing at times, the cutscenes are pretty unappealing by current graphical standards. The stylized panels, of course, don’t have that problem. This is also where Remedy stepped up their TV-within-the-game content, as several fake shows can be overheard throughout the game. I do think these are funny and flesh out the world to an extent. But in a game about combat momentum, I don’t always feel like staying still and waiting for the routine to end.

Max Payne 2 is shorter than the original, which many would see as a problem, but it’s a positive to me. With the game we got, it’s good that they didn’t try to overextend it. I made it through the story in an afternoon, and that’s the perfect length for the scope of story they tried to tell this time. There was no time I was angry at Max Payne 2 or felt that I could make a better game. Compared with the freshness of the original, though, I was hit with some diminishing returns. Don’t let my opinion dictate yours, though: I have a friend who called it a masterpiece. But he has some weird tastes.

What’s Next: I’m finding that I’ve taken so long to get to these games that some of them have remakes in development. I couldn’t finish Resident Evil 4 in time to beat that coming out, but at least I could for Max Payne. Next, it’s time to tackle… The Witcher. But, uh, probably don’t need a full blog post about that. I can just say “it’s janky” and you get it.