Game Review: The Cave

Rating: 6.5/7 Dark Secrets

The Cave is the latest game from DoubleFine, makers of Psychonauts, which is one of my favorite games, and Brutal Legend, which is not (but it's decent). It lets you delve into a mysterious sentient Cave with seven strange and darkly amusing characters.

The catch? There's more than one, actually.

For starters, you must choose three of the seven to guide through their journey, and that choice is tough considering who you are choosing from: the Knight, the Time Traveller, the Scientist, the Hillbilly, the Adventurer, the Monk, and the creepy Twins. Who you take on your journey not only determines what you can do (as each has a unique power or ability), but also determines which areas of the Cave you can access. There are both shared areas, such as the Zoo and the Gold Mine, which are experienced by all, and also character-specific areas, like the Castle, the Victorian Manor, and the Carnival.

I can probably short-circuit any qualms you might have about this choice by assuring you that the game was easily good enough to entice me to play it through three times, and thus take every character through at least once.

Every area is beautifully rendered, with an art style reminiscent of Psychonauts, albiet a bit less deranged-looking. The Voice of the Cave will also be familiar if you've played that game, as Stephen Stanton voiced Agent Sasha Nein.

My only criticism of this game is really a backhanded compliment: I wish it was longer.

There is certainly replayability -- in fact if you don't replay it at least as many times as I have, you won't even have seen all the areas -- but I would absolutely pay for some DLC if it involved new characters with their own secrets.

If you are going to judge it by a single play-through, I would highly recommend taking the tour with the Time Traveller, the Twins, and the Adventurer. Or the Scientist ... or the Knight ... The Hillbilly is fun, too. And the Monk. ... Yeah. Good luck deciding. Definitely the Time Traveller, though.

Reasonable Facsimile

Yes, I have realized my lifelong dream: warbling into a microphone and fooling a computer into believing that I can sing.

Rock Band is quite possibly the best game ever.

I will leave the drumming and guitar playing to my cohorts Full Metal Ted and Ixtililton, however -- I have no time for those aspects of the game that actually require "rhythm" or "skill."

No, instead I will use my sort of half-assed mynah bird-like ability to mimic sounds, which seems to be enough to fool Rock Band quite handily at easy and medium difficulty. This is because the game does not notice whether you actually know the words, or can even read them off of the screen. No, all you need to do is match the pitch and timing.

You could be singing in Japanese, as long as you were hitting something approximating the right notes at the right time. It even shows you what pitch you're actually singing at, relative to what you should be hitting, so you can find your note.

That is why, contrary to all logic, the hardest songs to do well on, vocals-wise, are the punk songs and the irritatingly-syncopated Aerosmith song "Train Kept A-Rollin'."

(Speaking of Aerosmith: how is it possible that this man was left off of this list? I mean, seriously.)

So, anyway, our "band," "Reasonable Facsimile," isn't exactly sweeping Rock Band off its feet (ace drumming by FMTed notwithstanding), but we have managed to score a tour bus and win a band challenge against an "evil" rock band --- a victory right out of a cheap Hollywood version of Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas (which is an obscure Jim Henson holiday classic, notable mainly for the fact that the down-homey good guys lose to the scuzzy heavy metal stylings of the Riverbottom Nightmare Band).

We specialize in songs that aren't particularly challenging, amped up to "medium" difficulty when we're feeling daring. Our manager tells us that if we want to be World Tour material or get our own private jet, we're going to need to expand our repertoire beyond Nirvana's "In Bloom" and Weezer's "Buddy Holly," but, dammit, we have to play to our fanbase.

Plus "Blitzkrieg Bop" is really, really hard to sing, for some reason.

Freeman's Mind

Even if you've never played the original Half-Life, this is a pretty funny video:

Hell Yeah!

Got my new computer working, finally, after losing my mind for a bit thinking I'd gotten a bum part or installed something incorrectly.

Finally, I can enjoy violent virtual combat in the pixel fill rate (and corresponding AA grunt), texture sampling and filtering rates it was meant to be seen in.

... Yeah, okay, I don't know what those terms mean, either, but it looks bitchin!

The Perfect Game

OK, so I finished Portal, and those of you who have already heard me go on ad nauseum about how amazing it is, you probably want to skip this post.

Portal is one of the best gaming experiences I've had, period. I feel pretty fortunate, actually, to have had some pretty spectacular luck with game purchases lately: Psychonauts, you may recall, had me raving like a fanboy at a Leia's metal bikini-themed costume contest, and Team Fortress 2 has been sucking up a lot of processing cycles on my computer (when the frigging machine isn't on the blink, that is).

One of the "negatives" in some reviews of Portal has been it's rather short running time. Though there is some replayability available via the "challenge" levels unlocked by completing the game, a reasonably good player could probably chew through the basic game in under four hours. It took me about six, I think, but I've played the entire game through again and it took me barely two hours to complete a second time.

The fact that I did play it through again is probably significant, here. I just don't do that with computer games. I can't recall a single puzzle or adventure-based game I've played through twice, with the exception of some of the Infocom text adventures from back in the days of the Reagan administration.

The reason for the replay, and for my continued enthusiasm for the game, is because, while it is eminently clever and very funny, it is also a bizarrely-touching game. You really become attached to the light, musical and extremely diabolical voice of GLaDOS, the computer in charge of the "tests" you are being put through.

The less you know about the specifics, the better, I suppose, but here is my personal plea: SOMEBODY PLAY THIS DAMN GAME SO I CAN TALK TO YOU ABOUT IT!

And play Psychonauts, too, dammit. That game is just too good to miss.

Orange Box

Got the Orange Box from Valve on Monday. Thus far, I've tried two of the games and they're both pretty nice.

Portal is a first-person puzzle game with a really evil sense of humor. I have read that it's supposed to be set in the same universe as Half-Life, but it seems a lot less grim in tone than that series. (Don't get me wrong, it's brutal, but it seems less so because you laugh pretty often.)

You play a test subject for a company called "Aperture Technologies" in what is basically a first-person shooter without any shooting (by you). Using a unique device that can create matching pairs of hole-like "portals." When you (or anything else, really) step, jump, or fall through one portal, you come out of the other one, which leads to some really bizarre situations which you kind of have to see to understand.

It's presented as a series of levels designed to test you and the portal device to destruction, but that dire scenario is somewhat lightened by truly odd announcements and encouragement from the complex's slightly deranged control computer. Messages like this, delivered in a cheery (if somewhat mental) woman's voice, made me laugh out loud while playing:

The next test includes an element of negative reinforcement. Please be aware that touching the floor in this area will result in a failing score. Followed by death.

The puzzles are challenging, but so far solvable (and I'm not really all that good at stuff like this, so it might be a bit too easy for some), and the game is really just a fun experience.

Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, involves a great deal of shooting. And explosions. And knives.

Unlike Portal, which is a "simple yet hard-to-describe" solo thinking game, TF2 is multiplayer-only, complicated, and frenetic, to say the least. That's not to imply that TF2 isn't a thinking game, though.

In TF2, you are a member of a ... well, a team, obviously. You can play one of many roles on that team, however: heavy weapons, demolitions, sniper, spy, medic, pyrotechnician (A.K.A. flamethrower guy), engineer, scout, or soldier. Each role has a unique style of play, and a team generally needs a good variety of roles represented to succeed.

Most of the scenarios involve facing off against another team in a battle to control certain locations, either taking and holding territory, assaulting defended positions, or defending against assault. It's very fast-paced and violent, but, like Portal, TF2 has a unique sense of humor that really works.

The character archetypes each have their own voices and personality, and the game has many moments that sort of blur between action movie standards and professional sports. For instance, when you die (as you do very, very often), the camera zooms in on a freeze-frame of the enemy who did the deed, complete with dramatic music and the offer to take a screenshot for posterity.

When someone takes you out several times in a row, the game makes note of that fact, declaring them your "nemesis" of the moment, and, if they continue to kick your ass, it starts letting everybody know. This can be a little irritating if you're really getting shut down, but I think on balance it is a good thing for one reason: it makes it unnecessary for other players to do a lot of their own taunting, saving you from hearing "pwnt!" and other standards of FPS braggadocio over and over again from semi-literate twitch gamers. Believe me, that is a net positive.

The bottom line is that TF2 is fun as hell, and really well designed. I had a lot of fun with almost every class (though I have yet to try engineer.) The spy was a bit too tricky for me to play without getting irritated, but I think it's one of the more demanding classes, skill-wise. My favorite by far were the sniper (for obvious reasons) and, surprisingly, the medic. This is probably because people are genuinely thankful when a medic comes to their aid. It lets them shine, keeps them alive in the face of enemy fire, and can really make a difference.

I'm going to have to try the third game in the box (Half-Life 2: Episode 2) soon, but I think Portal and TF2 are going to be getting a lot more attention first.

A Different Take

I don't own an XBox, and have only played Halo (2, I think) once. That said, this is a very effective and cool ad that doesn't feature any game footage at all. For a commercial, it has some pretty nice acting, too.

Meet the Team

A very funny series of trailers for Team Fortress 2. I will buy this game.

Psychonauts

Well, I finished Psychonauts, and I have to say that it's one of the best video games I've ever played. It's certainly up there with Planescape: Torment, Star Control 2, and Baldur's Gate 2.

Like all the best games (and fiction, for that matter), Psychonauts is all about story, character, and imagination. You take on the role of Razputin, a boy who ran away from the circus because he wanted to attend the Whispering Wood Psychic Summer Camp and become a Psychonaut (basically a mentalist super agent).

Though Raz is a standout student from the start, all is not well at Whispering Wood. The camp is built on the site of an ancient metorite impact that infused the area with "psitanium" -- an element that has strange effects on psychic powers and on the region's wildlife. But that much, at least, is well-known to the staff of the camp.

Less well known is the fact that a mysterious creature haunts nearby Lake Oblongata and the surrounding woods. Mysterious things start happening in the camp, accompanied by strange dreams heavily involving meat products.

It's kind of hard to describe without giving a lot away.

It suffices to say, however, that Raz is in for a hell of an adventure, both in the real world and, later, within the minds of half a dozen or more people, each of whom has serious issues.

It's within these minds that the game's incredible imagination really stands out. Each mental world is totally unique, with its own hazards, sights, and meaning, and all of it is infused with a fantastically weird sense of humor.

The brains behind Psychonauts belong to Tim Schafer, whose previous endeavors include Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle (all for LucasArts). I've only played Full Throttle, but I know that the mention of Grim Fandango is enough to make people who played it sit up and take notice.

Gameplay-wise, it's pretty solid. The only real issue is the learning curve, which has a couple of very irritating spikes in an otherwise mellow field. I've heard the last few levels described as "like childbirth, only more painful," but, hell, if I managed to finish it, it can't be that tough. However, I understand that the PS2 port of the game was very sketchy, control-wise, making the difficult parts particularly frustrating. The PC version is tough, but certainly doable.

Though the game came out in 2005, it's still available through Steam on the PC side (and for only $20). The title is officially "out of print," however, so finding it for a console (or finding a hard copy for those who despise Steam) may be a bit difficult.

It's certainly worth it, though. I actually watched the entire credit roll and then downloaded the BINK video player just so I could watch a lot of the cutscenes again after finishing the game.

Playing: Psychonauts

This game has crazed genius written all over it. I'll post a full review when I'm finished, but a sample is in order. So far I have:

• Learned to light bears on fire with my brain.
• Watched a slideshow of a chicken's plans for world domination.
• Fought a running battle against mental censors around all six sides of a cubist's imagination.
• Impersonated a street repair worker and a gardener.
• Attended a euro-style techno dance party so I could get my levitation merit badge.
• Punched a six foot steak.
• Participated in a scavenger hunt.
• Summoned my mentor with a slice of bacon.

And I'm avoiding mentioning any of the really weird stuff...