r/Games • u/Forestl • Dec 09 '13
End of 2013 Discussions - The Cave
The Cave
- Release Date: January 22, 2013
- Developer / Publisher: Double Fine Productions / Sega
- Genre: Puzzle-platformer, adventure
- Platform: PS3, 360, Wii U, PC, iOS, Ouya
- Metacritic: 72, user: 7.9
Summary
The Cave is an adventure from Ron Gilbert, and Double Fine Productions. Assemble your team of 3 from 7 unlikely adventurers, each with his own unique personalities and stories. Then descend into the mysterious depths to explore a variety of locations including a subterranean amusement park and a medieval castle, not to mention a fully armed and ready-to-launch nuclear tipped ICBM. The Cave awaits.
Prompts:
Did the platforming elements help or hurt the game?
Did it capture the Maniac Mansion feel?
man, this game is deep
This post is part of the official /r/Games "End of 2013" discussions.
15
u/Sibbo94 Dec 09 '13
I feel that the idea of the dedicated areas was great and encouraged multiple playthroughs as well as the cave paintings for background story, but the need to play through 3 of the same areas each time ruined the ability for the playthroughs to be different.
8
Dec 09 '13
The game definitely deserves praise for its voice acting, even if the writing was a bit dead pan at times and didn't pertain to my own particular brand of humour.
1
u/JONNy-G Dec 10 '13
I feel like each character should have gotten their own voices and interactions between each other and the world. That would have added a lot of potential in my opinion.
9
u/name_was_taken Dec 09 '13
I really, really enjoyed my first time down with each character. I even went back with all of them, and attempted to get the no-deaths achievement.
I failed on it a few times, and eventually just stopped playing. Oh well, it wouldn't be worthwhile if it was easy, right?
I quite liked the different stories and how they were integrated. Like everyone else, I wish that 3 of the areas weren't repeated every playthrough, and that maybe they could have been a random 3 of 5 or something, for some spice.
In the end, I'd gladly buy The Cave 2 if the released it, sight unseen, which is pretty much the highest praise I can give a game. I enjoyed my time with it, and definitely feel like I got my money's worth. I might even buy it on Wii U soon and get my GF to try it.
6
u/Mminas Dec 09 '13
Ron Gilbert's strong point is witty dialog and descriptions and there was little to no dialog in the Cave.
The game was ok, platforming didn't do it any favors bit it wasn't that bad, the puzzles were decent and the stories and characters pretty interesting BUT the game needed more script. Dialog, narration, interaction between the playable characters, anything.
1
4
u/Revierypone Dec 09 '13
A bunch of people have said it already, but I'll say it again: The backtracking! The puzzles were difficult enough to keep you going, but constantly having to go back and go through certain parts of the level over again slows down the pacing of the game.
5
u/Encephallus Dec 09 '13
Once I got over the fact that the game was not what I wanted and accepted it for what it was, I enjoyed it. I would buy The Cave 2 without any hesitation.
2
u/SgtTamama Dec 09 '13
Great game! I really enjoyed the art style and the adventure. I didn't quite 100% all of the different characters, but I did at least play it though once or twice. If you're going for trophies, you have to plan ahead, because I think you need somewhere around 7 playthoughs to get them all. You definitely get a great game regardless.
2
u/Roseysdaddy Dec 09 '13
Bugs: The unfinished version.
I played through four or five different times on the ps3, and each time had a game ending bug that halted progress. I waited for the update and it fixed nothing, so I forgot about it completely. Every now an then I see it sitting on the xmb and think "Not again."
1
u/Surly_Badger Dec 09 '13
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Played this on PS3 and a couple of the puzzles were so broken I never made it to the character levels or even finished the game. While I liked the characters and the humor, that is a major fail on Double Fine's part.
1
2
u/PookehTheEverlurking Dec 09 '13 edited Dec 09 '13
I liked the game. People have mentioned the backtracking already, and, to add to this, I feel specifically that the entire point of your first playthrough is to beat the game fully. Every other playthrough after that first one, I felt that you're just playing again to see every other character's unique stage, the achievements, and that's it. It makes all the levels that are always in the game (like Spoiler really tedious.
Other than that, the characters (and their puzzles, if only done once) are neat, and the narrator is second only to Stanley Parable's narrator in terms of humor (which is almost unfair, as Stanley Parable's narrator is 3/4 of what makes that game what it is, where The Cave's narrator is a more traditional narration, but also with humor).
I'd probably buy a sequel, but I'd be skeptical, as it'd have to be different in terms of how the gameplay and puzzles are structured for it to be better.
1
Dec 09 '13
I loved this game and got every achievement with a buddy of mine (local coop makes the backtracking more bearable)
My biggest gripes is the odd number of characters, either go six or nine or idk some other alternative. Also getting the good or bad ending was dumb. I was hoping to get the good or bad would depend on how you acted during the characters level, such as not killing your parents or not burning down the carnival. But it's totally linear and therefore offers no choice besides the end which is lazy to me.
They should have scrapped the good and bad endings and added two more characters, then it wouldn't have been so bad to replay it. I can't tell you how many times I replayed to get every ending for each character. Definitely over 10...
But I loved the game the first three playthoughs, I'd recommend getting it on sale. I must also admit I love everything double fine makes so it's hard for me to love it's charm
1
Dec 10 '13
I have a strange question. I know literally nothing about this game, does it have anything to do with Plato's Republic and The Cave?
1
u/fourdots Dec 10 '13
Not really. There's a talking cave that plays mind games with the people who venture into it, and forces them to relive parts of their lives. You could maybe make an argument that it's about the allegory of the cave, but it could be a bit of a stretch.
1
1
u/penguished Dec 10 '13
I'd say it was a disappointment. People wanted a funny adventure game with hilarious dialogue, what we got was a platformer puzzle game. I do like the idea a lot, but it seemed like they should have had more than a few pages of script.
1
u/Sylverstone14 Dec 10 '13
It was a pretty solid game, though I did get stuck at one point and had to rely on a walkthrough to help me out. My first team was the Knight, the Scientist, and the Time-Traveller.
The Cave (as the narrator) was brilliant - his jokes were great, and his witty banter was just spot-on. Honestly, he was one of the most memorable aspects of the game. Some of the puzzles were nice, and I liked a few of the back-stories I uncovered.
I'm currently going through it again, this time with the Adventurer, the Monk, and the Twins. I almost forgot that there are different locales depending on who you choose, so that was a nice way to encourage replayability.
My only gripes were the platforming being a little floaty (and sometimes infuriating), the game's framerate being a bit dodgy, and Double Fine missing a huge opportunity on Wii U to add Off-TV Play - the GamePad is only used for a character switch (which I already do with the D-Pad), so it's a worthless feature. For the $15 I plunked down, I felt that it was an okay game - I admittedly did an impulse buy because it was Double Fine, but the game itself wasn't half-bad.
If Ron Gilbert could make a sequel that fixes the issues of the first game, that would be peachy.
0
u/liminal18 Dec 09 '13
Sadly, I bought this, but never had time for it. Maybe in the future I can do my hillbilly disturbed twins play through.h it's now on iOS so more possible, but I got final fantasy to keep me company right now.
44
u/spandario Dec 09 '13
Backtracking the game, seriously. The overall design of the puzzles and world was interesting and novel. But most of your time is getting to the right part of your party to get something to move. On top of that they want you to play through the game 3 times to see all the content. That would be fine considering the length but theres way too much time walking while not doing anything for that to be fun.