Adventure and infrequent saves await!

Considered by many to be one of the best 2D platform adventure games of all time, Cave Story first hit the scene as freeware back in 2004, and has since seen play on the Wii and Nintendo DSi. However, the latest and most complete iteration of the title—Cave Story+—recently hit the Mac and is available exclusively in the Mac App Store at the very reasonable price of $9.99. If you can’t get enough of classic titles like Castlevania or Metroid, you’ll definitely want to pick up this bad boy.

Cave Story+ is old-school video gaming and storytelling at its best. The gameplay, while familiar to anyone who has ever played a 2D platform title before, manages to stay fresh and challenging. Players progress by running, shooting, and jumping their way through the game’s well-designed areas.

Decisions, decisions.

The game begins with players taking on the role of a mute amnesiac named Kwōto (Quote), who wakes up to find himself in a complex maze of caves. Unable to remember who he is or how he wound up in his predicament, Kwōto escapes from the caves to find himself on a magical floating island, full of sentient rabbits, angry mushrooms, and an evil doctor due for a serious comeuppance. You’ll have the opportunity to right multiple wrongs, upgrade a growing collection of hardware, and fight your way through a wide variety of baddies. As Cave Story+ unfolds, Kwōto makes new allies, finds more powerful weapons, and slowly unravels the mysteries of who he is and what’s going on in the world around him.

Across the lengthy adventure, my only real beef with Cave Story+ was the fact that I was unable to save my progress anywhere along the way except at specified save points. Given the difficulty attached to retro-stylized genre entries like this, being able to save my progress after surviving a particularly grueling gauntlet of jumps, kills, and near misses would have saved a lot of frustration. While it doesn’t take away from the title’s tremendous gameplay, the inability to save and walk away whenever I want is a little disappointing, especially given how much consideration and care the developer gave to almost everything else in the game.

I also found that while running, jumping, and shooting felt fluid throughout Cave Story+, at times the game became an exercise in frustration, due to its controls being a little too sensitive. As any Super Mario Bros. or Bionic Commando fan will tell you, nothing can prompt a rage-quit faster than watching your character die at the hands of a twitchy interface. It’s possible, however, that I’m simply rusty after years of being spoiled by the maneuverability afforded by playing games with a mouse.

The bottom line. Quibbles about its save system and controls aside, Cave Story+ is a sprawling, pleasurable game to experience.