Expected so much more!
User Rating: 6 | The Cave PS3
"The Cave"! It could have been a contender! Developed by Ron Gilbert and Tim Shafer, two of the three creators of probably the best adventure series of all time, "Monkey Island", this game promised so much and delivered so little. The cave brings us seven characters with a little bit of back-story and a desire in their hearts. We have the Knight, the adventurer, the monk, the time traveler... well you get the picture. We then pick three characters to take into the talking cave. Yes, the cave is the guide to your adventure. The game never really explains what the cave truly is although I suppose you can call it a sort of limbo where these character are trapped. The twist is that while the tone of the game is light and playful the stories of these characters are anything but. As you progress through each character´s story you discover a dark and twisted tale and in the end you must decide if the character "learned" its lesson and repents... or not. Each character has two endings but this brings us to a problem in the game. To see both endings you must play the game twice with each character. Even worse, even with different characters some levels repeat so to get access to all endings and see every characters story you must play some puzzles six times and each characters story twice! A simple puzzle skip after the first playthrough would have solved this problem but "The Cave" is all about padding its duration! You control three characters at once and the puzzles all require tremendous amounts of backtracking and each character can only carry one object at a time so sometimes you drop something along the map as you´re trying to figure some puzzle out and later find you need it and have to go back and... its all just a tremendous grind and so very tedious. The puzzles are interesting and just difficult enough but the game decided to throw some platforming trying to mix the genres and it doesn't work very well. The movements just never feel quite right and you go up and down hundreds of ladders and ropes for what seemed like hundreds of times and sometimes you miss a jump and you die because the fall damage is ridiculous and there goes another few seconds added to the play time! C´mon!
The stories also fail. None of the characters speak or have any interaction with each other or the player. Their story is told in pictures you find while exploring the levels. Not a very compelling way to bond with the characters as you get to know them through a few jpg´s. If you chose the bad ending you get nothing except a bit of a surprise in the next playthrough. If you pick the good ending you get a final picture with a weak conclusion. It also doesn't help that every character is despicable or that their story revolves around their heinous actions! In fact the game has a serious problem in tone. The usual Ron Gilbert humor is all around, especially in the cave´s narration, with even a nod to Monkey Island and a "cameo" by a character, left unnamed in the game due to copyright but you now its him! Wont spoil it but its a blast if you are a "Monkey Island" fan. However the stories are all very twisted as is the whole cave concept so there´s a constant clash between the wacky funny lines and what the game tries to convey as a message.
You can see the potential in "The Cave". There are brief flashes of brilliance but the game just never takes off. Trying to hide how short the game is the developers hid some content beyond dull puzzle repetition and the platforming adds nothing but frustration. While the puzzles are satisfying the story behind them doesn't engage and the whole experience is at best, average. "Monkey Island" is part of my childhood and for that I thank Ron Gilbert and Tim Shafer. But also for that reason, I know they are capable of much better than "The Cave" and I cannot stop myself feeling massively disappointed!
