Ok so I was a little bored and decided I'd finally get around to trying out Cave Story, a sidescrolling shooter freeware game. Even though freeware is usually obscure, like Yume Nikki, Cave Story is surprisingly well known, and is even getting ported to Nintendo's Wii Ware to be sold.

Basically Cave Story is like mixing gameplay elements from the early Metroid games and Megaman, needless to say, its extremely fun. It captures the addictive simplicity of these old platform/exploring/shooters, as you solve platform puzzles, shoot down enemies, fight bosses, and level up weapons. Cave story manages to prevent these elements from getting repetitive and boring, by increasing the difficulty, having non-linear style gameplayer, and mixing things up with new weapons at the right times. It can get a little hard if your not used to this style game (it made me wish I had a NES controller for some of the boss fights, its so much more natural feeling than a keyboard)

The story easily matches the same caliber as the gameplay. You start out in a cave (who would have guessed Cave Story would have caves?), without any knowledge of what's going on. Slowly as you progress through the game, you begin to learn more about yourself, the world around you, and wtf is going on. I won't really get too much into this, as it kind of ruins the point of the game. I will say there are multiple choices throughout the game that will lead to different events and different endings. You'll have to play through multiple times to see everything, and even then there's still bound to be secrets hidden around. There have even been some fans wishing for an anime style story to go along with the games, although I disagree, but I won't deny a new Cave Story sequel or prequel that once again set us in this world would be pretty ownage.

The music matches the gameplay perfectly. I had to download the sound track. My favorite was the actual theme song. I was just playing through the game, climbing up walls, shooting flying cats who were bombarding me with what appeared to be sperm-like projectiles. I walk through to the next zone, the Cave Story Theme started to play, and I just sat there listening to it (even though you can hear it on the opening screen, it was just much cooler in game). In fact I'm listening to it right now. The music was popular enough to garner fan attention, and inspire a remix project.

Some people may choose to criticize the graphics, but those people don't know what the hell they are talking about (I think Penn has something to tell them.). I can't believe people are criticizing the graphics on this one. Remaking the sprites would detract from the very soul of the game. it would be like taking the original Legend of Zelda on the NES and trying to paste the SNES Link to the Past graphics over the game.

Overall this is an excellent game, better and a lot more fun than some of the things people actually pay for, so check it out (here).