Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Cave Story sur (3)DS.

En 2004, après 5 ans de développement en solo, si on en croit la légende, Pixel offrait au Web Cave Story, ce que je considère personnellement comme le point de départ du jeu indé moderne. Un retour au sources graphiques et de gameplay à quelque-chose à cheval entre NES et SuperNES. Noël dernier, Je reçois de mon frère une surprise épatante: une version boîte de Cave Story 3D!

Built by a single person in 5 years, looking retro but with stunning gameplay and intriguing story revealed as you play, it turned famous and praised by the Web. I'm tempted to consider it the root of the current indie game fashion. It was surprising succesful for a 2D game 2 years before New Super Mario Bros. It is the game that made me realize that I could build Bilou's Adventure the way we dreamt it back in '94 and the look wouldn't matter if it was done right. Yes, I'm talking about Cave Story.

Somewhat 7 years later, Cave Story -- initially free on Windows -- is available on most video game consoles as official games. Sometimes as downloadable game, and sometimes as a real cartridge, like with the 3DS remake I received this Christmas. Surprised it took me so long to blog about it ?

Il a été assez difficile de m'y mettre: comparé à un Super Mario, Cave Story est un jeu exigeant de la patience, et vu mon niveau, il faut réessayer et encore réessayer. L'inertie forte du personnage combinée au pad-champignon mou et aux plate-formes miniatures d'un bloc de large mettent ma dextérité à mal. Du coup, je peux difficilement me permettre des parties de 10-15 minutes à côté de ma fille. Elle va me mettre la pression parce que j'échoue et au final, le jeu aura déterioré l'état de mes nerfs au lieu de l'améliorer. Inacceptable pour un Super Papa Bros.

Nowadays, when I play some game, it's usually as a way to entertain my kids that's also fun and relaxing for me. Something between reading a book (which I do too, even excerpts of D. Eddings, J.K. Rowling or J.RR. Tolkien) and letting them watch a cartoon... That works well with Rayman (because I know the game) or Mario (because it's designed not to trap you), but it was not working with Cave Story 3D. So I'm playing the game only in the evening, and not progressing as fast as usual.


Côté graphisme, on sent bien que le studio Nicalis n'a pas lésiné lors du portage, mais on perd malheureusement beaucoup en lisibilité de la situation. Le gameplay -- autrefois précis et nerveux -- devient flou et approximatif.

The visuals are appealing for sure. Revamped to the bones so that it works well with the stereoscopic screen although the level maps were completely flat. Not much room to move the player between front and back planes. So instead, the depth is used so that you know which part of the 3D world can be walked on, and which part is just decorative. And this is where we lost most of the requirements for fast-paced action.

Comparé à l'original, plus de séparation des plans sur base des couleurs. La seule chose qui peut véritablement servir d'indice, c'est la profondeur. Le hic, c'est qu'en mode 3D, la lecture est encore un peu plus complexe avec les effets de reflet et la nécessité de régler avec précision l'angle de vue.


It is quite hard to focus on encounters with monsters when you have to guess which platform you can land on. It gets even tighter when some sand ground hides monsters and you barely distinguish the sand from the regular ground.

Au passage, il y a moyen de choisir entre nouveaux modèles 3D (normal mode?) et stretching pathétique des sprites d'origine sur des textures à plat (story mode), ce qui ne donne vraiment pas de bons résultats lorsque le moteur décide de zoomer sur les personnages dans certains couloirs.

J'apprécie par contre le respect apporté à la bande son originale.

Definitely, for one expecting to play "the real cave story with real buttons on the go", Cave Story 3DS will be disappointing. The musics have been kept quite original. I'm not 100% convinced that the "classic" mode where you play with scaled sprites over the 3D world works much better than playing with the 3D models. In some levels, it gives a nice "original" feeling, but in other levels, where the camera zoom in to keep some secrets away, artifacts of pixel-art-to-texture conversion ruin the experience.

Autorisez moi une petite soirée de nostalgie sur le projet de Ravenworks qui aura dû s'effacer au moment du premier portage de Nicalis sur Wii (iirc).


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