It’s exactly the way to find out what puzzle adventures are like. So, if you’re curious about the past, you’ll be happy to know Colossal Cave looks, feels, and plays old. On the other hand, Roberta Williams made Colossal Cave 3D with the intent of catering to a specific crowd of gamers. But there’s more copy-paste gameplay that might just be a far worse thing to do in today’s age than lowballing the graphics. I feel that if there was more to mull over in the new game, it would have been easier to be forgiving of thwarting the graphics. Consequently, Colossal Cave becomes its own worst enemy, with the remake struggling to find its place in 2023. Though let’s not forget, Colossal Cave ’s recipe comes from a years-gone-by experience. A neat aspect of the original is randomness and deception, case in point is the frustatingly instant death gameplay that is, in no way, your fault, but oh well. Instead, the gameplay infuses emotion and thought into solving the puzzles, thus keeping you engaged throughout the playthrough. It’s not just an instructional guide about where to go and what to do. Most of all, Colossal Cave masters the art of wordplay. This is especially true for the original puzzler, which quickly rose to prominence as a key influencer in the puzzle games we know today. I'm not, in any way, advocating for remakes to deconstruct their predecessors and create something entirely new. Or, frustrating mazes that, oddly enough, were pointed out by fans before the remake was made. You’ll find dwarves jumping out of the ground without warning and killing you. Unfortunately, Colossal Cave fails to iron out some of this annoying, outdated gameplay. Unless it’s a Souls-like game, in which even Souls-like games have a way out of puzzling mazes and difficult boss fights, elements like instant death and mazes-that-lead-nowhere should just be a thing of the past. This is to be expected, especially since old-school gaming was notorious for it. In the original, gameplay aspects like instant death and mazes-that-lead-nowhere were commonplace. The visuals aren’t helpful, the background details are inaccurate, and the overall environment is nowhere near pleasing to the eye. Otherwise, merely using the visuals will get you nowhere. It feels like you have to rely on the narration to locate certain objects or at least get a hint of where they might be. With the only major difference being the transformation of text into graphics, it’s quite disappointing when the new environment feels difficult to navigate. However, 2023’s Colossal Cave now seems to over-rely on the original’s success. So, perhaps, it makes sense to still want to have it read exactly the same by an optional narrator. In retrospect, the original text adventure game was so inviting and creative. Otherwise, all other aspects of the original gameplay remain exactly the same. The only alteration the remake receives is the rendering of the original text into graphics. It’s lackluster, with the low budget allocated toward the remake evidently bursting at the seams. The graphics, though in 3D, just don’t feel at par with what today’s gaming hardware is capable of. And, in that regard, Colossal Cave falls short. Especially when there are a ton of games right now with jaw-dropping visuals, you literally feel like you’re transported into a world different from your own. However, let’s not kid ourselves that graphics alone will cut it. The text from before is now transformed into something you can actually see (rather than visualize). Colossal Cave is now a fully three-dimensional game. Now, that’s interesting a graphic adventure game is the “it” thing these days. You may reminisce about the old days, but it’s pretty debatable whether anyone would want to spend more than a few hours on a text-based adventure game from 1976.įortunately, Colossal Cave introduces up-to-date graphics to the remake. So many years have passed that have each catapulted gaming to new heights. On one hand, gamers have outgrown the old. Out with the Old…Īttempting to remake an old-school classic can go either way. Overall, it’s a game that marries discovery, puzzles, and randomness into one fulfilling adventure. To help you on your quest, text puzzles pop up, hinting toward an item you could collect or where to locate treasures that you must return to a house at the start of the game. Along with physical barriers, Colossal Cave features enemies like trolls, bears, snakes, dwarves (seven, of course), and pirates that want you dead. But if you don’t, 2023’s Colossal Cave is yet another attempt at reincarnating the titular Colossal Cave with its meandering mazes and caverns that serve as obstacles to your progress. Or perhaps the 1980s remake that still causes a stir in gaming. You may already know the 1976 classic text adventure game by the same name.
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