Rock, Paper, Shotgun

By Nathan Grayson on May 25th, 2012 at 11:00 am.

I recently got to see Ron Gilbert’s latest slice of adventure platformer mania, The Cave, in action. It was pretty great. I mean, characters walked and jumped and moved - as though propelled ever onward by the invisible hand of fate or the very visible hand of someone holding a controller. You should’ve been there. But since you weren’t, I desperately struggled to find a way to best relay that experience back to you. At first, my preview was a bunch of screenshot cut-outs glued to popsicle sticks, and then I fiddled with tiny felt finger puppets. Alas, however, it just wasn’t the same. But then Double Fine released this trailer. Madness, I thought. How could a mere video beat the fully 3D, impossibly high-def and immersive experience of a finger puppet? But you know what? It sort of works. Given time, these things might even catch on.

So yeah, that’s what The Cave looks like in motion. The trailer’s obviously too brief to give an in-depth idea of what puzzles are like, but the variety of locations on display is promising. Also, I think I can somewhat safely say The Cave has the best Hillbilly physics in the history of our young-ish medium.

Really, though, it’s incredibly impressive how much movement improves the visual appeal of this game. I mean, I like a sumptuous eye candy feast as much as the next person, but fidelity only goes so far. Once animation finally catches up, though, so long, Uncanny Valley. So then, more of this, please?