Review: The Cave

Created by Ron Gilbert, of Monkey Island fame, The Cave is an interesting game filled with dark humor and puzzles.  The game starts with the player selecting three characters from a set of seven, each with their own backstory and unique ability.  Once you have selected your three characters, you explore The Cave to try to resolve the character's moral choice.  The Cave is made up of a series of puzzle areas: four major ones you will go through no matter which characters you choose, a couple minor puzzles, and three puzzle areas based on which characters you have selected.  At the end of all this, you'll find yourself back at the beginning where you get to see how the character's story ends.  You actually get to decide if it's a good or bad ending, which I was not aware of until I had already beaten the game with all the characters once with the bad ending.

The whole game is beautifully narrated and almost every line is some joke or ominous foreshadowing (a lot like the story in the Deathspank series).  The puzzles themselves are interesting the first time you solve them.  Some require all three characters to work as a team, some require a character's special ability, some are just made easier with the special abilities.  The downside of the game is that if you want to see everything, you have to beat the game at least six times with the majority of the game not changing and (I still don't understand how this happens nowadays) with unskippable cinematic bits.  So the first time through The Cave is 100% fun and awesome.  The second time through is roughly 42.9% awesome since you have already done the four major shared puzzles before.  The third time through is 14.3% awesome since you are now only seeing one new area.  For the remaining three playthroughs, the only difference is the ending you get based on the choice you make at the very very end.  I've already mentioned how much I hate backtracking, so you can imagine that this doesn't go over so well with me.  On the plus side, it did allow me to watch Netflix on my laptop while playing the game because I didn't have to pay attention that much, so at least I was getting two things on my mental checklist done at once...if you're not a completionist and the game is on sale for like $10 or so, I would highly recommend this.  If you really like dark comedy and puzzles and don't mind a little backtracking, I would also recommend this.  If you enjoy doing speed runs and trying to cut down the length of a playthrough to as short a time as possible, this would be a lot of fun, too.  If none of those apply, I'd probably avoid it.