My primary criticism of this rendition of Colossal Cave Adventure, then, is that it may be almost too faithful to its own original ideas. I’m told this may be added back in later, which would be extremely welcome as I experienced some significant vertigo on the second go-around This even may come down to accessibility mechanics – my original playthrough at GDC in VR had snap turns, but they had been removed at Gamescom. There are a few small creative touches, like the trash of previous adventurers littering the entrance, the new imaginings of dwarves doing some slightly new activities or the catlike way a dragon moves, but everything I’ve been told leads me to believe this will be as 100% faithful a recreation as possible. It’s a lovely way to honor the original Colossal Cave and the spirit of exploration it invoked, even as that narration has been translated to a visual format.Īnd as far as I’m told, if you remember how to get every single treasure, you’ll likely get them all here too with little trouble. Aiming your Look icon at anything and selecting will get you the familiar, now gently voice-acted narration describing both what you’re seeing and often adding extra context clues. Just make sure you don’t actually throw any of your items off a cliff, as they’ll be gone forever.ĭespite the new format, this is still entirely the Colossal Cave Adventure that fans of the original will remember, with all the text intact thus far. There’s no sensible way anyone could carry everything otherwise, and it’s a pleasant nod to the era that came directly out of games like Colossal Cave. Colossal Cave is absolutely chocked with stuff, as item interactions make up the core of its puzzles. But after just a few moments in the cave, I’m sold on the more traditional adventure game system of icons – an eye to look and hear the narration for something, a hand to interact, and an inventory of all my junk. Hand tracking seemed that it would have been a natural fit for Colossal Cave Adventure, and yet everything is entirely aim and button presses. As someone who only rarely drags out her Valve Index anymore, moments like these remind me what I love about the technology.Īt first, I was a bit uncertain about the controls. A single blue bird perches gracefully on a branch as a beam of sunlight peeks in through the cave ceiling, close enough I can almost touch him. Deep chasms stretch into infinity beneath my feet as I slide along a narrow rock wall bats flap anxiously overhead. The Switch version appears to be running well and offers a very enticing portable option, but of the two, the VR version is understandably the more visually impressive in the way VR is able to depict the intimidating nature of the Colossal Cave itself. I’ve now had the chance to play the earliest snippet of Colossal Cave Adventure at both GDC and now at Gamescom, with two hands-on previews in VR on the Meta Quest 2 and one hands-off preview on the Nintendo Switch, for which it was just announced. So what does it mean to remake Colossal Cave in 2022? Text-based adventures have largely fallen by the wayside, so Roberta Williams and her husband Ken Williams are tackling the adventure most notably by visualizing it for the first time.
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