Kaust

'Where are we going, father?'

Kaust is ecstatic. He holds his father's hand tightly, eyes wide with a forgotten light. It is the first time he's seen the sun and its bright skies. Skies filled with strangely shaped clouds, beautiful. His father warns him again to not look at the sun, and Kaust nods, tearing his gaze away to the path before them. The road is paved with little black rocks like home, but the rocks glint in the sunlight, creating some kind of new cheer in them. They lightly dig into his feet, and he giggles at their touch. They even feel different out here, like the fresh air is cleaning them up.

They set off, and Kaust takes a quick glance back at home. He can barely see the entrance, embedded in the cliff that they'd climbed down - the only indicator that it is there is the trail of black stones leading up the wall to it. With another laugh, he looks at his father. The man's grey hair hangs past his eyes, and his wispy mustache droops at the corner. He doesn't look back at Kaust.

'Where are we going, father?'

'You'll see,' his father says, a sternness in his voice that Kaust recognises, duly silencing him. He returns his attention to the world around him, marveling at each sight. Plains of tall green plants - grass, I think it's called - stretch out for miles, their blades rustling lightly in the breeze. And that breeze! He feels it cool on his bare arms, feels it lightly brushing his hair across his shoulders.

Past the miles of grass, cliffs rise in the distance, fully surrounding everything. He can't see what is at the top of their peaks, but he can see how the rocks fragment the further up they go, become more pointed at the top. A sharp black rock pokes his foot as he walks.

'Why don't we live here, father?'

His father does not respond.

'Father?'

'Kaust, please.'

Kaust tilts his head, curious at the crack in his father's voice. His heart is racing with an energy he does not know, and a thousand more questions dance on his tongue - how does the grass grow, what's on top of the cliffs, why do we live in the caves - but he says nothing. For the first time, alongside that energy, a tiny, worried caress pokes at his heart. Something about his father's face makes Kaust shudder. When his father had woken him, Kaust had seen it then as well, but the sun had been enough to wash that away.

But now, that rush of excitement is gone, and he finds himself looking at the ground, biting his lip. The black stones still give him cheerful look,s and he smiles at them. His father isn't the same man out here, but Kaust still knows the stones.

After a lot of walking, they reach another cliff, with another path of black stones embedded in the side of it. His father gives him a lift, and Kaust starts climbing. Again, he marvels at the sight from up here, the grass shifting further below in a dance with the wind. Eventually what feels like a hundred feet up, he reaches the entrance. He hesitates before the dark cave, turning to look again at the cliffs and plains, feeling the breeze.

'In you go, Kaust,' his father calls from below him. Kaust looks down. His father hasn't moved, still standing at the base, surrounded by grass, with his hands around his mouth. Kaust giggles.

'You look so small, father!'

'Yes, I know!' his father calls back. Kaust can just about make out a smile. 'But you must keep going, son. I love you.'

Kaust squirms at the overly affectionate language. The other boys often make fun of him for his father's behaviour. 'You too,' he says half-heartedly and, with one last look at the outside, heads into the cave.

It's pitch black inside. He palms the wall to feel the route with the black stones - the paths are always flat, so he need only walk forward, but it is a habit he's found it difficult to break. After a minute, he sees light up ahead, faint and flickering, more like that he knows. What am I doing here, he wonders. I don't want to be here. I want mother.

But his feet carry him forward anyway - it wouldn't do to go back and disappoint father. He takes a deep breath and carries on, moving closer to the light. It grows, and he can see that the tunnel expands into a larger room. A hooded figure emerges from it and into the tunnel. They hold a wooden staff in one hand like the Seers, but this figure's cloak is red, and they wear a black mask with no expression. As Kaust approaches, they hold their hand out him. He looks at the hand, pale and boney, then at the blank mask.

'Do not fret, Kaust,' the figure says, their voice feminine, clear like a droplet of water in an empty room. 'Join me.'

Father wants me here, Kaust thinks, and takes the woman's hand. He shivers at her touch, feeling the bones through her skin, and they walk into the room.

The Void is in here. Kaust's eyes are locked onto it, watching its liquid bubble, then pop into waves that crash into itself. It sits in a basin in the middle of the room, with black stones risen high around it. Waves of the Void threaten to push over the stones.

Two other hooded figures are in the room, standing on either side of the Void. They step back now, tapping their staves on the ground. The first woman turns to Kaust.

'You may remove your garments, Kaust.'

Kaust blushes, hesitant, but she shows no indication of jest. He does as he's told, and one of the figures takes his clothes to a corner of the room.

'We are ready to begin,' one of them says, a woman also, her voice the same. The first woman nods, and takes Kaust by the hand again. His stomach knots.

'Why am I here?' he blurts out. The woman walks forward, leading him to the Void. His feet stay locked in place.

'Come now, Kaust. Think of what you are doing for your friends. For your father.'

That's right. For father, Kaust thinks. He wouldn't want to hear that his son had been too scared. If he backs down now ... Kaust doesn't want to even imagine the beating he'd get.

Kaust steps forward, wary of the Void lapping near his feet. The woman lets go of his hand, and the three of them tap their staves on the ground. They start murmuring nonsense - we explore, we repent, we forgive. Kaust feels his legs wobbling, then shakes himself, forcing himself to stay upright.

The Void takes shape. A claw of black rises out of it, and then another joins it, both of them dripping swathes of black liquid. It stretches its sharp fingers out as if yawning, then focuses on Kaust. With soft movements like a hunter on its prey, it advances.

It's too much. Kaust screams, then turns and runs, back down the tunnel, back out to the wind, back out to the cliffs, his father, his home, his bed-

The Void grabs him by the chest and he screams louder. It drags him backwards through the air, droplets of black liquid flying through the air with him. He sees the blank expressions of the figures. And he can see the wind itself, and its touch on the Sun, so bright above him.

Then the Void pulls him in, and he feels only the Void as it pulls, pulls, pulls.

A Non-Standard Threeday

We are one, so we are free.

Individuality is sin.

My life and death are always ours.

Never aspire, never seek betterment.

Never doubt the Light that guides.

Believe in the Light and we will ascend.

Twoday, Lunch Phase One, 06:00

The Twenty Nine swayed silently, the bedding taut around her neck. Her lips had gone blue. Her hands hung limply by her side, the nails chipped and bloody.

Poppy looked at the girl, frowning. I’m missing lunch for this, she thought. She turned and picked up the ladder. The bedding had been tied around one of the rafters and the Twenty Nine’s weight had tightened the knot. Poppy had been provided with some scissors for the job. They made short work of the knot. The Twenty Nine fell a few feet and sprawled out on the floor. Poppy winced at the sudden noise.

She unwrapped the bedding from the girl’s neck and put in the laundry chute. The girl’s throat was bruised purple with bloody gouge marks from where she’d clawed at it. Poppy lifted the girl in each arm, glad that she was young. Having to drag someone her own size would have wasted more time.

The supervisor thanked her as she deposited the Twenty Nine at the Recyclers. Poppy glanced at her tablet. Twenty minutes wasted already. She gritted her teeth and hurried to the canteen. The queue was pretty short thanks to her lateness. She looked around the silent room, trying to spot Rei. She hesitated for a heartbeat as something caught her eye. She glanced out the window.

Her stare was caught by a red eye with bulging veins trapped in the fog.

Poppy put her head down and continued walking. She filed into line, heart racing. She had already sinned. She had seen what she had seen.

If anyone else had noticed, they weren’t making a show of it. Doubt. A new word to her, it nestled inside her brain, an unwanted guest. She didn’t dare look out the window again to confirm what she had seen. She was already risking too much by letting such a word invade her privacy.

Poppy took her meat from the machine and got a table by herself. It was hard to hold cutlery in her thick gloves. It was much colder today than usual. Even with her hands covered, she could feel it biting her wrists. Maybe that was why …

She glanced back out the window. The white fog was absolute as usual. She studied her food, biting her lip. Who did she doubt? Life, or herself? Maybe she was going crazy. Like the Twenty Nine, or that Sixty Two who had claimed to have actually seen the Light. That was the kind of stuff that scared Poppy.

Her breathing was shaky. She forced herself to calm down. It was fine. All she had to do was stay silent. And she was good at doing that. Hopefully it would slip from her memory soon. That eye in the fog.

She slapped herself as punishment. A few people stared at her then turned back to their meals. She shovelled food into her mouth as fast as she could, cursing internally. What was she thinking, admitting what she had seen out there? No, no, she had to stop thinking about it. Focus on something else. Anything else.

‘Hi, Poppy!’

The canteen’s silence was broken by Rei, the bubbly Fourteen. Rei sat down opposite her sporting her default cheerful grin.

‘Oh. Hi, Rei.’

‘What’s got you down in the dumps, ey? The cold? Well, that’s got most people down, but not Rei!’ Rei tapped her head twice then wolfed down her meat. Poppy rolled her eyes but smiled despite herself.

‘Yeah, the cold’s killing me. You’d think we’d be used to it.’

‘You just gotta move a bit, girl!’ Rei said gleefully, pretending to run on the spot. ‘No wonder you’re freezing when you’re as still as a statue!’

Poppy nodded without really listening. She ate her food in silence as Rei rattled on about her morning’s low Errand Score. Poppy found her gaze drifting to the window but she quickly wrestled it back.

Twoday, Errand Two, 07:00

She was distracted during her second Errand in the Lab. Once, one of her rats escaped - there’d been a large commotion chasing it down but even then, every time she blinked, she saw the eye. That eye, unblinking amongst the fog, pressed right up to the glass. And then it was gone? She shouldn’t have looked back. The eye alone could be explained - the corpse of someone who had escaped.

Escaped? she thought nervously, distracted from her work. Escaped from what? What are these words?

She didn’t even hear her supervisor’s whistle at the end of the shift. Everyone around her began shuffling out while she continued working numbly.

‘Poppy!’

Poppy’s eyes widened a bit. The supervisor’s robotic voice cut through her daze. She walked over to him, taking deep breaths, consoling herself. It was shaking its head and the helmet’s eyes were turned to blue for disappointment.

‘Poppy. This is your average Errand Score.’ It held up a tablet and jabbed a finger at the screen. ‘Three point four three. Already below average but still safe. And this,’ it said, moving the finger down the screen, ‘is your Errand Score today.’

Two point nought four. She gulped.

‘Do you think this is acceptable, Poppy?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘You won’t get paid for this shift, Poppy. You understand?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘You are aware of the consequences.’

‘Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir.’

The helmet’s eyes switched to green.

‘Good,’ it said. ‘Never doubt the Light that guides.’

‘Never doubt the Light that guides.’

Twoday, Sleep Phase, 19:37

Poppy struggled to sleep that night. This was serious. An Errand Score that low was disastrous. Two point nought four … anything below a two was enough to kill her. She’d just barely survived by the skin of her teeth and even then, the score was likely to send her average plummeting. Anything below a three was a trip to the Recyclers as well.

So why couldn’t she stop thinking about that eye in the fog?

She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles and ground her teeth. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She shouldn’t have hesitated. Shouldn’t have looked back. Should just keep her head forward. It was that simple. Sin. Sin prodded her, laughing as it did so. So stupid. If she just did nothing, she couldn’t regret anything.

But that regret … she couldn’t let go. These alien words in her head. Doubt. Escape. Sin. Why did they feel so welcome? They’d settled so quickly like they belonged there. And with that, the word ‘Doubt’ just grew and grew. These things had been hidden from her. What else was hidden?

There was something else, something gnawing at her. This was …

Feeling?

Threeday, Wake Up Phase, 00:00

She didn’t remember drifting off but the alarm woke her all the same. She stretched and tapped her bedside tablet to check her routine. Today was a new day. Besides, she had to lift that average up. She couldn’t afford to waste time with all of the new guests in her head.

Threeday, Errand One, 01:00

It was a standard Threeday which meant Recyclers first. She filed in with the other Fifteens to the familiar screams. She hated the Recyclers for that. The boiler room was loud, too, but at least it was a consistent volume. It was hard to get set into a proper pattern at the Recyclers what with every new package bringing its own brand of screams. She hated the Uncooperatives most of all.

Poppy took a seat at her work station and pulled the lever to let the first package in. He appeared behind a one-way glass window in front of her, pushed forward on a conveyor belt. He was completely naked but for shackles around his wrists and ankles. He was slightly overweight and losing hair. He was old too, at least seventeen or eighteen. She flicked a switch, the conveyor belt stopped. She raised the microphone.

‘Read the sign on the wall and obey the instructions,’ she said diligently.

He screamed.

She rolled her eyes. Another “U”. ‘This is your final warning,’ she said. ‘Read the sign on the wall and obey the instructions.’

She fiddled at the controls. A large taser appeared from the wall, flickering with electricity. He looked at it then at the glass. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

‘Please,’ he begged, ‘I don’t deserve this. I don’t-’

The taser shocked him. He convulsed without a sound before crumpling to the floor, hair standing on end.

A magnet appeared, lifting the shackles above his body. A blade flicked out from the magnet, slicing his hands off. She moved the magnet to delicately place the shackles in their own bay. She did the same with his feet. She’d lose a few points for his hands and feet but he seemed the Uncooperative sort. The less time arguing with Us, the better. The conveyor belt moved him into the Recycler.

She made good pace for the day, with only two or three other Us. There was only one person she had to save - he was only six years old and his two bad scores had come from two new Errands in a row. Bad scheduling wasn’t his fault. If you saved someone, you could earn a percentage of their points. A six year old’s meat wasn’t worth it and she could possibly earn more points this way.

While working, she kept an eye on her tablet. She breathed a sigh of relief as the Errand Score went over three. That wouldn’t be enough, though. She had to get her average higher. She pulled the lever.

No.

Poppy froze at the controls. Her heartbeat stopped. Naked on the conveyor belt before her was Rei. The bubbly Fourteen was slouching and shaking horribly. Her mouth was moving but Poppy couldn’t hear a thing. Poppy stared hard. A scream from Rei brought her to her senses and she smashed the switch to stop the belt. Rei stopped two metres before the Recycler.

Poppy took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She raised the microphone.

‘Read … read the s-sign on the wall and obey the instructions.’

Rei’s head turned towards the glass. Her eyes widened, her lip trembled.

‘… Poppy … ?!’

Poppy took another shaky breath.

‘This is your final … your final warning. Read the sign-’

‘POPPY!’ Rei screamed. She tried to move to the glass but fell hard. Still shouting Poppy’s name, she clawed her way upright. She smashed on the glass with a fist, shackles ringing loudly.

‘Poppy, please, Poppy, you understand, right? I-I just had a two point nine eight, that’s barely even below the mark, that’s barely anything-’

Rei kept rambling, incomprehensible. The room had stopped. She felt her supervisor’s blue eyes burning into the back of her skull. Poppy looked at Rei’s broken face and then at her tablet. Three point nought one, the number shone happily. Safe.

Doubt.

But …

‘Read the sign on the wall,’ Poppy said, ‘and obey the instructions.’

‘NOOOOOO!’

The taser appeared and hovered behind Rei’s back. Rei slammed the glass again, screeching. Poppy’s finger hovered over the switch. She closed her eyes and the eye in the fog appeared.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

Escape.

She hit the switch. She heard the electric current running through Rei’s body but forced herself to hold the button. After a few seconds, she let go. She opened her eyes.

Rei had fallen against the glass. Her hands hung uselessly above her head, the rest of her body slumped. Her face was pressed against the window. One eye hung open, veins bulging.

Sin.

Poppy stared forward, seeing nothing. Her hands flicked switches on their own. The magnet did its job. The blade removed Rei’s hands and feet. The shackles were placed delicately in their own bay. Rei’s body slumped onto the conveyor belt. It moved her into the Recycler.

Threeday, Food Phase Two, 12:00

Poppy finished the day with a three point something. The supervisor nodded his approval at her, eyes green. She stood in line for her food, her head up. She passed by the window. She sat down with her meat at a table. Alone. At last, a tiny, intoxicated smile touched her lips.

Trying to understand why I don't like Cave Story as much as everyone else

I'm going to spoil the majority of Cave Story here so I'd advise not reading this unless you've played the game if you have interest in it. For what it's worth, I do think it's a fun little game that's pretty cheap so if I'm not here to tell you that it's overrated trash that you should ignore - if you've been interested in it, don't let my opinion sway you away from the game (if it would for whatever reason lol).

This is going to be quite a different to the other pieces I've written here. I don't want to give my full thoughts on the game because I haven't actually played the full game - I know that there is a hidden "true" ending that you obtain for doing some bonus stuff during the game. While that hidden segment sounds really fun, I'm not going to go do it right now because I simply didn't enjoy the game enough to replay it from scratch and get the true ending.

I've seen the game described as a Metroidvania which, on the surface, makes a lot of sense. The game has floaty jumps, you run and shoot stuff, you collect health and missile powerups and you even cycle through weapons using the same controls. The inspiration from Metroid is clear - the game ends with an escape sequence as the island falls, similar to the endings of Metroid games where the planets explode. However, while Cave Story has clear inspiration taken from Metroid, it's still not really a Metroidvania. In games like Super Metroid, the player is given a new powerup and then forced to backtrack through an old area discovering all kinds of new things using their new powers. Cave Story is a much more linear game - while there are hidden objectives found by using new powers like the jetpack, the player is never forced to backtrack and discover things on their own. The game teases at this a little bit by giving you the Minigma Village as a "hub" of sorts - I expected this to be an area where I could use new powers to find new things in but I was let down.

I should clarify that not being a Metroidvania is not a bad thing at all. Super Metroid is my favourite game but I typically prefer my games to be as linear as possible with only a few exceptions. By all accounts, Cave Story should have been right up my street. And the thing is that Cave Story is still perfectly fun. Shooting things is great, they all drop stuff which is satisfying to collect and all the rest but I still have problems with it. I'm going to attempt to list my problems with the game in an objective sense to try and understand myself why I don't like this game as much as I should.

1). The controls 

I played Cave Story+ on the PC which was its original release system as far as I know. The game gives you a small cutscene of somebody unrelated to you then drops you in the game. You have to press down to go through doors rather than up like I expected but I'm fine with this - down isn't really a commonly used button in these games so this works fine. The thing is that Cave Story isn't exactly altogether clear on which buttons do what.

To clarify, I do not think every game should have a tutorial and the less tutorials the better. Super Metroid doesn't have one. The thing is though Super Metroid was played on an SNES controller with very few buttons. A jumped, X shot things, L and R made you shoot diagonally. The game tells you to use B when you get the Speed Booster and Y is used when selecting weapons - due to the controller's simplicity, chances are that the player is going to press it at some point anyway and figure out what it does. Even if they don't, you can still select all your weapons with Select (another thing the game tells the player to do once they get missiles) so this is never a problem. Super Metroid, for a SNES game, has fairly complex controls with multiple different weapons and tools but is always extremely simple to understand.

For Cave Story, it has much more simple controls but doesn't tell the player anything. Like I said, I was playing on PC and the keyboard has a lot of buttons. I worked out that Z and X jumped and shot alright but when other buttons are introduced, the player is not told in that pop up prompt how to use them. You change weapons with A and S which I worked out by flailing at buttons around Z and X to work out how to do it but that's all. It took me a bit longer to work out how to open the map and inventory - for quite a while, I was opening up the inventory by alt tabbing in and out of the game because I hadn't worked out any other way.

So hey, maybe I'm just fucking stupid and everyone's going to go "really" at me but let me expand on this. The thing is that Cave Story was developed for a controller with way, way, way more buttons than a SNES controller but you still can't shoot diagonally in this game. This boggles the mind and I really can't think of any reason why this wasn't included. Fighting flying enemies in this game was much more annoying than it had to be because there was no way to shoot diagonally - I had to just run directly underneath them and hold fire or just jump from the side and hit every two seconds.

The layout of the buttons also doesn't really make much sense. I played with my index finger and middle finger on X and Z respectively. The other buttons that are mapped out are A, S, Q and W - all buttons that I'd have to move my middle finger or index finger to reach. Nothing is mapped to Space or Shift or Control for my other fingers to press which I also find very confusing. This was definitely something I could have just remapped myself, though, and I don't think pressing Select in Super Metroid is too comfortable either so I won't stress this point too much.

The final thing I found odd about the controls is changing weapons. In Super Metroid, weapons go in a fixed order - normal attack, missiles, super missiles, super bombs and then utility weapons. This was done for a very specific reason as these are in the order of strength and general usefulness. You're going to use the normal attack the most, then missiles and so on. When you press Y, you go back to the normal attack which allows you to quickly get an idea of where you are in the menu. In Cave Story, you go backwards and forwards with A and S in the menu. For me personally, I found myself having to glance up at my weapons pretty frequently to get an idea of where I was in the weapons menu - the weapons aren't really put in there in order of strength or usefulness or anything like that because there is no order. I found it pretty hard to remember exactly how many button presses it took to get to my exact weapon I needed. When the final boss was vulnerable, I felt reluctant to swap to my missiles in case I messed up and swapped too far.

Even though I spent a year on the controls, they're actually a very small part of it but I couldn't find a way to write about it without going into it way too much. The game generally controls pretty well even on a keyboard. The game wasn't detecting my controller, by the way, which is why I used a keyboard.

2). Deaths and respawns

The game's save system is identical to Metroid's. There are save points around the place that are separate to healing points but generally close together - if you die, it's back to the last save. However, there is a difference in design here. In Metroid games, the difficulty generally doesn't come in combat - you have a lot of health and you're typically much stronger than your enemies. The enemies are something to watch out for and you have to be careful not to take too many hits, of course, but you generally won't actually die as long as you're careful.

Cave Story, being a more linear game, has levels with enemies designed to kill you. There's another Metroidvania-esque game with challenges designed to kill you called Ori and the Blind Forest. It has save points too but it also has checkpoints that you can place anywhere so dying really isn't a big deal. I thought Cave Story was a much harder game than Ori was and Cave Story does not have such a system. Generally, games where you die somewhat frequently will have quick respawns to lower frustration but Cave Story doesn't attempt to do this at all. Too often, I was forced to go through the same part of a level over and over again because I kept dying towards the end of it.

Worse than that are the instakills you can't possibly see coming. After like three hours of not being in the game, a sandshark randomly just appeared out of one square of sand and did 15 damage (half my health) towards endgame. This forced me back a few minutes. Why? How could I have possibly known that? There's also a section completely in darkness that's designed to lure you into an area where a sandshark will kill you. If you attempt to explore in the Plantation and go up, you will instantly die in one shot. There are stalactites falling from the ceiling on the second visit of Egg Chamber that you can't possibly know about in advance. There's an enemy in the Egg Chamber which starts a countdown - I thought "oh, I must have to hide behind cover or something" and then it exploded and one shot me. Cheap instakills are always bad design but they're much more forgivable in games with frequent checkpoints - something that Cave Story does not have.

Cave Story also has a problem of putting save points too far away from its bosses. Super Metroid did this too with Ridley but the difference is that Ridley doesn't have an attack pattern you have to learn or something like that - he's an extremely simple boss so your first attempt is going to be similar to your last attempt. The bosses in Cave Story often have patterns or attacks that you're going to learn as you fight them more which becomes infuriating as you have to play through three minutes of enemies before you get to them every time. The first time I got to Monster X, I was running forward as you'd expect. The camera pans to the right when you're moving right so I couldn't see anything on the left and - oh. Monster X has appeared and has now run over me for 10 damage. The Sisters in the Egg Chamber are similarly bullshit in that you open a treasure chest and lol whoops here's a boss when the last save point was five minutes ago!

For the kind of game Cave Story is, it probably should have just had save points in every single room or something. I don't wanna say it should autosave because then you might autosave on 1hp and be in a load of trouble. Instead, I was backtracking to save every time I collected anything because I didn't want to bother with waiting through a cutscene again. Speaking of which...

3). Fetch quests vs exploration

Probably the best example of what I mean by this is the Plantation. When I got there, I had my jetpack and level 3 machine gun raring to go - actually, on a side note, I have to give praise for this machine gun which shoots you into the air when you aim down. That's the most fun thing in the whole game by an absolute mile and IMO the whole game should have been built around it. I would happily play another game with such a mechanic so if anybody knows any, please send them my way.

...Back on topic, I got to the Plantation and started exploring. If you've played this game, you know that's pretty much a waste of time. As I mentioned, I died when I tried to go up and two of the rooms were completely useless outside of one taking me to a healing point. What you're actually meant to do in this level is this:

-Go to the Rest Room and talk to the fisher

-Go down to the bottom and get the key from him

-Go to the teleporter room and get arrested

-Read the letter and break out of jail

-Go to the safe house

-Have your jetpack confiscated, get the mask and go find the broken sprinkler

-Go get a fixed sprinkler

-Bring it to the safe house

-Go get the dude who's transformed into a Minigma

-Use the rocket to go to the end of the level

If you start exploring at first, you've clearly just wasted your time because you're going to get all of the stuff you need anyway (outside of the health pack which is a good thing gj devs). This level is just fetch quest after fetch quest and, as somebody who explored the whole area before starting the chain of fetch quests, it was painfully dull. Unfortunately, a lot of the levels in Cave Story end up structured like this. The most infamous example (as far as I know) is the Sand Zone in which you have to go to an old lady's house, get a dog for her, bring it back, get a dog for her, bring it back and repeat like five times. Going back and forward to the same place over and over again in which you save and full heal each time is not a challenge, it's just padding. When you get down to it, Cave Story doesn't actually have that many levels so I get the feeling that the developers decided to just fluff out the game by having you go do more stuff. Check out the "to-do list" in the Bushlands:

-Go a quarter of the way into the level to get a key

-Go back and give it to a dude

-Go halfway into the level to get to a dude

-Go a quarter back, kill a jellyfish and get some stuff

-Go back to the second dude and use the jellyfish stuff to go through the fireplace

-Travel up until you find the dude stuck in the house who gives you a rusted key

-Use the rusted key on some door, fight Balrog inside (AGAIN)

-Talk to the robot who tells you get some stuff to make a bomb

-Go to the end of the level and get gum

-Go back and get jellyfish stuff

-Go back to the start and get charcoal

-Go get MORE jellyfish stuff

-Make the bomb

So much of this level is just walking back and forth. The thing is that I already said that this can be a good thing in a Metroidvania by using new powers to make older parts you've already visited more appealing but this just doesn't happen in Cave Story. There's no reason the game couldn't just say "hey, go get the Gum which is actually a Bomb and then we're sorted". Making you go all the way back to the start and then back again to the robot is just padding. Also, as happened in the Plantation, exploring the Bushlands is pointless until the end anyway because you'll end up having to visit most of the areas anyway. This is probably my biggest issue with the whole game and the reason I don't like it as much as everyone else. The Labyrinths aren't as guilty as this which I do appreciate but they have the save points miles away from the boss problem so RIP.

4). The gun levelling system

I don't have much to say here as this will probably be subjective but this system fucking blows. When you get hit, you are already being punished for that hit by losing health. Punishing me even harder by making my weapons weaker is just fucking infuriating. The only advantage I see is that it gives value to the experience drops but this is also annoying - you could get either health, missiles or experience drops when you generally only need one or two of the three. It's also really annoying to level down, have to go fight an enemy to level back up and get hit by accident so that you've basically just wasted your time. It's also infuriating because the level 3 machine gun is so god damned fun and having that taken away from you when you get hit so you plummet to the ground sucks hard. Fuck.

This has been way too negative an article for a game I still enjoyed so I'm gonna talk about a few things I enjoyed.

-The soundtrack is amazing (I listened to the Remastered version)

-This game feels very fluid to move around in

-The bosses are largely good

-The machine gun is ridiculously awesome

-The weapon variety in general is really good

-The game has a nice visual style that probably would have been really charming at the time it came out

-The final boss sequence is hard as fuck and spectacularly good

So yeah all in all Cave Story was pretty good/10. I wrote this piece mostly for myself to try and understand why I don't like the game as much as everyone else because it should be my exact kind of game. I have a much better idea of why now which I'm happy about and I hope it was enjoyable enough to read and didn't seem too nitpicky. In hindsight I should have started with the level design thing because it's the biggest problem but whatever, live and learn and all that KBAI

My thoughts on the Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy

Disclaimer: Crash Bandicoot 2 was one of the first games I ever touched in my life. It's a game that I've played to 100% completion at least six or seven times and, as such, it will be difficult for me to remain fully objective when talking about the game. I didn't own Crash 1 or Crash 3 for another few years but while I'm not as familiar with them, I have still played them both a lot.

To get started, I'm going to talk about some of the engine changes between the originals and this game. It's been well documented around the internet now that most jumps in are now harder. Nobody is 100% sure on why - most people think it's to do with a change in the collision detection - but it is very noticeable, especially in Crash 1. I do not think this was an intentional change. I obviously don't have insight into how the game was created but there are jumps now in the game that require you to push the direction the millisecond after you jump or bounce on something. This can lead to some pretty frustrating moments where previously mundane jumps have to be positioned perfectly. There's one level in Crash 1 in particular where you have to jump on some turtles to bounce across gaps on a bridge which has gone from somewhat challenging to something that costed me thirty of my lives. I also failed some bonuses right at the end just because my jumps weren't perfectly positioned. It's oddly demanding and I don't remember this much being asked of me back in the original games.

This is less of a problem in Crash 2 and Crash 3 due to slide jumps in the former and the double jump/glide power ups in the latter. Still, these games aren't without new odd glitches. The originals were generally very well polished with only a few minor hiccups here and there. I came across multiple minor graphical glitches throughout my playthrough of the N-Sane Trilogy as well as one gamebreaking glitch against N. Tropy that made him invincible even after death so I had to restart. I'm curious as to how more glitches are in the game now considering these are remakes but the glitches are definitely very minor. That said, I imagine that my N. Tropy glitch is extremely rare (I hit him on the same frame I died, I think) so I won't press the matter much further.

Aside from that, Vicarious Visions have added Relics from Crash 3 to Crash 1 and 2 which are extremely welcome. These time trials were always a really fun challenge that made you think about levels in an entirely different way so it's great to see the old levels get updated like that. Levels I've been familiar with for years in Crash 2 suddenly became a different beast as I was no longer waiting for enemies to move through their patterns.

They also added Coco Bandicoot as a playable character for all three games. She can't be used for Crash specific levels like riding Polar, diving or in boss fights. She basically just acts as an alternate skin for Crash but I will say that the team did a spectacular job on her animations. Her victory dance is impossibly cute and other neat touches like how she skates with her hands behind her back holding her laptop are the cherry on top. They did such a good job on Coco that her alone gives me confidence that this team making another Crash game would do well with it - all of her animations are so very Crash that she doesn't feel like an addition at all but rather something that should have always been part of the game.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the actual games.

Crash Bandicoot 1

I think the Crash trilogy is very comparable to the original Sonic games on the Mega Drive - Sonic 1 is an alright game that the sequels improved upon and fixed to make into classics. In my mind, the original Crash game simply isn't very good any more. If I was to recommend this series to someone, I'd tell them to skip the original entirely and move straight onto Crash 2.

In the original game, Crash has an extremely limited moveset of jumping, moving and spinning. He's unable to crouch or slide which makes the way you approach levels very linear. This isn't a terrible problem on its own - the original Mario game had only running, jumping and firing fireballs - but the level design doesn't really attempt to mix up the gameplay in any meaningful way. Pits are simply flat cuts in the ground and enemies are extremely simple for the most part. A large majority of the levels involve you holding up and pressing X at the right time to avoid obstacles. There are also plenty of side scrolling segments which basically fall under the same category. There are a lot of time based challenges in Crash 1 with platforms moving on a specific timer to make you have to make jumps as the game demands it. I don't think the platforming in Crash 1 is ever outright bad - there are good sections like the one in The Lab where you have to spin exclamation crates to open doors but it is for the most part very bland and without variety.

To be fair to Crash 1, it does have some different kinds of levels. There's a level where you ride on the back of a hog that automatically moves forward while you jump out of the way of obstacles that's fun enough to return in both the sequels. There's also a level where you run away from a boulder chasing you which forces some kind of urgency. I always disliked that you run towards the camera in these levels as it can make it a bit hard to know when obstacles are coming up but the levels generally goad you in the direction you're meant to go by leaving a trail of wumpa fruit or by having small lips at the edges of platforms you're meant to jump off.

I will say that Crash 1 actually has some pretty decent bosses after the first few. Well, it's probably fairer to say that the last three bosses are good while the first three are pretty dull/complete pushovers. Pinstripe has a neat cover mechanic that is some welcome variety, N. Brio has you avoiding explosive bottles and jumping on enemies to damage him and Cortex has a whole host of lasers to dodge and hit back at him. Cortex in particular is pretty challenging while also being fair - there's a lot of stuff to avoid but it's all very doable as he generally aims at you or, if not at you, his attacks come in slowly from off screen. Reflecting his attacks back is neat as well because you can't really get over to them fast enough to reflect if you're just running away so it makes you have to play somewhat dangerously at all times.

Crash 1 does a pretty good job of teaching the player about upcoming dangers well before they could pose a threat. Every new mechanic will give you a bit of time to see it before you have to deal with it. Enemies are often placed so an immediate jump would kill the player so they have to stop and wait, see the enemy's pattern and then tackle the challenge. Platforms are placed like this too - the first platforms that appear and disappear into the wall are placed above solid ground on a vertical climb so that failure isn't punishing.

You collect Gems in Crash games by collecting all the boxes in a level. In the original game, dying would reset your box count to zero so you had to collect all the boxes and not die to get a Gem. Considering how challenging some of these levels can be, that's a tall ask so the sequels got rid of the no death requirement with the exception of the special coloured Gems used to unlock alternate routes. I think this is a good compromise and is definitely welcome with the added difficult jumps to an already difficult game.

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

A few seconds of playing Crash 2 and it becomes apparent that this is a much better game. The first thing that Crash 2 does is give you a tiny area to run through before you're taken to the warp room to get used to the controls. I think this is a really good idea as the player is taught very basic mechanics here while also giving the original developers Naughty Dog the freedom to make even the opening levels somewhat complex for experienced players which I'll get to later.

Crash/Coco have been given access to a slide move which allows you to move a little bit faster. Jumping during this slide makes you jump higher and further than normal as well. This small technique allows you to move with much more speed and freedom which makes all the platforming generally more exciting as you keep momentum up. In the original game, you would often just hold up and jump whereas in Crash 2, you're pressing more buttons at a time which makes everything just feel better. You're also able to take shortcuts over gaps that a regular jump wouldn't reach - this is pretty notable in the water levels where you can skip platforms entirely using a well timed slide jump. The developers also made it so that you can jump just after sliding off a ledge to give you the freedom to use a slide jump everywhere and also avoid frustrations where you just about slide off the edge of a platform and die.

Pits in Crash 2 have odd shapes to them which often encourage you to jump from one side to another at an angle - this isn't really any more challenging than just jumping over a pit but it gives the player more things to do as well. Arguably the best thing about all of Crash 2 is how it manages to make even its early levels very creative for experienced players. Crash 1 was a very hard game and Naughty Dog were aware of this - getting to the end of Crash 2 with its mandatory 25 Crystals is a much, much easier affair. I don't think getting all of Crash 2's 42 Gems is as hard as getting all of Crash 1's but it's still more challenging than the main game by a long shot. A general good design philosophy is that optional challenges should be harder than mandatory ones - inexperienced players aren't gated away from content whereas experienced ones are rewarded with more challenging, complex content.

Nearly every single level in Crash 2 has some kind of secret or element to make it more challenging to obtain their Gems. In addition to getting Gems for breaking all the boxes, fifteen of the twenty seven levels also have Gems for doing additional tasks such as completing an optional, more difficult route, beating a level quickly enough or even finding a hidden secret exit. On top of that, those Gems for breaking all the boxes are often complex enough on their own - some are only possible by finding hidden paths in other levels whereas others require you to do backtracking through multiple routes. The infamous example of this is Cold Hard Crash. In Crash 2, there are "Death Platforms" which are basically optional routes that are only unlocked if you reach a certain point in a level without dying. These all have Gems at the end. Cold Hard Crash takes it a step further by having boxes in its Death Route to make it mandatory for getting the All Boxes Gem. But then it goes a step further by making you backtrack through the entire Death Route again to go back to the main path to get the All Boxes Gem. The Death Route is laid out so that it's also challenging on the way back thanks to the icy floor and the obstacles reversing their order of threat (two pillars thumping down from above will take different timing in each direction). In this way, players of three different calibres are rewarded - a player who plays through just the basic level is rewarded with a Crystal, a semi-experienced player is rewarded with a Death Route Gem and an experienced player is rewarded with an All Boxes Gem.

Cold Hard Crash is probably the hardest level in the game and not all of them are as complicated as that. The All Boxes Gem in Road to Ruin requires you to find a hidden route in another level and then you're basically given the All Boxes Gem. I'm unsure exactly how to feel about these hidden routes - I know all of them because I played the game so much as a kid but I wonder if a newcomer to the game would get frustrated if they spent their time in a level getting what they thought was all the boxes only to be told "nope, go elsewhere first". Some of these hidden exits are also quite cryptic but Vicarious Visions have included loading screen hints for levels with these exits which do a good job to keep the secrets secret without making them too obvious. I still do think that somebody would struggle to get 100% on this game without a guide, though.

As I said, the opening levels are able to more complicated thanks to these Gems. In the opening warp room, three of the levels have additional Gems and the two without them have somewhat challenging All Boxes gems - The Pits forces you to backtrack through a separate route and Level 5 (I forget the name lol) has lots of missable boxes as it's a level where a boulder charges towards you. Noticeable, Vicarious Visions have changed Snow Go to make it so that you can't obtain the Red Gem early. Basically, the Red Gem is visible in the level but you have to go to a hidden route in another level to actually obtain it. In the original game, you could obtain it by doing a glitched high jump bouncing off the seal at a certain angle so Vicarious Visions have simply moved the gem further up so this is no longer possible. They also fixed this glitch in general (from what I can see, anyway) which makes it impossible to sequence break Road to Ruin in the same way. You can also no longer jump on areas of the background to skip the pits with the mole rats in Turtle Woods or skip the need for a Death Platform in Diggin' It. These are all welcome changes for the non-speedrunner and I'm glad they were fixed.

While I could endlessly praise Crash 2 all day (and believe me, I could), I will level some criticisms at it. The bosses are nearly all terrible. Tiny Tiger is the only one that's acceptable and even then, he's extremely basic. The final boss in particular is an absolute joke for forcing the player to use a jetpack and not the basic controls. On that note, the jetpack levels in general are very, very bad, breaking up the pace completely and forcing you to move slowly through a 3D space that just doesn't work well. I've also found that the depth perception in these levels is really wonky - I've often flown into things I didn't realise were so close. Depth perception in general is a problem in the Crash games as the camera is often more horizontal than most 3D platformers. This can make it hard to tell whether or not you're going to land on a platform. The water levels avoid this by moving the camera up so I kind of wish that all levels had gone for this fix. Side scrolling levels naturally aren't guilty of this.

The level design in Crash 2 is generally extremely solid throughout to the point that I'm struggling to think of a weak level. Mechanics are introduced, expanded upon and then resolved in a simplistic manner which demands enough of the player to be satisfying. The space levels in Warp Room 5 are a great example of this. They introduce an enemy that has lightning on either side so you have to jump on it. Then it introduces the same enemy with the lightning on its top so you have to slide or spin into it. Then they introduce one of these enemies that changes the lightning from the top to the side so that you have to adapt to its positioning. It then starts to puts these enemies in patterns so they're vulnerable from the top as you would jump over an obstacle before making the next one vulnerable from the side instead, forcing the player to jump into a small space with this enemy. I hope I described that well enough but you can see here that the challenge increases very slowly but in a way that you are taught the mechanics fairly in advance.

The only examples of bad level design are in the cryptic stuff occasionally. There's one notable part where you have to literally jump down a pit on purpose to find a Gem and I really don't know how seven year old Skarfelt worked that out. In this part and when you find the Purple Gem, Naughty Dog decided to put the Gems right at the start of the optional routes. Unfortunately, this was stupid because if you die, you keep the Gem in your inventory and you respawn back on the main route so there's no reason to complete the Purple Gem route at all.

There are also levels where you ride a polar bear creatively named Polar. His levels function the same as the Hog level in Crash 1 but with more variety in enemies and challenges. These are a pretty fun diversion as they're still platforming and you're moving pretty quickly throughout them. There's only three of these in the game counting the secret Totally Bear and the only other time Polar is used is in a brief segment in Unbearable so they're not frequent enough to take away from the main game at all if you don't like them for whatever reason.

Once you beat the final boss, you are given the Sprint powerup, something was previously only in Crash 3. This makes Relic challenges much easier but I do find it kind of odd that it's possible to do Relics long before you obtain this power. If I had started doing Relics before I got the power, I would be pretty annoyed that I'd been effectively wasting my time without the Sprint powerup. It doesn't really add much besides allowing you to make extremely long jumps that wouldn't otherwise be possible but it's a welcome addition nonetheless.

Finally, I think the soundtrack in Crash 2 is much stronger than the first game in my opinion. The snow levels' Death Route song, the sewer levels and the water levels in particular all have really good tracks behind them. They've all been remixed from the original game to varying levels of effectiveness. I feel the sewer song has had a bit of its energy removed due to a lack of "hard-ness" in its intro whereas the snow level Death Route song is now much more intense, making Cold Hard Crash even better than it already was. 

Crash Bandicoot 3: WARPED

A lot of the stuff that makes Crash 2 really damn good is still present in Crash 3 though there are still a few differences. Crash 3's levels don't get as complex as quickly - Crash 2's first level had a hidden Blue Gem whereas Crash 3's first level is just a straight forward slog to the finish. The first route that demands a special Gem crops up before you can physically obtain it which forces some eventual backtracking. Crash 2 put most of its coloured Gems in its first three warp rooms so there aren't really many cases of this happening - the worst example is probably how you get the Red Gem in Level 7 and you need it in Level 6 but at least these levels are in the same warp room. The way that Crash 3 approaches secrets is subtly changed and your mileage may vary on whether or not it's a good change.

In Crash 3, a lot of the optional hidden routes end with the player being transported back to the warp room rather than being moved back into the level. I feel this misses some potential to make the All Boxes Gems more complex like in Crash 2 while also forcing the player to sit through some more loading screens and play levels multiple times. That said, there were two or three of these in Crash 2 and, like in that game, these sections offer extremely focused challenges that are very well thought out. I don't think every difficult section should be built to be backtracked through like in Cold Hard Crash in Crash 2 so having these challenges exist on their own in a vacuum to be developed as much as possible is also a good thing. There are still complex All Boxes Gems as well that require backtracking or hidden routes so, like I said, it's only a subtle change that's neither for the better or for the worse.

The level design in Crash 3 is largely very good. The levels this time are themed off of different time periods and while this doesn't really effectively change anything on a mechanical level (future levels operate very similarly to Crash 2's space levels), enemy types are radically different between levels which makes things feel very fresh. Returning mechanics from Crash 2 are given a new spin in a different environment to mix things up - the ice has turned into oil that's used in the pyramid levels, the things you hang from in the sewer levels are now in the Arabian ones and so on. These mechanics are used in novel ways thanks to the new environments. For example, in the pyramids, an enemy will pull a lever to drop huge weights onto an oil slick that slowly moves towards you. You have to jump over these weights while managing the harsher controls on the oil while making sure to not be underneath the weights when they drop. I think it's impressive that Naughty Dog managed to reuse basic mechanics in different ways just by changing the environments so much.

From what I've said so far, you'd probably believe that Crash 3 is the best game of the series. If every level in the game was solid platforming, I'd probably agree with that sentiment - the pyramid levels in particular are stronger than any of the themes present in Crash 2. Unfortunately, though, "variety" was the "in" thing at the time of development. I don't really have the sources to back me up here but I remember reading interviews with the developers of Insomniac Games as well saying that they wanted as many different types of gameplay as possible, hence Spyro 3's multiple characters and skateboarding segments.

Well, in Crash 3, there are also levels which dramatically change up the gameplay. Whereas the platforming in Crash 3 has had three games to be refined to control extremely well, these "gimmick levels" are basically extremely dull in comparison. Their controls don't really feel fleshed out, leading to some accidental deaths because the player is not used to the sudden movements.

In addition to platforming, Crash 3 has underwater scuba diving levels, jet ski levels, motorbike racing levels, plane levels and levels where you ride Pura which are mechanically very similar to Crash 2's Polar levels. Pura's levels are basically just Polar's but better - the All Boxes Gem is more challenging as you can choose different routes at sections and it's mechanically superior. If you press R1, you start to charge for as long as you hold the button whereas Polar just got a burst of speed for a fixed amount of time. Going for Platinum Relics (the highest tier) in these Pura levels is actually ridiculously fun as you charge through them max speed, bypassing enemies before they've even had a chance to move.

The other four level types aren't so successful. The diving levels are probably the best of the lot - you control Crash moving slowly underwater as enemies fill the screen more and more as you progress. While there's no platforming here, the levels still feel like levels with incremental difficulty spikes so I think these are for the most part a fine change of pace. I much prefer them over the jet pack levels of Crash 2, anyway. I probably wouldn't mind these as much if the other three level types didn't exist.

The jet ski levels sound like they could be pretty fun with constant momentum but, in reality, you're forced to slow down to avoid obstacles because the thing controls so poorly that it's impossible to avoid enemies when moving at any kind of speed. You can still go fast in these levels, don't get me wrong, but you have no chance of obtaining the All Boxes Gems from these levels if you do. These levels don't really introduce much more complex mechanics after the first one and there are FOUR (!) of them in the game if you count the secret one which I do.

The motorbike racing levels are also pretty dull. There's not really much depth to be had here - you just hold accelerate and turn as required. You can avoid some obstacles on the inside of a corner if you cut it very close to the edge of the track and there are boost pads to mix things up a bit but that's basically all. The only real difference between these levels is that the first has no police cars, the second has parked police cars, the third has moving police cars and the fourth has police cars driving towards you. Yes, again, there are FOUR of these levels if you count the secret one.

Finally, there are plane levels. In these ones, you seek out some blimps, shoot them down and then move on with your life. That's basically all there is to it. The planes control perfectly fine but there's no real "level design" here - just an open space with stuff to shoot down. The hidden race level is a bit better as it forces you to line up your vehicle in a particular way to make it through all the rings while going as fast as possible but they're still not too great.

All in all, these levels make up a whopping thirteen of the game's thirty levels. If I count the two Pura levels as well, half the game's levels aren't even the core gameplay. I can speculate as to why this is - chances are that it's much easier to design a level for a plain road with no variation for the motorbike levels compared to making an entirely new level type for Crash to jump through. All of the main level types have at least three levels (outside of future which only shows up towards the end of the game so this makes sense) so at least all of the ideas get explored properly. There are only five different environments for the platforming levels in Crash 3 whereas Crash 2 had seven if I'm generous and don't count the night time levels. I probably wouldn't mind as much if all the alternate game types were as fun as Pura's levels but they're unfortunately not.

I've given this game a lot of criticism so far which is pretty unfair as the game is still very good so I'll talk about its good sides now. It has by far the best boss battles of the series. In the original, you could beat the second boss, Dingodile, in just a few seconds by slide jumping over his barrier. This has thankfully been fixed and so now we have the proper boss we always should have had. The only boss I would call weak is probably N. Gin due to the game randomly becoming StarFox for the duration of the fight but it's actually one of the better alternate gameplay modes so I won't criticise too much. The final boss is pretty good all in all - Cortex uses the same gun and hoverboard he did in Crash 1 which I think is pretty cool and there's a lot of stuff to avoid. I kind of wish that all of the bosses were a little bit harder but I don't really mind too much.

Oh, and Dingodile's boss theme is an absolute whopper of a tune.


Conclusion
I'm thankful that the PS4 doesn't track my playtime on these games because I'm sure my time spent getting platinum trophies on both Crash 2 and Crash 3 in just a few days would be extremely alarming. I've come away from the trilogy extremely satisfied - Crash 2 and 3 both have very good platforming that I would love to see expanded upon in a new game of some sort. I actually think that it's a shame that the first game people will touch in the trilogy is Crash 1 - it totally pales in comparison to Crash 2 and 3 which may turn people off touching 2 and 3 at all. I understand that Vicarious Visions were in an awkward spot here - if they realised that Crash 1 was much weaker, they still had to remake it because ignoring it would upset fans of the first game and I do recognise that such fans exist. As I said before, I'd still probably recommend that a newcomer to the series start with Crash 2. Even though it's the best game, I think that playing Crash 2 first would make somebody more willing to put up with Crash 3's bad levels.

I didn't really touch on the graphics which is like the whole point of the remakes but I will say that I'm extremely impressed with what Vicarious Visions have done. I was a little bit sceptical after I saw the first footage but these games just look so perfect in motion that I have to applaud the team. I watched a bit of footage from the originals when I was writing this and I couldn't believe how much things had changed. It really didn't feel like that much was different which is a credit to the team. It's particularly impressive because the original Crash trilogy used extremely exaggerated animations that only really worked because of the low polygon count like the way Crash's mouth opens so wide after he collects a Gem or the way his eyes go wide during certain death animations.

All in all, I think I would feel comfortable recommending the trilogy to newcomers, especially if you like platformers. It's hard to put my nostalgia aside but I hope with this article I've been able to state why I feel these are genuinely good games. I'd still suggest skipping Crash 1, though. I'm excited for the future of Crash platformers which is something I never thought I'd say.

Now just give me a remake of Crash Team Racing with online and I'll never touch another game again.