[News] COLOSSAL CAVE | REVIEW

[Douma]

You are now reading a review of Colossal Cave made by somebody who has chosen not to play the game to completion for reasons that will shortly become evident. As your eyes move along the screen, they come across new sentences, a telltale sign that you are, in fact, reading.

Having played the original Colossal Cave, you have some idea of what the game is all about. You know that you explore a large cave found nearby your starting location. You know that you’ll collect treasures, examine and pick up various strange objects, and use those objects to get past some of the obstacles you encounter, including a dragon…because…who doesn’t like dragons?

You wonder if Colossal Cave is any good, as the game begins you notice that the game has limited locomotion options. One is called Classic Locomotion and lets you move around the environment using the thumbstick. Although there is an option to switch between snap and smooth turning, there is no option to have the motion follow your head. You find this somewhat annoying, so you try the other option. The other option is called Comfort Locomotion. The menu screens tell you that this is the favored control method of the remake’s lead designer. You try it. It’s odd and unwieldy, it maps all motion controls to the left controller and all inventory controls to the right controller. You advance by holding down the trigger button, as though it’s some kind of gas pedal, and you reverse by holding down the grip button. 

You revert to the so-called Classic Locomotion, despite its lack of head-follow options.

COLOSSALLY CRIPPLING
You find yourself in front of a cabin in the woods, you approach it and try to open the door with your in-game hand. 

Your in-game hands function merely as cursor pointers, making you feel as though you’re stuck in some kind of point-and-click adventure game made in the mid-1980s. You wonder why a 2023 VR port of a text-based adventure game originally made in 1976 is using a control system traditionally used by DOS-based PC games made in the 1980s. 

Your hand, now merely a pointer for an eye-shaped cursor, points at the door’s handle. You click on the use button, mapped to your trigger button, and Colossal Cave’s narrator confirms what you can already see; that the door is closed. 

You cycle between the trigger button functionality by using the grip button, and it now turns your cursor into a hand, signifying that you can now take or use things with your cursor. 

You click the hand-shaped cursor on the door handle, and it opens. 

You wonder why you could not simply have grabbed the door handle and pushed it open yourself. Why am I pointing at things to use them, you wonder to yourself, but soldier on.

Inside, you find a few objects, although you can clearly see what they are, you can still click your eye cursor on each to have the game tell you what they are. It seems redundant and useless.

https://6dofreviews.com/reviews/games/colossal-cave/