When I’m writing about a game I try not to say something is just “bad” because bad is one of those words that doesn’t really mean anything. Nobody ever just doesn’t like something for no reason, and part of the reason I even made a backloggd account was because I wanted to challenge myself to write about every single game I play in an effort to become more articulate about how I think about the media I consume. Practice is the best way to get better at anything, after all, and that applies to criticism as much as anything else. So I try not to say something is bad, or at least not let that be the end of the thought, because there’s always gotta be a reason why, right?
Okay so you see a half-star rating at the top of this and I open with the most Film Studies 301-ass explanation of how to conceptualize criticism and this is a very ominous way to start and I really just need you to understand where I’m coming from when I say that The Creature of Kapu Cave is simply a bad game, from top to bottom, in the most mundane and unremarkable ways imaginable.
Typically when I find these games frustrating it’s because they have swung big (either narratively or in some kind of gameplay ambition) and missed hard at whatever lofty ambition or innovation they were reaching for. Not so in Kapu Cave, which has not only the worst qualities of the dregs of Nancy Drews past (tedious puzzles, paper thin narrative threads, characters who are at best uninteresting and at worst annoying to spend time with, bland setting, nonsensical resolutions) but also myriad new features that add to the sense of languid time-wasting that dominates the proceedings.
The plot of this game is so scattershot as to not be worth recapping but I will give the barest hint of a premise because this IS my favorite of the Stock Nancy Drew Setups: Nancy Steals A Presumably Valuable Internship From Someone Who Could Presumably Actually Use It For Their Career. This time it’s to help an entomologist with her research in Hawaii for a month and we’re gonna pause right here for my new favorite recurring segment NANCY DREW CUCK WATCH because literally moments after Nancy’s boyfriend Ned, whom I’ve been joking is a spurned partner who never comes on her adventures and two games ago was looked over for the Hardy Boys, calls Nancy on the phone to see if she arrived safely, Nancy spots the Hardy Boys on the beach and says okay bro I’ll call you later bye and hangs up on him it’s INCREDIBLE.
Yeah, the Hardy Boys are here, they’re fucking annoying, and they’re huge cops, working undercover as tourists for a super rich dude to spy on local a Hawaiian business owner to see if he’s got any skeletons in his closet before the rich white guy invests with him or some bullshit it’s fucking uncomfortable. So Nancy treks into the forest to find her Doctor who is missing, the bridge goes out, and now you switch perspectives between Nancy and the Hardy boys and spend almost the entire game doing literally nothing as either of them, just kind of wandering around doing plant research (the doctor isn’t missing at all, actually, and it’s fine that her camp has been vandalized – she’ll just make Nancy go replicate all of the lost research!), fishing, talking to assholes (but not the fun kind of assholes in these games, just normal ones), and engaging in lighthearted banter as you very slowly uncover an extremely mild and generally harmless Scooby Doo Real Estate Scam so innocuous that even the game says the cops don’t know what to charge the criminals with at the end of the game (you do still make them turn themselves in however! And yes, it IS the indebted Hawaiian business owner and you ARE protecting the white businessman and big pharma science lab! WHAT THE FUCK ELSE WOULD YOU BE DOING IN THIS SERIES LMAO). The game is like four hours long and I honestly couldn’t tell you what happened really besides the fact that you could easily shave off at least an hour of that play time if you removed the first person stealth maze in this point and click adventure game or the fishing “minigame” that involves clicking on the screen and then waiting for a random fish to be caught ten seconds later, which you have to do literally dozens of times. None of the game overs are even super funny in this one.
The whole thing is just a mess, but worse than that it’s a BORING mess, and a RACIST one to boot. This is it, this is the monkey’s paw curling on my wish for one of these games to imply that there are actual genuine supernatural forces at work in the series, which is probably the most noteworthy thing here, and even that is drowned out by being a note of subtle ambiguity in the sea of absurd goofy nonsense that is this game’s climax. It’s really not even enough to get worked up about. It’s just nothing at all.
PREVIOUSLY: DANGER BY DESIGN
NEXT TIME: THE WHITE WOLF OF ICICLE CREEK
ALL NANCY DREW PIECES
Okay so you see a half-star rating at the top of this and I open with the most Film Studies 301-ass explanation of how to conceptualize criticism and this is a very ominous way to start and I really just need you to understand where I’m coming from when I say that The Creature of Kapu Cave is simply a bad game, from top to bottom, in the most mundane and unremarkable ways imaginable.
Typically when I find these games frustrating it’s because they have swung big (either narratively or in some kind of gameplay ambition) and missed hard at whatever lofty ambition or innovation they were reaching for. Not so in Kapu Cave, which has not only the worst qualities of the dregs of Nancy Drews past (tedious puzzles, paper thin narrative threads, characters who are at best uninteresting and at worst annoying to spend time with, bland setting, nonsensical resolutions) but also myriad new features that add to the sense of languid time-wasting that dominates the proceedings.
The plot of this game is so scattershot as to not be worth recapping but I will give the barest hint of a premise because this IS my favorite of the Stock Nancy Drew Setups: Nancy Steals A Presumably Valuable Internship From Someone Who Could Presumably Actually Use It For Their Career. This time it’s to help an entomologist with her research in Hawaii for a month and we’re gonna pause right here for my new favorite recurring segment NANCY DREW CUCK WATCH because literally moments after Nancy’s boyfriend Ned, whom I’ve been joking is a spurned partner who never comes on her adventures and two games ago was looked over for the Hardy Boys, calls Nancy on the phone to see if she arrived safely, Nancy spots the Hardy Boys on the beach and says okay bro I’ll call you later bye and hangs up on him it’s INCREDIBLE.
Yeah, the Hardy Boys are here, they’re fucking annoying, and they’re huge cops, working undercover as tourists for a super rich dude to spy on local a Hawaiian business owner to see if he’s got any skeletons in his closet before the rich white guy invests with him or some bullshit it’s fucking uncomfortable. So Nancy treks into the forest to find her Doctor who is missing, the bridge goes out, and now you switch perspectives between Nancy and the Hardy boys and spend almost the entire game doing literally nothing as either of them, just kind of wandering around doing plant research (the doctor isn’t missing at all, actually, and it’s fine that her camp has been vandalized – she’ll just make Nancy go replicate all of the lost research!), fishing, talking to assholes (but not the fun kind of assholes in these games, just normal ones), and engaging in lighthearted banter as you very slowly uncover an extremely mild and generally harmless Scooby Doo Real Estate Scam so innocuous that even the game says the cops don’t know what to charge the criminals with at the end of the game (you do still make them turn themselves in however! And yes, it IS the indebted Hawaiian business owner and you ARE protecting the white businessman and big pharma science lab! WHAT THE FUCK ELSE WOULD YOU BE DOING IN THIS SERIES LMAO). The game is like four hours long and I honestly couldn’t tell you what happened really besides the fact that you could easily shave off at least an hour of that play time if you removed the first person stealth maze in this point and click adventure game or the fishing “minigame” that involves clicking on the screen and then waiting for a random fish to be caught ten seconds later, which you have to do literally dozens of times. None of the game overs are even super funny in this one.
The whole thing is just a mess, but worse than that it’s a BORING mess, and a RACIST one to boot. This is it, this is the monkey’s paw curling on my wish for one of these games to imply that there are actual genuine supernatural forces at work in the series, which is probably the most noteworthy thing here, and even that is drowned out by being a note of subtle ambiguity in the sea of absurd goofy nonsense that is this game’s climax. It’s really not even enough to get worked up about. It’s just nothing at all.
PREVIOUSLY: DANGER BY DESIGN
NEXT TIME: THE WHITE WOLF OF ICICLE CREEK
ALL NANCY DREW PIECES
10 Comments
i don’t know, i’ve never minded the hardy boys in any of these games before but in this one they’re particularly obnoxious. i think a big part of that has to do with the way they’ve gone from like one chill mature hardy boy and one hothead jokey hardy boy to just like two obnoxious quipped hardy boys? Like when joe got got in this game I was like great I get to only interact with the good one now! And then fuckin Frank just acts exactly the same way suddenly!! And they’re both horrible to the girl they’re spying on it fucking sucks dude they’re evil.
I really hope the other contender for all time worst is “the one we stopped selling because it was too racist” lmao because if not aw jeez lol
They're So Bad. Awful boys, awful lads, send those boys away and get new ones who can be kind to women and stop showboating and have actual feelings about their sibs going missing
even when the games are bad, the reviews are good. i am so excited for future instalments of NANCY DREW CUCK WATCH
thank you for saying so woodaba! I’ll be honest this series has been very giving in terms of providing a lot of food for fault almost always - there have been multiple games where as I’ve been playing I’ve been like yo WHAT could I POSSIBLY talk about with this and then I’ve found it when i sat down to write. But this one is so empty I really didn’t feel like there was much to say here haha
Reading this review and re-reading my own review, im thinking I maybe gave the game one star too many (originally I gave it 2/5. Gonna knock it down to 1 or 1.5). I still dont quite think its 0.5 star material but the stuff I tend to stick there is unplayable trashfires that you only need to spend 5 minutes with to know that its bad (Like the Home Alone Ps2 game, the GBA ports of Mortal Kombat and Sonic or an Amiga platformer called Top Banana that scarred me for life as a child).
But yeah. This is near to the worst in the franchise. There's only one I would say is worse... Three if we also want to include those horrible Hidden Object spinoffs that nobody played. Four if we include the woeful and completely weird port of 'Message in a Haunted Mansion' for the Game Boy Advance (yes really. Thats a thing that exists for some reason).
The characters are dull, the puzzles are boring, the fishing is bad. I cant comment on the supposed racist elements because I dont remember them but I also dont remember most of the game full-stop and my brain doesnt want me to either. The fact that ive spent more time talking about other games in the series or other games full stop probably says everything.
Also yes - like Nerdietalk, I also cant stand the Hardy Boys. Boo hiss to them.
But yeah. This is near to the worst in the franchise. There's only one I would say is worse... Three if we also want to include those horrible Hidden Object spinoffs that nobody played. Four if we include the woeful and completely weird port of 'Message in a Haunted Mansion' for the Game Boy Advance (yes really. Thats a thing that exists for some reason).
The characters are dull, the puzzles are boring, the fishing is bad. I cant comment on the supposed racist elements because I dont remember them but I also dont remember most of the game full-stop and my brain doesnt want me to either. The fact that ive spent more time talking about other games in the series or other games full stop probably says everything.
Also yes - like Nerdietalk, I also cant stand the Hardy Boys. Boo hiss to them.
No wait I remembered Stay Tuned for Danger exisits. Make that two games worse than this.
yeah i have debated dropping ratings altogether because i think like, philosophically they're useless. When I go to people's profiles on here and everyone has to explain what their personal 1 to 5 scale means to them like it's i think indicative of a system that is ultimately meaningless as a universal signifier of quality. on the other hand tho numbers are fun and they will continue, sometimes you just want to fuckin body creature of kapu cave, a shit game that deserves it. I have no principles, no rhyme or reason to my ratings. I give the one that feels right in the moment of rating. true to my heart.
Are the hidden object spinoffs the nintendo DS ones by a different company? Because if so then I do have those downloaded to my 3ds and i WILL be playing them lol. I have also looked at footage of the GBA port of Haunted Mansion and i LOVE it it rules, the hideous bitcrushed screenshots, no animation, scrolling jpegs, just an absolute masterclass in what the fuck was anyone thinking. what a strange thing.
I think Stay Tuned gets off the hook in a lot of ways for me because it's so early and retains a lot of quirky charm from the first game. Like yes it absolutely sucks and i hate it but it has enough in it that's bizarre and funny and i do genuinely enjoy the villain once they've been revealed, that actor is just giving a fun performance in a very intense way we don't see a TON of. Vs later games where a formula is firmly established and they're just like, fuckin it up real bad.
Are the hidden object spinoffs the nintendo DS ones by a different company? Because if so then I do have those downloaded to my 3ds and i WILL be playing them lol. I have also looked at footage of the GBA port of Haunted Mansion and i LOVE it it rules, the hideous bitcrushed screenshots, no animation, scrolling jpegs, just an absolute masterclass in what the fuck was anyone thinking. what a strange thing.
I think Stay Tuned gets off the hook in a lot of ways for me because it's so early and retains a lot of quirky charm from the first game. Like yes it absolutely sucks and i hate it but it has enough in it that's bizarre and funny and i do genuinely enjoy the villain once they've been revealed, that actor is just giving a fun performance in a very intense way we don't see a TON of. Vs later games where a formula is firmly established and they're just like, fuckin it up real bad.
The GBA game also has no save feature and uses a weird checkpoint password system but the checkpoint chapters are really arbitrary in what it thinks you should have finished or shouldn't have finished by that point so if you have to use it for any reason (like using the second chance feature), it means progress is a crapshoot.
I actually meant the hidden object ones on the pc (lights camera curses & resorting to danger). I forgot thq made some too.
I actually meant the hidden object ones on the pc (lights camera curses & resorting to danger). I forgot thq made some too.
Nerdietalk
2 years ago
My irrational hatred for the Hardy Boys probably comes from this if I'm being honest with myself.