I HATE BUTES

Recently, I got the urge to play through Doko Doukutsu Monn Duok Cave Story again, because the last time I completed it I was informed by quadralien shortly afterwards that there was a much better ending for those that did a few extra side quests throughout the game and got through the final extra level. To pass the time on my commute I often play games on my laptop, but was on the point of finding less catastrophically frustrating things to do when other passengers were slightly disturbed by my under-breath shouts at the computer. But now, on the train this morning, I've finally got past the end boss, been saved by Balrog (who happens to be a flying toaster) and seen the Redemption Ending. If that's not an achievement I don't know what is.

By the way, if you haven't played Cave Story yet, it was a game written largely by one Japanese man from about 2001-2004. If I had to choose one, I would say that this is the game that made more people aware of the independent game-making community, and it's definitely an example of why I'm proud to be part of it. To sum it up, it's an 8-bit-styled Metroidish platformer with a reasonably complex storyline involving cute rabbitlike creatures being killed in various awful ways, and it can be downloaded from here, along with a patch to translate it into English. (The patch was made with the Clickteam Patch Maker, you know.)

To sum up this ordeal, there are two routes through the game. One of them, invariably the one that you discover on your first play through, is the normal route (calling it "easy" would be slightly insulting). The final boss of this non-extended game is the Undead Core, which I mentioned a couple of entries ago. And he's really quite difficult. If you complete the extra requirements, you can open up the Hard route instead of escaping the island at the end, which leads you to a nigh-on impossible extra level.

I know I said that we'd all been spoiled by the prevalence of snapshot saves in a previous entry, but I was sorely in need of them here. The Sacred Grounds (or "Hell", as the entire extra section is rather appropriately known) consists of a short spiky obstacle course, a room where you're bombarded with falling blocks, a decently large level while being shot at with angels with bows and arrows, a gigantic metal boss monster called Heavy Press, a small chance to recharge a bit and then four final bosses, just to make sure. All this from one savepoint at the end of the normal game. Interestingly, if you talk to the bookcase in that room, it'll smugly give you the chance to give up and revert to the easier route. If you've tried the secret level a couple of times, talking to a bookcase seems to be about the right level of sanity.

After getting anywhere near the end of the Hell levels, even the Undead Core seems like the easiest thing ever. I remember thinking of him as a properly Devil May Cry boss that flung things at you from all angles and could only be damaged for a few seconds per minute. Ballos does the same thing, but flies around frantically most of the time, has four different forms to go through and can only be damaged for about a minute per fortnight. Skipping the details about the trudge through the rooms being shot at by little angels called Butes, which take off almost a fifth of the maximum amount of life you can possibly have in the game when they hit you, and the easy-the-eighth-time Heavy Press, this is what happens.

The first form is actually quite easy, though I didn't think so on my first couple of tries. Most of the tactics of this section are in the timing, as he charges towards you, up into the air, towards you again and down. Staying calm and getting into a rhythm are difficult but not impossible, although occasionally he'll float into the air and throw a whole lot of lightning bolts down, which is a bit unsporting. I'd done this a few times before, and got through it pretty much unscathed.

For the second form, Ballos regenerates into a gigantic rock ball with glowing eyes and bounces around slowly. Again, rhythm is the important part here, and it's a matter of making sure you're off the ground and at the right height to hit him when he lands. Memorizing the height in relation to the background helped. Again, a couple of attempts made this straightforward, though it's easy to find yourself in a situation where you haven't left yourself enough room.

The third form is the one where you really have to worry about damage. The ball grows eight eyes which rotate around it while it trundles over you, and you have a very narrow gap to stand in to avoid having about a quarter of your life bar taken off. I almost died here, but thankfully had kept the Life Pot from near the beginning of the game for this very moment and was miraculously restored to full health. That item's absolutely invaluable for this section of the game.

The fourth stage is the killer. The gigantic head breaks apart slightly and bleeds from the eyes and mouth, transforming the entire walls and floor of the room into spikes and providing you with only eight rotating platforms to die on. In addition to this, Butes come flooding into the room and pelting you with arrows from the sides, as the author obviously didn't think this was difficult enough already. The online guide I was using gives a gigantically long list of tactics for this, but in the end I found the best strategy was to hit the Big Missile button as fast as possible and hope most of them get there. I got him down to about a quarter of his health with that after flying around uncertainly when the platforms didn't offer me a good vantage point. By this stage, my right knee was shaking so badly that it set off the hard drive protection mechanism and I had to wait, poised over the keyboard for about ten seconds, waiting to start falling again and considering what I was going to do next.

Eventually, I decided frantic shooting was the answer, ignoring everything flying at the character from all sides. After another twenty seconds or so, the game gave a noticeable jolt, and I glanced at the health counter to see if it was him or me who had just been killed. Twenty health points. Fairly safe, but I wouldn't have put it past the creator to put something in that room that took it all off instantly. But then the gigantic head exploded, I watched the ending, and alighted at Park Street with the unmistakable confident air of someone who's just seen the best ending on Cave Story.

Do that and writing an XML management system plugin for a system that only uses VBScript and JScript is easy by comparison.