Cuphead (2017)

Welp, that's Inkwell Hell, and the Devil, defeated and thus Cuphead is over. I can easily say beating this game is now one of my top proudest gaming achievements. Getting to hell is actually pretty simple aside from one or two bosses in Isle 3, and King Dice was remarkably easy once you figured out which minibosses to fight, but the Devil was pretty tough. Took me at least a day to figure out all his patterns and whatnot.

Onto Expert mode, I guess.

The visual and audio presentation is excellent and has a nice cohesive style. It's probably the first thing that will attract players to the game.

This can be played with one or two players. The levels are mostly bosses, each with multiple phases. Some are platforming based and some are shmup based. There are also a few more traditional run n gun levels with enemies. But there are no traditional shmup levels. You get to different levels by traversing a map and defeating certain bosses opens up different pathways and generally you have some choice in which levels to tackle first.

The controls are mostly good. You can shoot while moving in different directions and also shoot in all 8 directions while being fixed in place. Other abilities include jumping, ducking and a horizontal dash. What differentiates this game from other run n guns is the ability to parry pink objects while in midair by pressing the jump button. However, I feel there is a bit of a delay with the parry and wish it were more responsive. There is also a super meter represented by multiple cards. Filling up one whole card allows one to shoot an ex move which differs depending on the equipped weapon but it's often a more powerful shot. You're allowed to equip two weapons at a time and switch between them freely. A full super meter allows you to do a super. There are three supers to unlock by beating the Mausoleum levels which are parry challenges.

It would've been nice to have the ability to fix aim in one direction no matter how you moved (something that Gunstar Super Heroes had). It would've been useful on some bosses.

For the shmup levels the controls are different. You can freely fly all around the screen in an airplane. You have your standard shot and later unlock an alternate bomb drop weapon that you can switch to. The jump button just does parry right away. Instead of the dash you can now shrink your plane. You become smaller and faster to maneuver but your shot is also limited in damage and range. This seems pretty unique, as I can't think of any shmup that has this.

There is nice variety in the choice of weapons, charms and supers (although I never found the last super useful). Interestingly some charms that give benefits also have penalties. All of the different run n gun weapons and most charms disappointingly don't have any alternate effects in shmup levels. In shmup you have the same basic shot and the same ex and super move regardless of weapon. The only charms that will still be active are the extra heart, the super meter auto refill and the whetstone.

The game is definitely quite difficult on regular. Often you'll die right in the first phase multiple times. It's definitely a lot of trial and error but as you play and fail more you start to recognize the patterns and naturally discover ways to deal with them. Some weapons and charms are better suited than others for certain bosses. But one thing that could've been done better was progressing. While later bosses are harder it doesn't feel like things you learned from beating earlier bosses can be applied to later bosses.

In addition, what also adds to the difficulty and frustration is the RNG. This can feel a bit unfair (a mode without the RNG would've been nice) at times requiring sometimes a bit of luck to get through a level but skilled play can overcome this. But the worst thing that is inexcusable is how foreground objects in many levels obscure significant parts of the playing area which often leads to getting hit. The very busy graphics already make it somewhat difficult to see everything on screen clearly with some things being ambiguous in whether they will hurt you or not. But obscuring the view should never be allowed other than by a telegraphed enemy attack. At least all the levels are fairly short and when successfully completed take anywhere from 3-4 minutes. I don't think a single one takes more than 5 minutes. Although there are simple versions of the bosses you won't be able to complete the game by playing those, which is unfortunate. An actual easier mode should've been implemented. If you beat the regular levels you unlock expert which I don't dare to touch.

Despite various frustrations, usually after a break I would manage to beat a boss that I just thought was impossible days before. Despite the flaws I think this game is pretty good but the difficulty will be a turn off for many. The addition of an easy mode would've been greatly appreciated and would not have compromised the dev's vision for the regular difficulty.

I am looking forward to the upcoming DLC.

I've been playing through Cuphead again to beat it again before the DLC finally launches this June, but boy do I have some things to say.

Since nobody will actually say it, I will. Cuphead's problem isn't its difficulty, because it isn't hard, its problem is it's incredibly broken in subtle ways.

The fact that there can be multiple perry items but you can only do one at a time - meaning if there's two items you can perry and one of the perry items is actually an enemy you'll take damage from it when you're actually meaning to perry the enemy and not the nondamaging perry you'll hit instead - but even worse than that is the fact that there's simply too much happening on screen at any given moment.

Yes the game is gorgeous, in fact it's a rare example of "style equals substance" because the game is also fun and not just all about its visual aesthetic, but I'm not sure they took into account just how awful it is to look at at times when you literally cannot see what is happening because everything is happening. It becomes an outright visual nightmare mess, and while the games visuals is whats its most appealing thing to a lot of people, it actually does hinder its gameplay a lot of the times.

So yeah, there's a lot that Cuphead does right that makes it great. In fact, I'd be willing to argue that most of it is great, and most of the things it does it does right. BUT...those few things it does wrong hurt it rather significantly and really keep it from being a perfect classic, and that sucks.