Cuphead (2017)

The rubberhose animation style is absolutely incredible in this game and the music perfectly harkens back to this 1930s era. The decision to make this game crushingly difficult is somehow fitting, it just works with the whole retro feel of the game. Cuphead is essentially a boss rush game interspersed with a few run and gun levels, and it brought out my gamer rage unlike any other. The satisfaction you feel though when beating bosses is unlike any other. It's like a drug high. Full playthrough below:

What can be said? This game is an a monumental achievement. The craftsmanship is oozing out of every corner. It’s almost surreal being able to PLAY a game with this style of animation. It’s like living in a classic cartoon, and it’s an absolute blast.

It’s always a joy to reach a new level and get presented with a beautiful backdrop, mesmerizing animations, and a telegraphed boss pattern that will take 5-100 attempts. The game rewards patience, as a boss that feels overwhelming will slowly teach you how to beat it. It’s adrenaline-pumping and very satisfying when you finally beat them.

The OST is equally endearing. They stayed true to the classic cartoons of the 30s/40s, and the orchestral arrangements are another treat when you get a unique song EVERY LEVEL.

It’s such a good value and such a unique game, that everyone should play it (besides possibly those that need an easy mode generally). The game will challenge you and reward you in the way perfectly designed games do. It’s absolutely worth the experience, and will always be one of my favorite games.

P.S. the DLC is just as good as the base game!

let's get the obvious out of the way, the game has great presentation, music, art. It trully shows the passion of the people in this project.

The gameplay is bombastic, you get to focus on bosses and each boss is extremely unique that makes things interesting.

You have abilities and "guns" you can equip to tackle the enemies, so you can adjust your strategy for the enemy at hand.

Even though the game is hard, is really easy to restart and try again, you don't need to do 20 minutes of gameplay to retry the next section you are having difficulty.

The game is mostly about skill, and my only complain is that there are certain bosses that relies too much on luck for a game of such difficulty and skill. The platform spawned at the other of the level? well i guess you die now.

The other problem is that if you are stuck, that's it, there is absolutely anything you can do to try to progress, no grinding levels, not buying better equipment. It is all on you and your skills.

Other than that is a great challenging game, if you like to get better at the game, you enjoy platformers and bullet hell type of games. you can't go wrong with this one.

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.

This game is both a work of art and passion. The amount of effort and detail placed into each enemy is truly staggering. The animations are fluid, hand drawn, telegraphing and is complimented aptly by a great musical score. It's a tightly constructed package with no shortage or excess of ideas. Each boss encounter feels unique and memorable. The best design of the game is how it creates a sense of progression through player skill.

Game play is simple but challenging. You die in three hits and most levels and boss encounters quickly devolve into bullet hells. You can jump, shoot and dash. While jumping, if you hit the jump button again while in the air, you can parry any pink object. I think it was a pretty apt decision to color code all parry-able attacks as pink. With how chaotic a boss fight can get, having visual clarity goes a long way for an enjoyable player experience. Parrying felt really awkward, particularly if an attack comes from the bottom of the screen. You have to have extensive forethought to jump ahead of time, and before you land on said attack, you then hit the parry button. It's really easy to push the parry button too soon and get obliterated. Not an elegant system, but I really liked the inclusion of the mausoleum events as parry tutorials. Without them, I may never have gained a grip on the mechanic.

You gain various upgrades and weapons via the store, but they are more minor tweaks. For example, the peashooter does 4 damage per hit and has a high rate of fire whereas the charge shot does 6 damage uncharged and 46 damage if you hold fire long enough and thus has a significantly lower rate of fire (I felt like this was the best shot overall. Made it pretty easy to cleave through bosses once you get a feel for it). You can beat each boss in the game with your first weapon, except for maybe the Phantom Express (his first phase probably requires the scatter shot, at least that's how I beat it) and the last phase of the Bee boss seems way too hard without the lobber shot. The trinkets you can equip are mostly useless except for the smoke bomb, which gives you I-frames whenever you dodge. You basically always want to use this which is kind of a shame that the devs couldn't design the other trinkets to compete. You have three super abilities. I found myself using the blast attack the most. The invulnerability I used for King Dice, and that's it.

My only issue with the game is the sheer amount of RNG that gets thrown at you during a boss fight. Not all damage feels avoidable. Sometimes it feels like you just get screwed over with multiple attacks/enemies stacking against you at the same time. Still, it mostly works and most damage feels fair.

Overall, I'm glad I finally sat down to conquer this game. It took me a little less than 8 hours. The hardest bosses for me were The Phantom Express and King Dice. The later was challenging due to the attrition. I think each mini-encounter was well designed in a vacuum (except for that damn chimp with cymbals! Fuck that guy!), but it can be terribly draining starting this fight over because of how long it can last. Easily the longest encounter by a huge margin in the whole game. I did feel like the Devil was a bit disappointment. He wasn't a push over, but compared to the penultimate boss it felt too easy.

Addendum: I just beat the DLC. I don't have much to say about it. The DLC provides more of the same type of content without any innovation. I did find the new "charm" or playable character to be strong. She has 4 hearts by default, an invincible dodge roll ( which can be a little awkward to use since you need to be on the ground) and a dedicated parry button. I really like the dedicated parry. It takes some getting used to since it is a dash into parry, but it makes parrying significantly more reliable which is a huge improvement from the base game. She does feel overpowered though. In addition, the crackshot and lightning shot are insanely strong. They easily outshine the charge shot. I don't think the DLC is a must play, but I don't regret it. It only costs $8, but it does still feel very short. I was able to beat all the bosses on normal in about 2-3 hours. Still I don't feel bad supporting a creative team.

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.

Cuphead is like the Bloodborne of indie platform-esque games in the sense that it is absurdly difficult from stage 1, but it is so much fun you will desperately want to beat the game until you can't take dying for the 105th time. I recommend playing the game solely for the experience of it. It is ALL HAND DRAWN. ALL OF IT. So it is insanely beautiful and wonderful to look at it. The character design is genius and refreshing as well as the construction of the way the bosses work. None of them are similar to one another, but they all follow their own pattern that is relatively easy to pick up on. Executing it, that's another matter. The music is also incredible. Yes, it does get a little annoying when you're trying to defeat the same boss for the 78th time, but any video game stage would.

It does seem like a waste of money to just experience the game aesthetically, but honestly that's a very worthwhile part of the game. It's design is unlike any game I have seen in a long, long time.

That being said, I still haven't figured out which platform this is best for: pc keyboard or controller. Aiming is of course always easier with a keyboard, but executing moves is easier with a controller. I would love to know others thoughts about that. I would love to pick up this game again and see if I can beat it (wishful thinking)

I didn't particularly like Cuphead, and I don't know why. I know that is heresy. I'm not saying the game isn't fantastic, I'm just saying that I personally didn't enjoy it. It's possible I wasn't in the right mood for it and I will enjoy it on replay another time.

The artstyle and music are wonderful. I didn't grow up with this style, so I don't have any particular fondness for it. I appreciate it and I think it is nice, but I'm not super drawn to it.

I'm trying to pin down what exactly I didn't like about the game. I think the boss patterns felt a bit too simplistic to me? It was often not very dynamic - the attacks would always come out the same way. So, once I learned how to avoid a certain pattern, there wasn't much else to do. And having to repeat sections that I already mastered started to feel repetitive.

The run-and-gun levels felt sort of unintuitive to me? Because of the 3 HP system and how easy it is to get hit, I felt like I couldn't enjoy running through them, I had to be careful at all times and proceed slowly, but it wasn't exactly strategicly satisfying to do so. I was annoyed every time I died and would have to restart a level.

I'm a bit colorblind, so I'd often be confused about which things I could parry or not. And I found the parry timing unintuitive. It was like you had to hit parry a bit before you hit something, but sometimes you could parry before touching it and still have it be too late. It's a very precise window and it bothered me.

Ultimately, the game was fun enough for me to push through, and I do think the bosses had a lot of really clever ideas. There was just something missing for me, I do not know what. Please don't hate me. It's not the game's fault, it's mine.

This game is tough, real tough. In fact, it's exceptionally tough. It's infuriating. It's painful. It's sadistic, cruel, and appeals to only the most masochistic. It's therefore very apt that a game this devilish ends with a battle against the devil himself.

I don't really know what kept bringing me back to Cuphead. I spent the majority of my playtime in an angry haze, cursing at the seemingly impossible odds. It wasn't until the very end of Cuphead that I came to appreciate it on a level deeper than its exceptional aesthetics. Cuphead asks you to work harder than any game I've ever played before. It demands a level of mastery and precision that simply won't come without dedicated practice, resilience, and patience and that's all, somehow, really bloody fun. It isn't afraid to sincerely challenge you and I sincerely admire it for that. It respects the gamer enough to not compromise its difficulty and that's not so common in this day and age.

Despite managing to somehow finish Cuphead, I sorely suck at this game. For a while I was unsure whether to blame myself or the game for the countless failings, rages, and apparent injustices I felt but, after finishing, I'm now sure it's me who was at fault. This game is the hardest game I've ever played but it remains admirably fair. I don't think I'll ever feel like I've truly beaten this game, rather I've inexplicably survived it. I've never felt like that about a game before.

I deeply respect this game and that respect is deepened further by the way it respects the player. In an age of micro-payments, 'dynamic' difficulty, live services, excessive pricing, and general anti-consumer practices, Cuphead stands among the dying breed of games that are created from a place of love, imagination, and respect for this wonderful art form we call gaming. It's a modern classic, no doubt about it.

Rating: 7/10

It's just not for me but I still respect it. I enjoyed it some, but there are so many games that have creeped up on me recently that I want to play more that I'm not going to finish this. I guess that's a disclaimer.

Artistically it's brilliant; the visuals and music are outstanding, perfectly create the era they were shooting for and, to be honest, just make the game feel so original. I can't praise it enough for this aspect.

But boss battles are rarely the best part of a game for me, so a game so focused on them is not my jam. Certain games like Bayonetta or even the Metal Gear series have great boss battles but in the case of the latter, there's so much meat leading up to them that I still don't think that they are the highlight (and MGS is my favourite series ever, so). Bayonetta they probably are.

That's not to say that they aren't great. Right from the first one you fight they are bursting with personality, the randomized nature of them keeps them fresh, and you really have to be skilled. So for that audience I can understand the love.

They do throw in other different times of stages but they're lame from what I played, which was not a small portion of the game. They break up the boss battles and give you an opportunity to get some cash but I think it would have just been better without them.

Glad people are loving this. Once I heard how boss heavy it was I knew I wasn't destined to love it, but it's great for what it is.