Cuphead’s relentless difficulty and classic cartoon art-design is a recipe to really captivate an audience. The type of audience that hates themselves.

When a truly difficult game comes my way, I often go in with caution. I don’t need everything to be braindead easy, but I do much prefer a relaxed experience over constant enemy placement, boss attack, confusing platform fuckery. Where Cuphead is able to separate itself from the games we know today as “bullshit,” is its fast-paced cutesy style of play.

Too many times in a game like the first Dark Souls, Sekiro, or the hardest modes on most FPS games, enemies are delay merchants, or there’s too many brutal, high damage attacks. Cuphead throws all of this out of the window and says, “Yo, check out this exploding bomb okay now look at this bullet wait actually blue and red bullet okay pink balloon you can parry this hold on pal I wasn’t done it’s time for my ultimate move, a floating head that follows you around. Checkmate, bitch.”

Cuphead’s ability to keep a lighthearted environment while also murdering you in broad daylight is what makes it stand out from its competition. Similar genres like shmups often fail to give you a break, it’s just a constant hellfire for 2+ hours. Cuphead’s boss difficulty can vary, and it isn’t all required to be done in a linear fashion. It’s really like an open world game where you have the freedom of saying fuck this, I’ll come back later.

A few things can really hold Cuphead back for me, though. Hit boxes on certain enemies, like the spaceships in Dr. Kahl, never seem to be all that close to them. Sometimes I’m standing around in what I think is a safe spot, only for a random attack to fly above my head but actually hit me in the process, even though it didn’t look like it did at all. There’s also some awful attacks. Again, Dr. Kahl is a huge blame here. The exploding bombs that follow you around are just ridiculous. I know Cuphead’s whole shtick is that retro feel of NES bullshit design, but when the majority of the game doesn’t feel that way, it’s hard to excuse this one instance.

My absolute biggest gripe with Cuphead, is the fact that the easier difficulty is just there for practice. I have no idea who thought this was a good idea; to add in an easier option but just deem it obsolete in the endgame. It’s not even like it just slows it down, they are completely different attacks with different patterns. What’s the point of adding a “practice mode” if that mode isn’t practice for “Regular” at all?

Also, fuck King Dice. Too long, no heals after levels unless you land on hearts, dumb. Lame.

I think what makes Cuphead so special is the fact that it’s just boss after boss after boss, with killer soundtracks and a great visual design. The difficulty is for the people who love masochism, while the rest of the game is for the people who love good overall game design. 8/10.

An amazing game!

Its art-style is absolutely flawless and it translates so smoothly into the boss rush game it is!

The game is incredibly difficult but also fair and every single boss fight has at least one thing that makes it a blast to fight! And with all the weapons and charms you can unlock it allows for so many strategies and ways to take down your foe!

The only thing you can really get the game on is the fact the “run and gun” stages are not as good as bosses, but they’re still amazing!

Overall great game!