I pay attention to E3 the same way I pay attention to the Oscars: I only really want to know about the highlight reel after the event is finished. In 2015, I watched a compilation video of every game announced. After a slew of unremarkable sequels of Ubisoft shooters, this brightly colored game that looked like a classic Warner Bros. cartoon immediately caught my attention, like the fire alarm going off in class. I believe this was everyone's reaction to their first time seeing Cuphead because it was indeed unlike anything we had ever seen before in a video game. Unfortunately, Cuphead became a fleeting tease for a while as it seemed like this game was going through a dreaded development hell which meant that the final product could have likely faltered. It didn't help that once this game was finally released, a particular game critic's pathetic attempt to play through the game's tutorial seemed like it was made to sabotage the game before it came out to affirm our worries. Still, anyone who has ever played a video game before knew better than to use this guy's generally piss poor gaming ability as a reflection of Cuphead's quality. However, no one was entirely certain. It would have been a shame if this game went through development hell just to come out as a mediocre product that would rightfully fade into obscurity. Fortunately, this was not the case, as Cuphead felt as fresh as it looked.
Calling Cuphead a "retro game" to describe its general direction has become one of my favorite awkward fallacies. It's not a retro game in the same vein as Shovel Knight or Bloodstained, but a modern indie game that calls back to the long-forgotten retro animation style similar to early Walt Disney and Max Fleischer cartoons. The developers did a fantastic job at ensuring the game fit the aesthetic and feel of a 1930s cartoon in every aspect. The soundtrack is a snappy mix of prevalent music genres popular during this era, such as Dixieland, ragtime, barbershop, and big band jazz. The game's animation is painstakingly hand-drawn, which probably caused the enormous span of development hell for so many years. The plot also seems like something from a cartoon from the 1930s. Cuphead and Mugman are denizens in this folksy cartoony world of Inkwell Isle when they disobey their old guardian, Elder Kettle, and decide to have some fun in a casino across town. They gamble against the Devil and lose, so they bargain with the Devil to go across town and collect the souls from the other denizens of Inkwell Isle instead of spending an eternity in hell. If you've seen any cartoons from this era, you know that there is a disturbing abundance of cartoons in which charmingly cute characters inadvertently make mistakes that condemn them to eternal damnation, so I think the developers did an outstanding job with the plot direction akin to the cartoons at the time (and also at displaying how terrifyingly conservative the 1930s were).
One common prediction before Cuphead's release was that it would be a run-and-gun game like Contra or Metal Slug. It turns out that those predictions were only half correct. Cuphead's direction leans towards being a boss gauntlet with run-and-gun levels to occasionally deviate from boss fights. The hub world is divided into four levels, each becoming much more difficult as the game progresses. Each part of Inkwell Isle has two run-and-gun levels and about 5-6 bosses except for the final part, Inkwell Hell. The bosses are an assortment of characters ranging from vegetables, frogs, birds, robots, mermaids, etc., all of which fit the 1930's cartoon aesthetic nicely. It's hard to say whether or not the subjective boss quality in this game is due to my range of difficulty with all of them. Do I like Captain Brineybeard and Werner Werman because of their design and fun, balanced fight, or were they substantially more manageable than the other bosses on Inkwell Isle III? Either or, I generally like all of them except for Wally Warbles. It's just something about his resting bitch face that makes dying to him much more aggravating. The run-and-gun levels tend to be just as difficult as the bosses. They take you out of the normal swing of things, but they don't quite match up in quality to the bosses.
Oh yes, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Cuphead is notorious for its "Dark Souls" difficulty level. I should slap myself for unearthing that old joke three years later, but that's how people saw it when it came out. It's pretty evident that the Dark Souls comparisons are silly, but it doesn't mean that Cuphead isn't a challenging game. The only aspect of Cuphead that it shares with retro games is its unforgiving difficulty level. In each level, Cuphead has only three chances to get hit before he dies. There is no such thing as health recovery in this game, and once you die, you have to restart the boss/level at the very beginning. Cuphead doesn't believe in modern luxuries like checkpoints or health bars. This aspect forces you to learn the boss's patterns and find a weapon combination that works for you (dare I say, Dark Souls?). At this point, I've 100% completed Cuphead twice, so I can safely say that I know how to get around the challenging obstacles that the game presents. Besides learning the bosses through trial and error, you must find a build that works for you. I've found the most luck with the roundabout and charge shot combo, using the spread shot occasionally depending on the boss (Beppi the Clown, Werner Werman, and the Devil go down so easily with the spread). The plane bosses are a different story, however, as you are limited to bullets and bombs. Each weapon works well depending on the boss phase, but the plane bosses are more a factor in dodging a myriad of obstacles and practicing the shrinking move to do so.
There is also a co-op mode where you can play through the entire game with another person playing as Mugman (or as Cuphead since the update a year ago). I played through the game for the first time with my brother playing as Mugman, and I do not recommend this to anyone playing Cuphead for the first time. Co-op adds a whole level of difficulty to the game that could be avoided entirely. I'm relatively certain that each boss's difficulty gets up-scaled like in Dark Souls, and saving your partner every so often can completely throw off your momentum. Play co-op after your first playthrough, or be prepared to have your friendships compromised.
Cuphead was a pleasant surprise back in 2017. For one, it was surprising that the game had so much to offer besides its pristine 1930s animation style that grabbed us many years before the game came out. It's a charming experience, and its notorious level of difficulty just makes it all the more invigorating. At this point, after completing the game twice, I feel as if I'm not finished with it yet. I'm looking forward to the DLC that's coming out so I can persevere through another wide-eyed, Mickey Mouse-looking boss once more.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/
Calling Cuphead a "retro game" to describe its general direction has become one of my favorite awkward fallacies. It's not a retro game in the same vein as Shovel Knight or Bloodstained, but a modern indie game that calls back to the long-forgotten retro animation style similar to early Walt Disney and Max Fleischer cartoons. The developers did a fantastic job at ensuring the game fit the aesthetic and feel of a 1930s cartoon in every aspect. The soundtrack is a snappy mix of prevalent music genres popular during this era, such as Dixieland, ragtime, barbershop, and big band jazz. The game's animation is painstakingly hand-drawn, which probably caused the enormous span of development hell for so many years. The plot also seems like something from a cartoon from the 1930s. Cuphead and Mugman are denizens in this folksy cartoony world of Inkwell Isle when they disobey their old guardian, Elder Kettle, and decide to have some fun in a casino across town. They gamble against the Devil and lose, so they bargain with the Devil to go across town and collect the souls from the other denizens of Inkwell Isle instead of spending an eternity in hell. If you've seen any cartoons from this era, you know that there is a disturbing abundance of cartoons in which charmingly cute characters inadvertently make mistakes that condemn them to eternal damnation, so I think the developers did an outstanding job with the plot direction akin to the cartoons at the time (and also at displaying how terrifyingly conservative the 1930s were).
One common prediction before Cuphead's release was that it would be a run-and-gun game like Contra or Metal Slug. It turns out that those predictions were only half correct. Cuphead's direction leans towards being a boss gauntlet with run-and-gun levels to occasionally deviate from boss fights. The hub world is divided into four levels, each becoming much more difficult as the game progresses. Each part of Inkwell Isle has two run-and-gun levels and about 5-6 bosses except for the final part, Inkwell Hell. The bosses are an assortment of characters ranging from vegetables, frogs, birds, robots, mermaids, etc., all of which fit the 1930's cartoon aesthetic nicely. It's hard to say whether or not the subjective boss quality in this game is due to my range of difficulty with all of them. Do I like Captain Brineybeard and Werner Werman because of their design and fun, balanced fight, or were they substantially more manageable than the other bosses on Inkwell Isle III? Either or, I generally like all of them except for Wally Warbles. It's just something about his resting bitch face that makes dying to him much more aggravating. The run-and-gun levels tend to be just as difficult as the bosses. They take you out of the normal swing of things, but they don't quite match up in quality to the bosses.
Oh yes, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Cuphead is notorious for its "Dark Souls" difficulty level. I should slap myself for unearthing that old joke three years later, but that's how people saw it when it came out. It's pretty evident that the Dark Souls comparisons are silly, but it doesn't mean that Cuphead isn't a challenging game. The only aspect of Cuphead that it shares with retro games is its unforgiving difficulty level. In each level, Cuphead has only three chances to get hit before he dies. There is no such thing as health recovery in this game, and once you die, you have to restart the boss/level at the very beginning. Cuphead doesn't believe in modern luxuries like checkpoints or health bars. This aspect forces you to learn the boss's patterns and find a weapon combination that works for you (dare I say, Dark Souls?). At this point, I've 100% completed Cuphead twice, so I can safely say that I know how to get around the challenging obstacles that the game presents. Besides learning the bosses through trial and error, you must find a build that works for you. I've found the most luck with the roundabout and charge shot combo, using the spread shot occasionally depending on the boss (Beppi the Clown, Werner Werman, and the Devil go down so easily with the spread). The plane bosses are a different story, however, as you are limited to bullets and bombs. Each weapon works well depending on the boss phase, but the plane bosses are more a factor in dodging a myriad of obstacles and practicing the shrinking move to do so.
There is also a co-op mode where you can play through the entire game with another person playing as Mugman (or as Cuphead since the update a year ago). I played through the game for the first time with my brother playing as Mugman, and I do not recommend this to anyone playing Cuphead for the first time. Co-op adds a whole level of difficulty to the game that could be avoided entirely. I'm relatively certain that each boss's difficulty gets up-scaled like in Dark Souls, and saving your partner every so often can completely throw off your momentum. Play co-op after your first playthrough, or be prepared to have your friendships compromised.
Cuphead was a pleasant surprise back in 2017. For one, it was surprising that the game had so much to offer besides its pristine 1930s animation style that grabbed us many years before the game came out. It's a charming experience, and its notorious level of difficulty just makes it all the more invigorating. At this point, after completing the game twice, I feel as if I'm not finished with it yet. I'm looking forward to the DLC that's coming out so I can persevere through another wide-eyed, Mickey Mouse-looking boss once more.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/