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.

When I think of the “Soulslike” genre, I never get eager. It is a genre full of no fun try-hards claiming to be above the rest of us peasants. What Another Crab’s Treasure does with the genre, is stick a pipe up its ass.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

This was my most anticipated game of the year, legitimately. I had just finished Elden Ring when I found out about this, and I loved it. When I saw the… options… in this game, I immediately knew it could be something truly special. Yes, you are an animated crab with a fork as your weapon. If that doesn’t just scream “have fun,” then what does?

The idea of the difficulty setting in the soulslike genre has always sparked heated discourse. I’m all for it personally, but Aggro seems to have a much different approach to this complicated mechanic. While there are a plethora of available settings to increase or decrease difficulty, the main one is very obviously the gun. You have the ability to have a gun as a shell, that kills everything in a single hit.

Now, the gun doesn’t actually save you 100% of the time. The 2nd phase of the 2nd to last boss is an escape test, you don’t actually attack it. A few of the bosses start far away, and are incredibly fast, so the option to shoot immediately sometimes doesn’t pan out. Plus, you still have to do all the platforming, and can still take damage.

The end game gets absolutely ludicrous. There are 3 final bosses with 2 phases, with the first 2 being utterly mind-fucking. You’ll think, “Oh this must be the final boss!” Until you think that again, and then again… The bosses overall are also incredibly entertaining. A wide variety of designs, movesets, unique dialogue, you name it.

Speaking of dialogue, this is not just another goofy heartwarming story because it’s a cartoon style. Characters die, MAIN characters. The story really makes you feel like all of this senseless violence in the end is for nothing, because, well, it practically was. Kril’s entire mission was to just get his shell back, seemingly willing to do anything to retrieve it. Even if “anything” means putting people he cares about amidst a magnitude of harm. In the end, he attacks someone who was never exactly a friend to him, but didn’t deserve his fate, just to get his shell back. Then, the game just kind of ends… It’s an incredibly dark and depressing narrative, capped off with dark undertones through environmental storytelling.

Now, there are some serious bugs. I know that games on Steam are often complete jank, since PC is much different when it comes to developing games for it, but I’ve heard that these bugs occur on console as well. I had to restart the game a few times in the first day, but I can say that I never experienced anything major afterwards. I played for I believe around 20 hours. Keep in mind, this is a MASSIVE game from an indie studio with a single other game under their belt. The scale of this game, how great it looks, how funny it is, how solid the VA can be, I really have to give them credit.

This game has what I believe could be the best soundtrack of the year so far, too. Styles are constantly making drastic shifts from area to area, all fitting the world around them. The city is a cute upbeat sense of vacation, the electrical area is a wobbly synthesized amalgamation, the credits plays a melancholy song with a play on words, all crafted in such a well produced way. it’s, quite literally, music to the ears.

The little details of things like the writing on the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!” carton, the jokes written on hidden popsicle sticks, the references to things like Taito and CVS, I just can’t believe the scale of this game given the circumstances.

If it wasn’t for some serious camera flaw, or early game bugs, I think this would truly be up there with some of the best games ever. Regardless of my issues, this is still an absolute home run. 9/10.

Metroid Prime is the vital “mood” game. The atmosphere is what sells it, shootin’ shit is just a plus.

Straight out of the gate, boom, detailed planet in the distance whilst in the middle of space. It hooks you in with its stellar visuals and killer soundtracks, and keeps you sucked in with its atmospheric world building.

Curling up into a ball and rolling or bouncing around might be the absolute most fun thing in any game ever. Because, sure, it’s not the only game to ever have a playable ball, but it is the only one that looks, sounds, and feels like this while also racking up alien K/Ds. Bouncing off of morph ball bombs through the air, using the spider power up to roll around ceilings and walls, twisted columns, it’s so surreal.

Metroid coined the term “metroidvania,” and Metroid Prime 15 years later certainly shows why. Yep, there certainly is a whole lot of backtracking here. It’s not terrible since the goal is just collecting artifacts and the maps are extremely detailed. Colored
doors guide your way to understand the best path to advance from elevator to elevator.

Where Metroid Prime fails, though, is its endgame. Petrasyls may be my least favorite game enemy of all time. They are not fair and challenging, they are not a scary design, they are not cool to look at. They take way too many shots, and latch onto your face constantly for no other reason than to slow you down. So, when they start coming my way by the dozens after the Phazon Suit is acquired, I want to die. Especially when the final boss throws 2-4 of them at once, so you’re just scrambling to try and get them off of you.

There’s not a whole lot bosses here, since the focus is the vibe, but when you do come across a boss, it is very fun. I just kind of wish they’d had been more balanced out throughout the whole game, rather than really spread out.

Metroid Prime Remastered takes the cake of an already amazing game, and adds some icing to really boost its replay-ability. This is one of the best looking games on the Switch, the source material was already there. Thanks Reggie, you did it this time. 8/10