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Cuphead review - Polygon


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Cuphead has a reputation for being difficult, so let’s clarify this up top: Cuphead isn’t impossible; it isn’t the Dark Souls of 2D shooters, nor is it the world’s cutest bullet-hell game; it isn’t even particularly punishing. For a game that has established an identity around an “old-school” (read: hard) design, Cuphead is unexpectedly accessible.

Announced in the summer of 2014, Cuphead cultivated a fandom around its art style, an homage to 1930s cartoons from Disney and Fleischer Studios. Brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, along with animator Jake Clark, meshed the hand-drawn art with the run-and-gun genre popularized by pixelated games like Mega Man. The result is a throwback on a throwback, an ode to the good old days of games and animation alike.

 

Shrewdly, the creators lanced many of the warts that have festered on the “good old days” of both forms. Gone are both the technical limitations of classic games and, more importantly, the grotesque racist caricature of classic cartoons. Cuphead’s creators have emulated how we remember our nostalgic darlings, rather than how they actually exist today.

 

Cuphead is a throwback on a throwback

 

And that’s why I say Cuphead shouldn’t be missed because of preconceptions about difficulty (barring, perhaps, the finale, which I’ll get to shortly). It borrows ideas from games like Ikaruga and Gunstar Heroes, but it’s fine if you aren’t familiar with either of those. While it’s a game about battling overpowered enemies, Cuphead shares more with puzzle games, although it requires healthy reflexes, patience and, above all, a willingness to learn.

Cuphead is the story of an adorable cup that makes a deal with the devil, then has to repay a debt by collecting the contracts of the devil’s other debtors. Satan’s debtors amount to a few dozen stand-alone boss fights, which must be completed so dear Cuphead can save his soul. You (and optionally, a friend in local co-op) travel from one boss to the next, unleashing infinite ammunition into their eyeballs, tummies, appendages or other vulnerable spots until they submit. All the while, you dodge increasingly complex patterns of attacks.

 

Cuphead punishes pride and speed

 

The average boss fight in Cuphead, from beginning to end, is roughly two minutes long; short enough to be tested over and over and over again. Fights are themselves divided into a few phases, and each phase introduces its own new set of challenges (such as a tall wave of bullets) that inspire tiny epiphanies (rather than jump over the bullets, duck). Strung together to complete a stage, these self-taught lessons produce a real sense of accomplishment. It’s chemical. I do not fist-pump while playing games. I do not whoop. Cuphead had me doing both, while yelping “I did it!” to my very confused and indifferent dog.

StudioMDHR Entertainment

Cuphead, at its best, educates the player on how to overcome each obstacle. Every boss fight has an ideal strategy discovered through trial and error. To avoid stress, it’s helpful to think of failure as a greater tool than any weapon. When a Medusa-like boss froze me in midair, I eventually found the spot to hide from her icy stare. After a ghastly horseman uppercutted me into oblivion, I knew to keep an eye on the bottom of the screen so I could spot him preparing a strike. With each round against a boss, I found myself progressing further, not because I was becoming some prodigious video game guru, but because I merely spotted and memorized each stone on the walkway to victory.

All of this is possible because of one crucial component: consistency.

The game isn’t designed for true gamers to race through with nothing but raw skill and unearned confidence. If anything, the boss fights punish pride, filling stages with minions, projectiles and traps.

Where Cuphead scolds speed, it rewards a careful and thoughtful method. Anytime the challenge feels too great, a solution can typically be found by inhaling, exhaling and carefully considering all possible solutions before diving back into the fight.

Cuphead unlocks new weapons and abilities rapidly, allowing for further experimentation in pursuit of the optimal way to beat any given boss. In a fight, Cuphead can carry two weapons, a bonus power and a special attack at all times. A thoughtful loadout can impact the difficulty of a stage. For example, a stage with swarms of enemies benefits from a powerful short-range attack, a buff that automatically accumulates special attacks and a screen-clearing super move. Meanwhile, a humongous boss who fires large projectiles calls for homing bullets, a buff that prevents damage while dodging and a special move that grants brief invincibility.

 

Cuphead - balloon boss with alligator-like enemyStudioMDHR Entertainment

Loadout weapons and buffs can purchased with coins hidden throughout a handful of platforming stages. To be clear, Cuphead isn’t a platformer. A few side-scrolling moments have been added for flavor, but where boss fights teach players the unique method with which to clear each fight, these traditional stages are largely completed through brute force, killing everything on screen, pressing forward until the finish line. Classic video game boss fights have fallen out of favor in the past couple of decades, and one wonders if these bits of platforming were added to ground intimidated players in something more familiar.

 

Cuphead’s final boss fights undermine the game’s best traits

 

Sadly, there’s no better reminder of why video games have largely scrapped the classic boss fight than the final two battles in Cuphead. The first is a gauntlet of bosses, between three and nine, along with a bonus boss. And the final ... well, I won’t go into details, but it felt like a battle with the game itself.

Cuphead has an astonishing cohesion: a stunning orchestral soundtrack and visual confidence that reminds me of my favorite Ub Iwerks cartoons. But on occasion, those elements get in the way — particularly the art, which can obscure the foreground, concealing enemies and projectiles. Sometimes the part of an enemy that can be touched without taking damage is unclear. The final fights combine both of these problems, and what should feel like a culmination of a learned expertise winds up requiring a mastery of the game’s idiosyncrasies — with help from luck.

The conclusion of Cuphead is, I fear, what the game has broadly been perceived as: a comically difficult, if not cruel, experience. And that’s really a shame, because the lion’s share of Cuphead is a special formula that takes a notoriously challenging genre of the past and carefully and lovingly introduces it to the wider audience it deserves.

 

Wrap-up

 

Cuphead made me feel incredible, even if its difficulty eventually goes too far

 

Cuphead’s deal with the devil eventually leads to hell, and so perhaps it’s fitting the conclusion should be so torturous. Though, honestly, even the residual headache has been soothed by the sweet, sweet salve of victory. When I think of my time with Cuphead, instead of frustration I’ll remember the dozens of tiny breakthroughs, when the impossible became possible, and a game that built an identity around difficulty helped me to feel, however briefly, undefeatable.

Cuphead was reviewed using a final “retail” downloadable Xbox Play Anywhere code provided by Microsoft, and the game was played exclusively on a Windows 10 PC. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.

8.5

Cuphead

  • Platform Win, Xbox One
  • Publisher StudioMDHR Entertainment
  • Release Date Sep 29, 2017
  • Win Score 8.5
  • Developer StudioMDHR Entertainment
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