Cuphead

I play in short 15 minute sessions to keep the game fun. The bosses are hard to defeat. Art and sound are excellent!

[u][b]-Quick Review-[/b][/u] Cuphead is a 2d “Run and Gun” where the first thing you’ll want to do is rebind your shoot button to something you can hold down at all times, so you can gun while you run. Then you will proceed to get beaten up by the various colorful bosses and enemies until you learn the attack patterns well enough to pass the level and move on to the next level. I felt like I ran into a brick wall until I slowly knocked each brick out and was able to limp through to introduce my face to the next wall. Cuphead was developed by Studio MDHR Entertainment Inc and released in 2017. It’s absolutely insane that the developers took the time to make the game using “traditional methods” by HAND drawing then water coloring and having their own jazz recording. But that’s what takes Cuphead from being merely a good “run and gun” game and boosts it to an inspiring work of video game art. [u][b]Review Video:[/b][/u] If you don't like reading, or are curious about watching gameplay check out my video here: https://youtu.be/mEznF6KfXcY [u][b]-Detailed breakdown review-[/b][/u] [b]Story:[/b] Our protagonists are Cuphead and Mugman. Apparently, they didn’t learn the lesson “gambling sucks”, and the more important rule regarding gambling which is “The house always wins”. Well, Cuphead and was on a hot streak, and made a deal with the literal Devil. The foolish little Cup got greedy and of course the dice were loaded so he lost the bet, and now you gotta help Cuphead and Mugman collect the “Soul contracts” from all the different zany characters so that the Devil will spare them. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3638041696 [b]Gameplay:[/b] Cuphead is hard, but the controls are simple, movement to the right or the left, duck by pressing down, aim up by pressing up, jump, shoot, charged, shot, switch weapon, aim mode and a dash button. the most technical part of cuphead is the parry which is used on “pink” attacks/enemies/particles. The User Interface is simple too in the bottom left you have your hit points and the status of your charged shot. I would say there are 3 game modes: Brawls, Airplane Mode, and lastly Run and Gun. The brawls are the easiest to explain, normal controls, you carefully watch the boss to see what move they’re going to use and then dodge, think “Mega Man or Sonic the hedgehog boss fight” without the rest of the level. The Airplane game mode is different, because you move around 2d space as an airplane this game mode feels more like a side scrolling shoot-em-up or a bullet hell. Your charge shot changes, you don’t have any charms or shot customizations, you do have a choice between shooting regular straight shot, or lobbing bombs which will arc down from your character. You also have a shrink move which shrinks your hitbox making you harder to hit… but also decreases how far your shots travel, so it’s a risk/reward kind of move. Lastly the Run and Gun modes, which you do just that, run through a level to get to the end. Lots of different smaller enemies will drop in on you and respawn, so don’t get too comfortable staying in one place to wait and think. There are coins in the run and gun game mode which you can collect to buy equip able weapons and abilities from “Porkrind's Emporium”. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3638042497 [b]Conclusion:[/b] I really like Cuphead on several levels. The gameplay is a bit tougher then I’d prefer… however without that difficulty you could blow through the game in a couple hours, so I understand how you can get really hooked on getting good at Cuphead… especially if you invest the time to really learn the attack patterns and what cues to watch for. And that’s about the worst I can say about cuphead. The music is really freaking classy. The old 1940’s cartoon style is *chef’s kiss*. If you’re good at 2d platformers, run and gun games, probably a lot of old classic retro console game skill would apply here. If you’re good at those I think you’re in for a real treat with Cuphead! I’ll just conclude this review by saying we’re lucky to be living in the timeline where we got such a great game!

Game can be challenging, but that's the fun in it. Learning the patterns of the wide variety of bosses while advancing your skills. I feel it's better played in local co-op. Art design and audio are fantastic.