A great slam-o-nanza
(This
review contains minor spoilers!)
Well, this has been a long time
coming.
It feels like a million years have
passed since we were first introduced to Cuphead.
Being in development for seven years now, gamers were very quickly won over by
the game’s 1930’s cartoon-style graphics and a promise of a real challenge in
terms of gameplay. But was this yet another game sold on a promise alone that
failed to deliver, or is Cuphead a
fun throwback to both the early days of gaming and the dawn of animation?
Well, since I’m basically the last one
to the review party I’m sure you can guess what I’m gonna say here. If you’re
looking for a retro-style shooter with the one of best art styles I’ve ever
seen in all of video games, Cuphead will
delight you.
The story is unsurprisingly very
simple. Cuphead and his pal Mugman wind up gambling their souls away to the
Devil himself, and are sent on an adventure across their island home to
retrieve contracts from other debt-owners in order to be set free. That’s all
you need to know. Later on in the game more tidbits of plot are thrown in for
good measure, but overall the story is as simple as can be, and that was all it
needs to be.
Onto the graphics. Yes, they’re just
as impressive as you’d expect them to be. This isn’t a situation of “Oh, this
game slightly resembles a 1930’s cartoon!” No, this game is a 1930’s cartoon. The hand-drawn animation is absolutely
gorgeous. It looks like something directly out of the era they were going for,
albeit upped to HD and 60 frames per second. The creators have said that the
reason that the game took so long to make was because of how long it took to
hand-draw the entire game, and I’d say it was well worth the wait.
The jazz-themed soundtrack is also
exceptional, but with a few caveats that I’ll get into later. Each song matches
the boss its paired to in a way, and at times the music even matches up with
what the boss is doing. It’s great all around to be honest.
The gameplay is exactly what it says
on the tin: an ultra-hard shooter with homages to games like Contra and Mega Man. And when I say it’s hard, I mean it. Cuphead is no joke. This game will chew you up and spit you out
over and over again until you figure out the bosses. But you know what? As
someone who isn’t super great at video games, at no point after dying dozens of
times to the same boss did the game ever allow me to lose any hope. Every time
you lose you learn a bit more about how the boss works, and the more you learn
the closer you’ll get to winning.
But the big problem of the game also
comes into play here: it relies way too much on trial and error gameplay. When
you enter a boss fight for the first time, you’re going to die. No ifs, ands or
buts. Get ready to die. And then you’ll try again. And then you’ll die again.
Rinse and repeat until you slowly and surely learn the boss’s patterns and win.
And then you’ll move onto the next boss and start the whole thing over again.
This is the one caveat I mentioned
with the music. Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I try to listen to the songs
from levels I had especially hard times with I get a weird kind of PTSD and
have to turn it off. This isn’t a slight against the game, but I found it kind
of funny.
I would’ve really liked a place to
practice individual segments of boss fights without having to worry about
dying. Because of the trial and error nature, you don’t see the final form of
bosses that often. Because of this, you can often be perfect throughout entire
fights only to die to something at the very end you had no idea was coming. A
way to practice and learn in a safer environment would’ve led to less
frustration on my part.
If you like especially hard games with
excellent gameplay and boss fights, Cuphead
is the game for you. If you aren’t a fan of tough games, I’d still recommend
checking it out when it goes on sale later on down the line. The graphics alone
are worth giving it a look. Still, the constant necessity of dying and trying
again does wear you down after a while, and I would’ve liked a place to
practice segments of boss fights on their own. But these are just minor qualms
from me. Cuphead knew what it wanted
to be right out the gates, and succeeded in all aspects.
FINAL SCORE
8/10
Great
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