Why Cuphead is perfect
Golly, a perfect score!
There have been many incredible games over this console generation; from the return to top form experienced by Resident Evil and God of War, to the breakout new franchises that have set the gaming world alight, such as Horizon Zero Dawn becoming a breakout smash hit for the PlayStation, and Sekiro bringing From Software’s patent punishing to a fresh Eastern setting. With all these stellar titles the task of choosing the best game of the generation can seem daunting as each has certain aspects in which it excels and some in which it comes up short. However, one game stands head and shoulders above all the others to be the greatest game of the generation and the only recent example of a game that is absolutely perfect and that is, Studio MDHR’s Cuphead.
Released back in 2017 Cuphead made an immediate splash in the gaming world, selling one million copies in just two weeks and dominating Twitch on the day of release, as people from all over the world tuned in to see their favourite streamer swear at the screen after Grim Matchstick for the fiftieth time. Since its release, Cuphead has gone on to sell over six million worldwide and its recent release onto the PlayStation 4 means that these sales figures are only the beginning. This kind of success for an indie game like Cuphead is rather extraordinary, especially considering it is the first and at time of writing only, game released by Studio MDHR, so this raises the question where Cuphead’s appeal comes from? This is something that is obvious is you examine any Cuphead trailer or sit down to play it for the first time as the art style is so utterly breathtakingly unique that it is certain to draw you in.
Cuphead’s art style famously imitates the 1930s era of children’s cartoons, think Steamboat Willie or Max Fleischer, with every aspect of the game hand drawn and lovingly animated by the people at Studio MDHR, giving it the feel of a jolly cartoon you might have watched in the middle of the day when off sick from school on a channel you hadn’t watched before, if you’re childhood was anything like mine. What is particularly impressive is how effectively authentic the game looks and feels, the grainy, scratchy effect that overlays gameplay, the big booming brass jazz band soundtrack that blares through the background and behind every battle, and the sense of animation that oozes from every character (in both senses of the word). Characters have overly exaggerated limbs and move with hyperbolic movements, like their arms and legs are made out of elastic bands, and they all bounce up and down like a child at a party. This all comes together to create an atmosphere to lose yourself in, one that oozes enough energy and charm to keep you enthralled for many hours, and with the mammoth challenge that Cuphead offers that is a good thing.
Cuphead’s bullet hell style of gameplay is hard. There is no two ways about it, each of its bosses offer up new and engaging challenges and it is likely that you will die hundreds of times before seeing the credits. This is a refreshing change to the large majority of AAA games nowadays which place an emphasis on leaving no player behind, allowing the difficulty to be changed at any time in an attempt to offer a ‘choose your way’ style of gameplay. Cuphead does not make allowances, Cuphead does not grant you any slack. You either learn to do it Cuphead’s way or you do not do it at all. This means that Cuphead’s game design can be incredibly tight and focused, every boss phase and every section of the run and gun levels offer a new and interesting challenge. Whilst challenge in a video game is not an automatic signifier of quality, such as games like The Surge in which the battle with the camera can be much more difficult than any actual enemy, the beauty of the challenge in Cuphead is how fair it all feels. Every time you die there is no one to get angry at other than yourself, which in some cases can be even more frustrating, there is no great secret to defeating each boss, only patience, the patience to learn every boss like the back of your hand. Whilst this may sound like this detracts from the enjoyment of the game as an experience overall, this immense amount of challenge leads to one of the best experiences in gaming, that feeling of beating a boss after countless attempts. It’s a feeling of catching an important train just before the doors close behind you, the feeling of getting top marks in a incredibly difficult exam you’ve spent weeks revising for, it’s the feeling of overcoming adversity and the reward being all the sweeter because of it. It’s a feeling that doesn’t exist in the first person shooters of the world as you don’t have to put the same level of commitment into battles and form the same kind of emotional bond with bosses that you do with Cuphead, thereby offering the most satisfying experience in gaming.
In order for a challenging experience to be considered fair by the player, to be considered ‘easy to learn, difficult to master’ as the old saying goes, the mechanics of the game need to be incredibly tight and well developed and this is the area of Cuphead that is so easily over looked, with the genius of its equip system often being overshadowed in other dissections of the game. The brilliance of the Cuphead equip system is the way in which it encourages the player to constantly change their loadout depending on the challenge they are currently facing. For instance the Chaser shot is extremely effective against Rumor Honeybottoms (the bee boss for the Cuphead newbies at the back) as the level requires constant jumping and movement to avoid losing health and so the value of a shot type that automatically targets the boss is obvious, but against the pirate boss Captain Brineybeard it also targets the treasure chest that is suspended above Cuphead for the duration of the fight, meaning that half your shots are off target. This example illustrates the quality of both the loadout and the way in which bosses are designed to interact with them as it avoids something that is so prevalent in other games, equipment stagnation. With other games, such as Dark Souls and Skyrim, you are likely to finish the game with armour and weapons that are simply unmatched by any new equipment you are likely to pick up, Cuphead meanwhile encourages you to constantly make adjustments to your equipment in an attempt to gain any kind of advantage against the behemoth of a boss the player finds themselves up against at that point, and its not just the garnish on top of the gameplay cake that earns the five star reviews as the standard bullet hell gameplay is the solid foundations on which the rest of the game can be built on in the restaurant/ construction company mixed metaphor.
The basic gameplay of Cuphead can be described as a form of bullet hell in which the player has to balance the shots they pour into the enemy against avoiding the damage that the enemy attempts to pour into them. This kind of gameplay can become rather hectic at some times with the skill of being able to work out which of the many moving parts on screen is the player character but the focus and almost zen like state that this form of gameplay forces within the player is unique and unachievable by almost any other game. The concentration creates the greatest level of immersion I have ever experienced in a video game, with many hands being clenched onto the controller with a Vulcan like grip as I finally made it to the last phase of a boss that’s already beaten me thirty times with only one HP remaining, a kind of immersion that has not be reached for me by even the most intricately designed open worlds. This simple system of bullet hell is greatly enhanced by the parrying system, a simple twist on the standard gameplay that adds an element of risk and reward to the combat. Parrying allows the player to parry any pink item, usually an enemy projectile, in exchange for a special attack. This, therefore, sometimes forces the player to actively seek collision with enemy projectiles in order to utilize more power in the fight. This extra element only adds to the intensity as the player has to weigh up if its worth moving past the barrage of obstacles and attempting to jump and a projectile is worth the risk for extra attack power. The base gameplay of Cuphead, the stable foundations of the whole game, therefore, is shown to be incredibly tightly focused, effective, and most importantly, immersive.
The term ‘perfect game’ needs more than just brilliantly composed gameplay, a unique and breath-taking art style and a masterfully constructed difficulty spike, every aspect of the game must be stellar and so in order to vet Cuphead’s candidacy for the elite ‘Perfect game club’, to join such members as Super Mario Galaxy and Monopoly, even its least prominent and effective aspects need to be looked at, therefore the time has come to discuss the elephant in the room, the story. Cuphead’s story is fairly basic and simple, albeit it pretty dark for its fun and cartoony aesthetics. Our two heroes, Cuphead and Mugman lose their souls at the Devil’s casino and have to collect the souls of all the Devil’s other debtors by midnight. This is a pretty standard plot, there is a generic villain, who is literally the Devil so you know he’s the bad guy, a pair of scrappy underdogs as the heroes of the piece and a number of objects that have to be obtained to help them, all culminating in a climatic battle between good and evil in the final act. Whilst what I have written so far might indicate that I’m not a fan of Cuphead’s story, which is a fair assumption since I feel like the only person who would receive praise for writing this seriously is a primary school student and even that would be immediately followed by several therapy sessions, the great thing about Cuphead’s story is that it is perfect for the game it’s used in. The cartoon aesthetic demands a silly, bombastic story to fit in with its style and the only one that could realistically be enjoyed with the cartoon art style, as it would have been a little bit hard to sell a gritty story line of a creature with a cup for a head, say, seeking revenge for the murder for the death of his wife. Having everything in the story dialled up to eleven right from the start feeds into the cartoon aesthetic and, in turn the carton aesthetic feeds into the story.
As a boss rush style game, the most memorable aspect of the game is the big baddies on which you are likely to spend the majority of your time. Every boss is brilliantly designed, both visually and in gameplay terms, both of which deserve special mention. First the design — the cartoon aesthetics set the right conditions for all kinds of weird and wonderful boss designs with delightfully charming, varied, creative and wacky designs such as the pair of frogs that turn into a slot machine, for reasons that are still unclear to me, or the literal ghost train with all kinds of skeletons, ghouls and ghosts aboard. The creativity in the Cuphead bosses is abundant and obvious from the word go and have a degree of variance that is unmatched by any other game. Every Cuphead boss is completely unique from a German rat to a sentient vegetable patch, if that is indeed an officially recognised scale, and so there isn’t any boss that seems poorer in quality when compared to the others as each are utterly sublime in their own way. The sensational boss design does not just make for a pretty opponent but the cartoonishness and animation that seeps from their every action means that the player forms an emotional bond with each of the foes they face. Their demeanour prompts not just hate and frustration, although that is often the case, but affection, sympathy, joy and surprise, feelings that are not easy to evoke for the villains of the story. After design we move onto the way in which each boss plays and examine the incredibly tight and well-honed challenge that each one poses. Cuphead bosses are almost designed to be memory tests, intended so that the player must remember what it means when Sally Stageplay disappears or when the giant cupcake shows up in the Princess Bon Bon fight, this all makes it so that each failure feels like a little more progress has been made each time, each death by a certain attack engrains how to avoid it deeper into the player’s mind until eventually they can become the sum of all their past attempts and beat the boss perfectly. This tightly focused memory test is broken up through the use of boss phases as, after a certain amount of damage is done, the boss will completely transform in the most bombastic and Cuphead-ey way (a term I’m hoping will soon catch on), completely shifting its attacks and openings and turning everything you’d previously learnt about it on its head. This adds a refreshing change to the memorization test, forcing the player three, four, five or even more sets of attacks learn when they are being telegraphed, how to avoid them and the most opportune to retaliate. Therefore, Cuphead’s boss is particularly exemplary in the way in which they might to engage both sides of the brain, the left brain’s cold, calculating side to remember enemy attacks, and the creative right side to fully enjoy the charm and flamboyant quality that practically jumps through the screen.
Whilst the broad strokes of Cuphead make it such a brilliant game, it is its attention to detail that grants it the status of perfection as every scintilla of the game is well polished and adds to the tone and feel of the game, each little fragment pulling its weight to establish the world in which the player inhabits. The overworld is where the majority of these hidden secrets lie, as very basic transition between levels it can be easy to overlook just how incredible it is and the wonders it does for furthering Cuphead’s atmosphere. First the overworlds, whilst at first may appear a simple landscape, little more than a level select screen, it soon becomes apparent that these overworld’s feed into the exaggerated, animated themes of the game. The world becomes more open as more bosses are defeated, opening up new paths that allow an open world vibe to proceedings as you can choose which out of three bosses you fancy taking a crack at in the moment and also encourages a certain amount of toing and froing between bosses when they inevitably beat the life out of you. The real brilliance of the overworlds comes in the multiple non-player characters who effortlessly add multiple layers of depth to the already effectively developed world. If I can examine just one of these in particular it would have to be the Pacifist Turtle (I doubt if that’s his official name) who appears in the third overworld near the Cala Maria boss fight sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time. He can be seen swaying his head in an energetic way. Whilst this may seem like a small point it is worth mentioning, it makes sense that the turtle is close to the water, this is something that is consistent with the other characters in the game, the juggler in the amusement park, the coin attempting to hide his money from the devil by moving as far asway as possible from his casino. This means that the tone and world building feel consistent and well designed adding to the immersion of the game even in the least consequential aspects of the game.
The post-game content in any game is designed to extend the longevity of the game, to appeal to the hardcore fans and offer up more content to appease their insatiable appetite. There are many ways in which this can be achieved but doing it effectively can be difficult to pull off, such as the Assassin’s Creed method of stuffing the world with collectibles which demands hours upon hours of trawling though every nook and cranny of Renaissance Venice looking for that last feather that you are starting to believe doesn’t actually exist. Whilst this approach does offer a reason for a player to spend more time in the game they have already finished and enjoyed, it has the effect of numbing the player as they mindlessly run around with no kind of thought or strategy and cannot match up to the levels of pleasure that would be experienced in the initial playthrough and instead seeks to squeeze time out of the player more than engagement. This is an aspect in which Cuphead excels as it manages to increase the longevity of the game whilst at the same time cultivating and indeed demanding the same level of concentration from the first playthrough of the game, a goal which is realized through three different methods, deviation, mastery and challenge.
If anyone is yet to play Cuphead, firstly what are you doing reading this — go and play it right now! and secondly you may be wondering about the earlier description of the pacifist turtle but the reason I have given him such a title is that it gives the player the most interesting post-game challenge, get through every run and gun level without killing a single enemy. This dynamic completely turns the game on its head and forces the player to fight against every skill and instinct they have spent all game cultivating in order to accomplish this extra challenge. The effectiveness of this comes from the fact that it is able to pull off something that is so often done poorly in other games in just the right way as changing mechanics can be seen as an artificial and cheap method to increase difficulty, throwing a whole new game at the player and expect them to pick it up, but the status of this idea in Cuphead and the rewards for completing it are what make it work in this instance. The fact that this pacifist challenge is something for the post game means it is naturally going to attract the most hardcore, psychopathic fans of the game, hoping to squeeze every drop out of the game that they have come to love but in a new way. With this simple twist, every run and gun level that the player has experienced and learnt like the back of their hand suddenly becomes alien and mysterious as they now have to manoeuvre around obstacles rather than just plough straight through them, it creates an unfamiliar game in a familiar environment, keeping what made the game so appealing in the first place whilst providing a fresh enough challenge to feel new and exciting. Whilst this challenge is very difficult and will no doubt push all but the omnipotent among us to their limits the reward upon completion of this taxing trial is not something that fundamentally changes the game, providing a black and white filter to further enhance the idea that you are playing a cartoon. Whilst this reward is very nifty (50s words for a 50s aesthetics) and should be sought after by all hardcore Cuphead-heads it’s not necessary or important over the grand scheme of the game, it rewards the most invested of players whilst at the same time not punishing those who don’t show the same level of masochistic dedication, it honours the elite without excluding the rest, providing more without detracting from the rest of the experience of the game.
This reward logic is also shared by another aspect of Cuphead’s post game content, the master quest. Throughout Cuphead, the game grades you based on your performance in both bosses and run and guns, depending on things such as how much health the player has remaining, how much time they took and more besides this. In the initial run through of the game these can be fairly easily ignored as not even a C grade can diminish the feeling of finally beating King Dice after three straight days, however in the post-game the game offers up a new challenge, completely perfect every boss. Doing so will earn you another new video filter in the same vein as the black and white one provided by the turtle, a filter called 2-strip colour mode, dulling some colours whilst emboldening others and providing a new aesthetic to the game, sharing the same idea of rewarding without excluding as other post game content. The quest in itself offers up a challenge different to the pacifist run, it does not change the game, it asks you to perfect it, throwing down the gauntlet of, you think you have mastered this game? Then prove it. It may seem like a very simple way to enhance the game’s longevity, but it does what it needs to do, namely providing an excuse to go back and enjoy the game all over again. It doesn’t innovate the formulae, instead seeking to build upon the already solid foundations that it has laid seeking to produce the highest quality of player, which is a good thing if the player wants to have any chance of completing the last piece of post-game content, hard mode.
Playing through the game for the first time there are two difficulty setting for the bosses, simple and regular. Simple provides a shortened boss fight with fewer stages to help the player get their eye in, and regular which is, by any measure a lie as it is here that the hardest, soul-crushing gameplay that creates the essence of Cuphead and is where any player is likely to spend hours of their lives. Whilst this aspect of the game is very capable of breaking a player beyond the realms of normal human comprehension, it is nowhere near to the game full fury as, upon completion of regular difficulty, Cuphead cries havoc and unleashes the dogs of war by unlocking hard mode. Hard difficulty tightens up every aspect of the boss fights, projectiles move faster and phases start to blend together forcing the player to anticipate attacks from all angles, forcing you to use the skills that you have acquired over the course of the game but changes the environment in which those skills need to be used has slightly been altered, forcing the player to reassess what they knew about familiar enemies and attacks in an unfamiliar way. This new difficulty mode is exceptional as it achieves the top tier of post-game content by offering new content in a familiar way, offering content fresh enough to challenge the most expert of players whilst at the same time being built on the foundations of the strong gameplay that has incited them into the game in the first place. Cuphead’s attitude to post game content, diversifying the goals its sets and always building on the familiar with new and interesting twists, mean that it’s longevity is immense especially for an indie game, making sure that the players will always have a reason to enjoy the brilliantly crafted game as they battle through every challenge that it offers up.
Many games are good, some are great, fewer still are brilliant but for a game to be perfect a very specific set of requirements must be met, it can’t just be that the good outweighs the bad or it’s good all the way through apart from a certain section but instead must not have any flaws. What it is must be great and nothing can detract from it, thus making it such an exclusive club. Cuphead manages to gain entry into this club due to its incredibly tight and focused gameplay, a unique and compelling aesthetic, incredible world building and surprisingly lengthy post game content whilst having no noticeable flaws to drag it down. Admittedly, not every aspect of the game reaches the dizzying heights of the sensational cartoon theme, such as the story, which is a very basic affair, but none of it can be described as ‘bad’. The story is modest, but it is as prominent as it needs to be, offering a fine frame for the gameplay without encroaching into areas in which it is distracting or unwelcome. Everything in Cuphead is brilliantly calibrated and adds to a general feeling that it isn’t a game, it’s more than that, it’s a carton you can interact with, it’s art, it’s a masterpiece, it’s perfect!