‘Cuphead’ Review: A Devilishly Difficult Good Time
It all starts with a deal with the Devil. A deal made by an anthropomorphic cup and mug that sends the gamer spiraling into sea of charm, difficult boss fights, and complete and utter madness.
The world of Cuphead is staged to resemble a 1930s cartoon, which lends to one of the most unique gaming experiences I’ve had in quite some time. After a bout of gambling in the Devil’s casino ends poorly, the titular Cuphead and his pal Mugman are forced to seek out soul contracts for el Diablo in exchange for their salvation. Not only is the visual style accurate to the era, the storyline seems to fit well, too, creating an all-around fun setup.
Taking on a run-and-gun style of gameplay, StudioMDHR Entertainment opted to replace a standard level-based structure for a series of consecutive, increasingly difficult bosses.
Before you see the words “run-and-gun” and think any ol’ chap can pick up the controller and navigate the humanoid glasswear’s devilish predicament, you should know that, save for the first few bosses, Cuphead is difficult.
Borderline Dark Souls difficult.
Luckily, you can take it on with a local co-op partner, which doesn’t hinder the experience one iota.
As frustrating as I thought the higher difficulty level would be, most of the boss fights are really fun, which makes playing them over and over and over (and over and over) again less of a tedious chore. It also challenges you to create the perfect armament of standard attacks, special attacks, and added bonuses. Obtaining new attacks and powers requires money, which you’ll get by muscling through scarce trap-laden platforming levels.
How you handle each boss depends on your load-out. Maybe you can hang back and fire lower-powered homing bullets or get up close and personal with more powerful short-range bursts. If a certain loadout isn’t working, back out to the overworld and revamp your choices.
To avoid repetition, especially for those that tend to get hung up on a certain enemy, StudioMDHR designed each foe to have different “stages.” Inflict enough damage and the attack pattern you just got used to will change drastically. For most fights, it’s all about knowing the pattern and how to effectively dodge attacks, meaning death is inevitable.
Had the selection of bosses been less fun, this clearly would have been an issue; but Cuphead is fueled by a quirkiness that makes it easy to press on, even when you’ve died a dozen times on the same boss.
Where Cuphead suffers the most is in content beyond the focal battles. Each overworld, of which there are four, is sprinkled with multiple boss battles, two “run-and-gun” segments, strange towns-folk that drop hints about dealing with bosses, and the occasional secret passage or hidden secret.
The game does try to make up for this with different weapons and supers, but even those aren’t as abundant as they could have been. Once I bested the Devil, I actually found myself wanting more. And though I did get my requests fulfilled with a secret mode, I hope Cuphead is privy to future DLC.
Or am I not supposed to ask for such things?
