Review: Cuphead
Written by Ben Vollmer
Run, jump, shoot. In Cuphead, that’s all you’ll ever need. In a game that can be deconstructed into a trial of perseverance, Cuphead doesn’t deviate from what makes it click. The complexity of the game lies in its intricately designed boss fights and platforming levels, where you’ll likely spend hours at a time learning how to combat everything that is thrown at you. The fun is in the trial-and-error process, and ultimately, your success. Through its sensational hand-drawn art style, responsive controls and hard-as-nails difficulty, Cuphead is an unprecedented bullet hell success.
Cuphead consists of well over a dozen boss fights, each designed with the same idea in mind: begin with a simple concept, and then blow it up into an irrepressible crescendo that only ends when you figure out just the right way to stop it. There were times in the game where I couldn’t get over that initial hump, and the idea of having to prosper under a similar, only more difficult, concept later on felt draining. Though, in its consistency, Cuphead manages to train for those exact moments. You won’t get through it all at once, not on the first try. So value those moments of improvement and progress, because that is an indication that victory is on its way.
A good example of this is a late-game boss that extends itself from a wavy surface of water and reveals herself a mermaid. She’s angry, as all the bosses are, and so she uses everything within arms reach at her disposal: fish, electric eels and scraps of junk. As the fight progresses, she takes the form of a medusa-like monster, her eels turned into petrifying snakes. It’s never easy, but it’s progressively more difficult and chaotic as the fight goes on.
The pacing of these fights is spaced in a way that you’ll spend a lot more time with those simplified concepts than the tumultuous ones later on, but those final moments can last a lifetime when you’re on your 100th try. Each boss only lasts a few minutes, so Cuphead makes it plenty easy to waste hours telling yourself “just one more try.”
For how difficult the game is, it’s remarkable that Cuphead only has a few blemishes of injustice through its entirety. By and large, Cuphead is one of the most reasonably fair games in recent memory. In large part, this is due to excellent hitboxes – which are very player friendly – and tight controls.
Within moments of the game (and a brief tutorial), players will have picked up on everything they’ll need for the rest of the game. Within the first hour or so, everything felt second nature to me. Because there are so many different components in the game, with some bosses having upwards of thirty different projectiles, all of which behave differently, it seems obvious that there would be some segments that feel “too” hard. But in my fifteen plus hours with the game, I never once encountered segment that I couldn’t learn and adapt to.
There are, however, small moments in the game that can become almost unbearable; mostly due to some awkwardly randomized platforms or boss mechanics. For instance, about halfway through the game, you fight a bee boss by the name of Rumor Hunnybottoms. She’s fairly passive, as many of the fights are, and hurls everything from large bullets to (literal) worker bees at you as the floor extends vertically in an elevator-like fashion. As the game forces you upward, the platforms are randomly generated, meaning you’ll often have no idea where Cuphead will land. This is problematic, because Cuphead’s stature extends to about a third of the game’s frame. When he jumps, you often go off the screen, landing you on a platform that will only serve as your deathbed.
Small moments like these are scattered throughout the game, but they’re often in smaller portions of each individual fight. Because the game moves from one boss phase to the next so quickly, you’re rarely left with anything that will prevent you from making progress.
While Cuphead is very hard, the game has incredible frame-by-frame animations that sometimes made moving on from the boss the most difficult part of the game. It’s unfortunate that your focus has to be on the avoidance of these animations, because they really are a wonder to look at. It wasn’t until I watched someone else play the game in front of me that I noticed some of the nuances of the design, like the giant cat that looms behind a cracked wall before eventually bursting through it and wreaking havoc.
These animations are also your best friend, as most of the attacks are so quick that you need to know they’re coming before they actually do. It’s a wonderful integration of the game’s art style with its game mechanics – everything works as one fluid motion.
Cuphead’s score is perfectly qualified to accent the game’s stunning visuals. A mix of bebop jazz and earthy blues help set the tone for the maniacal pace that is evident from the get go. While it’s not an indictment of the game’s OST, many of the tracks begin to blend together after you’ve played for a little while. The up-paced tunes work in conjunction with your progression in a fight, often culminating in a cacophony of instruments.
The bosses in Cuphead, however, are so individualized that they often permeated in my mind’s eye before sleep. Whether it be “Hilda Burg”, the hot-air balloon that terrorizes you from the sky as you soar alongside her in a miniature propeller plane or Cagney Carnation, who is perhaps the most menacing (aside from a certain Undertale spoiler) flower in all of video games, you’ll be left thinking about your latest triumph long after it’s over. It’s a magnificent accomplishment, especially when you consider that a successful run often takes less than two minutes per boss.
Most of the game’s complex systems lie in its item management, which is plenty accessible without losing any of its weight. Players have the option to choose between several weapons – all of which can be exchanged for the currency you earn in game -, supers and abilities. The weapons manage to carve out niches for themselves, with each shooting pellets in a slightly different way. For instance, the charger requires the player to pull down on the shoot button to load up a damaging attack, while the chaser can pretty much be shot from pretty much anywhere on the frame with automatic fire, but lacks the same kind of damage output.
The supers serve as one Cuphead’s few disappointments. There are only three, with the last of them being earned almost right before the game is over. The other two, a beam attack and a few moments of invincibility, rarely make a meaningful impact. Given that the game’s parry system builds off of these supers, which each parry earning you some additional power toward your super, it can leave both feeling underserved.
Cuphead also has a series of platforming levels called “Run N’ Gun”s that occupy most of the game’s currency. It would have been easy for them to mail this portion of the game in, as the boss fights were obviously the focus (and, if you’ll remember, Studio MDHR added these levels in after most of the bosses were already completed), but these levels serve as some of the best platforming moments of the year. Filled to the brim with unique enemies, tough jumps, and a variation of challenges — like running and dashing from a giant cyclops while trying to land on individual platforms.
There are moments in Cuphead where everything will come together at once. I’ve learned every detail about an enemy, perfectly predicting what they’ll throw at me and timing my jumps and dashes. I have the perfect weapon at my disposal and all of Cuphead’s shots are landing. In those moments, a wonderful calm washes over. I’m going to beat this boss, and it’s inevitability is the triumph. When everything comes together in Cuphead, it’s damn near perfect.
There are moments in Cuphead where everything will come together at once. I’ve learned every detail about an enemy, perfectly predicting what they’ll throw at me and timing my jumps and dashes. I have the perfect weapon at my disposal and all of Cuphead’s shots are landing. In those moments, a wonderful calm washes over. I’m going to beat this boss, and it’s inevitability is the triumph. When everything comes together in Cuphead, it’s damn near perfect.
Score: 8.5
