My Cuphead Impressions

[Harvey]

My overall impressions on Cuphead.

I found the experience in Cuphead overall boring and often repetitive. While the bosses are cleverly designed, they aren't that much different to one another as they all pretty much do the same thing which is to send tons of bullets around you or simply just charge at you and don't do so much of uniqueness. The only bosses that are unique are Cala Maria, Dr. Kahl's Robot and King Dice because they do something different unlike the majority of the bosses.

Speaking of which, why is this more of a boss rush game instead of having more levels? Lots of run and gun games have levels first and then bosses like Earthworm Jim, Contra, Gunstar Heroes and many others and all this game does is just face bosses for like 95% of the time. Levels help broaden the worlds and add variety in them. Just getting straight to the bosses isn't balancing the game's pace properly because not only do some of these bosses have random attacks but they also don't warn the player enough to avoid this and that of their attacks and the only ones who do that are the first few bosses in world 1 and that's that. This is one of the reasons why the game feels very repetitive because you are just often shooting straight at the bosses and then dodging them, rinse and repeat.

It also doesn't help that most powerups aren't helpful at all and even then, are somehow weaker than what basic weapon you are stuck with once. There's no way to upgrade your powerups meaning that you are forced to do tricks to make full use of them. For example, jumping up and shooting the spread is more useful than just shooting the spread up when shooting a boss from the top or constantly swapping between powerups to deal more damage towards bosses. 

On top of all this, there are lack of collectables to get even in the run and gun levels. The only ones you get are coins which are needed to buy weapons but that's about it. Something like concept art or different costumes could have sufficed to add more replay value to the game. 

As for the art itself...I will admit and say now that it is very well done. Not only is the entire game hand drawn but it manages to replicate the original look and feel of animation that is done in the early 1930's such as the constant screen tearing that existed back then during filming and the colour of the pictures originally being washed up instead of today's shows having brighter colors. Every single character(except Cuphead and Mugman) is completely whimsical and have their certain charm to them. 

That being said, there are some minor issues with them. Cutscenes are not animated and the main characters are just straight rip offs of Mickey Mouse with the only difference being their heads designed like cups even Felix has original character design( If you ask me, Felix>>>>>>>Mickey Mouse!). Now I can understand that they had issues during development so I can get why they couldn't have cutscenes animated but the lack of originality of the main heroes? Even the bosses have more originality compared to the heroes.

The music also has some issues. Most of them sound similar to one another. World 2's theme plays similarly than world 1's theme only with slight differences and the same goes for the bosses as well.

However, the overall quality like the art is well done. My personal favourite song is Mr. King Dice. Lots of jazzy moments and again manages to emulate the sound of the original animation in the early 30's.

And finally for the difficulty......honestly, its not hard. Granted, some bosses are very infuriating but for the most part, you are not severely punished facing them. Since bosses have progress bars instead of the health bar, it may seem like you are not getting anywhere at first but it is doable with the right equipment in hand. The game encourages you to try out various weapon types so you can always experiment.

And besides, you can always choose the simple mode if all else fails but you can't do this for the last two bosses for some reason. 

However....if you decide to 100% the game(which I didn't bother btw), you be prepared for the most frustrating experience ever in your life. Getting a perfect S in regular and hard mode is downright ludicrous and the same goes for being a pacifist in the run and gun levels. If at all you do this, I seriously hope you are doing it just for bragging rights because otherwise, the rewards that you get are very underwhelming with only two visual modes and that's about it.

In the end, its alright but could have been better. Hopefully the sequel fixes the issues that I have with the first one as do most others especially the difficulty and adding more variety such as more levels.

Edited December 10, 2017 by Harvey

[Reality]

Finally-  someone being real.

I know I tell people that my personal policy is to see reviews as "previews" but  I was really getting sick of hearing that this game is hard outside of S-ranking (which is more frustrating than demanding technically/execution wise anyway). 

I really like how some bosses subvert the original cartoons at least a little bit, but yeah, cuphead himself does nothing for me as a character Felix at least has some pretty amazing body language in most  of his shorts to really make up for using the same base as . mickey- while cuphead goes all in for the same knee bending even.

The game loading all the content into the boss battles and making all the other stages into an afterthought reminds me of my problem with Metal Slug 1 VS Metal Slug 3- That kind of design works fine for set pieces if you want to play the game once through, but if you really want to dedicate for score or replay a game, the more balanced experience wins hands down. (granted that MS3 also give the bosses too much health).

Also I feel like too many of the bosses had dive/throw themselves across the room attacks, which made me feel like I was doing the same fight to a little too much.

 

[Zera]

Spoiler

I don't have a system to play Cuphead on, but as a Treasure fan I must say your review sounds a bit narrow-minded.

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

The only bosses that are unique are Cala Maria, Dr. Kahl's Robot and King Dice because they do something different unlike the majority of the bosses.

This could've been a strong point if you explained what makes those bosses different. Otherwise, I must assume the bosses are as varied as Gunstar Heroes.

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

Speaking of which, why is this more of a boss rush game instead of having more levels?

That is simply StudioMDHR channeling their inner Treasure. Cuphead was always meant to be a boss game, and there weren't going to be run'n'gun levels originally - they were added late in development.

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

There's no way to upgrade your powerups meaning that you are forced to do tricks to make full use of them. For example, jumping up and shooting the spread is more useful than just shooting the spread up when shooting a boss from the top or constantly swapping between powerups to deal more damage towards bosses. 

Having to jump to get closer to a boss is the entire point of a spread weapon - if if dealt full damage at a distance it'd be OP. Swapping powerups to use the right ones at the right times is part of the strategy. Honestly it sounds like you just need to git gud.

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

Lots of jazzy moments and again manages to emulate the sound of the original animation in the early 90's.

You meant to say 30's, right?

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

And finally for the difficulty......honestly, its not hard.

Oh, phew, I had a feeling everyone just sucked at-

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

However....if you decide to 100% the game(which I didn't bother btw), you be prepared for the most frustrating experience ever in your life.

-oh. Well, there's the extra-spicy difficulty!

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

In the end, its alright but could have been better. Hopefully the sequel fixes the issues that I have with the first one as do most others especially the difficulty and adding more variety such as more levels.

I disagree that the game needs more levels. If the bosses aren't varied enough, it would make more sense to just, y'know, have better bosses.

 

 

Edited December 10, 2017 by Zera

[NinjaMonkey]

4 hours ago, Harvey said:

And besides, you can always choose the simple mode if all else fails but you can't do this for the last two bosses for some reason.

Playing on Simple Mode doesn't allow you to progress in the game, though, as you can only get the Soul Contracts on Normal difficulty or higher.

Edited December 10, 2017 by NinjaMonkey

[Tryhard]

Cuphead was designed to be a boss rush to begin with ala Shadow of the Colossus - they added in the run and gun stages later because they felt they owed it to the game, and that's why there's only six of them. It was always intended for the focus to be on the boss fights.

Edited December 10, 2017 by Tryhard

[Harvey]

2 hours ago, Zera said:

This could've been a strong point if you explained what makes those bosses different. Otherwise, I must assume the bosses are as varied as Gunstar Heroes.

4 hours ago, Harvey said:

I could have said that but I didn't want to spoil that much. But since you asked....

Spoiler

Cala Maria has the ability to turn you into stone which has an additional animation. You can't avoid it either because of its radius and that you can't use the smoke grenade in the plane for some reason. None of the other bosses do this enough. Dr. Kahl has three phases but his first phase is the hardest to the point that if you die there, you're progress hardly goes up. And last but not least is King Dice. Instead of facing him head on, you have to land on the fin square using the three die that he gives you. Along the way you face bosses that are not too hard while some are tough like the one on No.9.

 

2 hours ago, Zera said:

That is simply StudioMDHR channeling their inner Treasure. Cuphead was always meant to be a boss game, and there weren't going to be run'n'gun levels originally - they were added late in development.

Then in that case, balance the game better. And as @NinjaMonkey stated, simple mode doesn't give you the contracts that you need to beat the game so the simple mode is in itself almost worthless. Also, just defending the fact that the game was going to have bosses only is odd because otherwise, why did they decided to add run and gun levels later on? Because they knew that there wasn't enough variety within the bosses themselves.

Speaking of which, I think I need to elaborate on the bosses on why they are boring and repetitive. Normally, when facing a boss, it is to test your skills from the previous levels that you have progressed on but since this game straight away goes to the boss, it leaves a lot of missed potential to utilise the environment that the world is in. Like there's no world here based on ice nor is there a boss based on ice for some reason. And repetitive? You are just shooting at the boss rapidly mostly waiting for him/her to attack you, they do it and you dodge it and its rinse and repeat. Few bosses like King Dice didn't always do this so that's my point.

2 hours ago, Zera said:

Having to jump to get closer to a boss is the entire point of a spread weapon - if if dealt full damage at a distance it'd be OP. Swapping powerups to use the right ones at the right times is part of the strategy. Honestly it sounds like you just need to git gud.

Let's put it this way. The devil is at the top of you and you can do the spread on top of him. But the spread doesn't fully damage him so you need to jump up and shoot so that all the bullets hit him which somehow deals more damage which is very odd. Why not just upgrade the spread instead?

And swapping powerups...I was referring to swapping rapidly like how this guy does it.

3 hours ago, Zera said:

You meant to say 30's, right?

Ah I fixed that, thanks!

3 hours ago, Zera said:

I disagree that the game needs more levels. If the bosses aren't varied enough, it would make more sense to just, y'know, have better bosses.

 

The issue with the boss rush is the lack of collectables that are there unlike in levels where there are stuff to get. You can't just have stuff to collect on a boss rush because its too messy to deal with. I'm sure no one else is going to bother getting all 3 perrys for each and every boss because they are just not worth getting most of the time.