Cuphead
SLEEPY GAMER
Cuphead is a run'n'gun game in which players have to control an unusual hero who is not at all busy saving the world, but simply knocking dust out of enemies. Players will have to help Cuphead, who challenged the Devil, lost his bet, and is now struggling to get it back.
The game is made in the style of cartoons and cartoons of the 1930s, and offers players not only a single player campaign, but also a mode for two players, where each controls their own unique character. The gameplay is built around the exploration of branchy levels and constant battles with bosses, and the heroes do not lose anything at death, which is unusual for the genre.
Everything that happens in Cuphead evokes memories of the best old cartoons from Disney and Warner Bros. The gaze will constantly read recognizable images: cars with a maliciously grinning face, a giant carrot with eyes, surreal-looking clowns, walking caramels - a lot of archetypes familiar from childhood. In Cuphead, however, they are presented even more insanely and grotesquely, but all the more fun!
But what is more important here is not how it looks, but how it feels. The magic happens at the moment when you understand that the cartoon comes to life in your hands, you are a part of it and can control its characters. It's a dream! This is where nostalgia wakes up. Not for any specific things, but for childhood in general: for the Disney Club on the first, for soapy rips of cartoons on VHS, for stickers and comics with our favorite characters, for times when we were ready to get up at 6 am at weekend to watch cartoons about Bugs Bunny.
Cuphead enchants not only with the beauty of its world, but also with its content. Here the story is as simple as possible: the main character, a boy with a cup instead of a head, deciding to cut easy money in a casino, got into a huge amount and owed the Devil himself. But around her, the game still builds a catchy cartoon universe. It rests on details and in drawing levels, and in the images of your opponents. And you will also meet a lot of funny characters. They, like the heroes of old cartoons, are laconic, but even a couple of phrases are enough for them to be remembered.
At the same time, Cuphead is not a collection of jerked quotes from other people's games. The game has its own face, and borrowing is primarily an artistic device. For example, in one of the levels you will come across a wall of shooting (hello, Contra), but it is not just standing as a monument to the game from Konami. It was quite succinctly entered into the logic of the level, and, most importantly, the stage is remembered not by an element taken from another game, but by its unique gameplay findings. Cuphead is a work with its own ideology, aesthetics, and a complete picture of the gameplay.
Cuphead, of course, is far from the most difficult in the world, the developers deliberately make concessions to the player - this is the necessary balance of complexity. How to play Cuphead so that it fully unfolds, we recently talked about in a separate article. In short: only the maximum difficulty, only the default weapon and no YouTube tips.
But even without deliberate complications, Cuphead will not be successful. The game forces you to learn from your mistakes and constantly think. Rushing once again through the fabulous forest thicket, you already well remember that now a flock of beetles will jump out of there, and a little further a hail of acorns will begin. And if you don't remember, you will lose. Sometimes you come across especially wild episodes where you need to calculate jumps exactly to the millimetre : for example, in one of such levels (here, by the way, the enemy wall is encountered) you need to run upside down, using gravity lifts, and this, I must say, something else trial.
The classic platform levels in Cuphead are not enough: basically the whole game is a boss fight. These battles will blow your mind: each boss has several incarnations, it is impossible to predict what he will throw out this time. You have to react with lightning speed and adapt to new types of attacks - tactics change in an instant. You just fought with an overgrown berry - and now it is a tombstone with a picture of this berry trying to crush you!
Boss battles in Cuphead are most reminiscent of Treasure's Alien Soldier: the whole game there is a solid boss rush. On especially difficult opponents in Alien Soldier, only one thought came to mind: is it really possible to overwhelm you ?! In Cuphead, you experience similar emotions: every time you hit the wall, expecting that it is about to crack. And at some point, she really gives up! Sometimes you need to study your enemy - his habits and attacks - pure mathematics, and sometimes improvisation decides.
MDHR has one of the best run 'n gun titles in history, and some of the genre claim to be the best video game of all time. Such high-quality genre games have to wait for decades.
The link to the game is here: