Cuphead is getting a lot of well deserved attention again since The Delicious Last course came out. I myself jumped on the bandwagon as well after initially dropping the game last year, finding new respect and admiration, as well as a clean new outlook on it. I'll be reviewing the base game, and the DLC for this one.

Cuphead and his pal Mugman like to roll the dice, to the point of Cuphead mindlessly gambling their souls for one last dice roll against The Devil himself. A single toss decided their fate, and then came immediate realization and regret. Cuphead and Mugman beg to substitute the cost any way they can, the Devil accepts their offer by having them go all across Inkwell Isle to collect the long overdue contracts of many different citizens of all different shapes and sizes. Booted out of the casino, Cuphead and Mugman run to find the elder Kettle to help them hopefully fix this mess. The story itself is fun and helps create some sort of narrative for why you're fighting all these crazy bosses throughout the game, but there's not much else to it. I think the simplicity is fine, since it gives you everything you need.

The gameplay of Cuphead is simple, you move around, jump, and shoot by holding down a button. you have parries to help you gain height off of certain attacks and projectiles, and helps you build up a meter that can be spent to supercharge your moves, or use a full meter to perform a super powerful special move. You also have a dash to help avoid longer attacks, reposition, and go over large gaps. The complexity with Cuphead is the fights themselves, you'll be fighting a very unique and colorful cast of different characters, each having their own unique gimmicks, attack patterns, and even stage layouts to figure out and brawl in.

Cuphead is not easy, it's very deceptive in the difficulty, most players will be able to cream the first two or three bosses, and the first run and gun stage with ease. Doesn't take long for Cuphead to stop messing around and really starts to test you, the game expects you to gain a good grasp on everything you're capable of quick, thankfully the first handful of bosses are designed in a genius manner. The first boss you'll come across teaches you about boss placements, how some will be idle on the other side of you, others will be in the middle of the screen, where you'll have limited space to weave dodges and attacks, and finally the last one teaches you some bosses will be in the background, giving you lots of space to move around, and plenty of angles to attack from, the most important though is no contact damage for these particular fights. The next boss will teach you how to use your dash to get out of a tricky spot. These are just the first two examples, but Cuphead is very good at letting players naturally figure things out through easy examples early on, which leads to even faster mastery, which is very satisfying and keeps you engaged and wanting to play more to see how much further they'll push these mechanics. Which they definitely do, I think the game keeps a consistent spike in difficulty for the amount of skill you'll have at that point in the game. I do feel some run and gun levels can get a bit crazy, and I'm not a huge fan personally of the run and gun levels for another reason. Cuphead is a game about awareness, and studying your enemies moves and tells. Run and gun levels usually have some sort of "random" aspect to it that makes the consistency a bit worse. Nothing that you can't react to on the fly, but I got stuck a bit more than I should have on some of these levels, overall though, it's fine, and they are totally optional to do. They are the primary source for coins, which is the currency in this game to buy new weapons and upgrades for Cuphead and/or Mugman, so I recommend doing a few of them at least. Overall, the game has very snappy combat and movement (pun intended) and has a very satisfying difficulty curve later that can get a bit hectic at times. Especially later there can be a lot going on and it can get a bit confusing, but it never got bad to the point where I got distracted, I always felt in control and felt capable of avoiding attacks and beating whatever was thrown at me.

You can't talk about Cuphead without talking about the presentation. What an absolutely stunning marvel at how far games have come. Being able to take hand-drawn animations, putting them into a game, and turning it into a game, that is fully interactive, such a spectacle. The game looks perfect, captures the 1930's aesthetic perfectly, everything is so smoothly animated and has so much style and personality. The filter put over the game puts a grin on my face every time, and don't get me started on the voice lines, it really feels like they bundled up everything great about 1930's cartoons and put it all into this awesome, small package. There's even a lot here you probably wouldn't see from the 1930's. or in a cartoon, but that just goes to show how well they understand the style. The best part to me though, is the not so subtle disturbing aspect they put into these designs and their equally morbid transformations at times. Taking full advantage of the medium the game was originally created in, the creativity oozes everywhere here, and I was laughing or in shock every time this happened, brilliant work.

To truly enjoy Cuphead, you must acquire a taste for free-form jazz. Once again just completely going all in on making this game feel like a love letter to the 1930's, everyone knows the Cuphead soundtrack. Every song is a joy to listen to, every song fits the accompanying boss or area almost too well. I honestly can't think of a more fitting genre for Cuphead. Even if you don't like video games, as a musician, Cuphead is astonishing, the craft put into these live tracks with real instruments will always have my highest respect for the effort and just how you can tell everyone was having fun making this music, and that's really important.

Now, I haven't gone into the DLC yet, so I will now. Considering the price for the DLC, the highest quality animations I've seen in a while, the same amazing style of music, with a bit more variety thrown in this time being infused with the jazz was a nice surprise and was really magical. Probably one of the best DLC's in a game in a long time, absolutely worth every penny, I immensely enjoyed my time with Delicious Last Course. Not only are you getting more stuff to do, you even get a brand new character you can play the entire game again with, and it's an entirely new and amazing experience. Kudos to Studio MDHR for the amount of love, time, and care put into this entire game, and the DLC.

Cuphead will remain in my thoughts for a long time. I originally dropped it back in 2021 because I thought the game was just okay and not anything special. I'm so glad I gave it another shot after seeing a bit from the new DLC, because this was absolutely a phenomenal experience, and will love to revisit again in a few years time. The game is pretty short, I was able to finish the base game and DLC in two sessions of about two hours and twenty-five minutes each, but that's the perfect length for a game like this in my opinion. Absolutely give this game a chance if the DLC interested you like it did for me. You can get cuphead on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Windows PC, and Mac.