This review contains spoilers
I've had a bit of a troubled history with Cuphead. Before now I've tried it on two different occasions, both with varying results. My first attempt ended pretty swiftly since I didn't have a controller and the keyboard controls are... really bad! The game didn't quite jive with me at that point, but my main problem at that point was the hell that is cuphead with keyboard controls. A year or two later, I would play through the whole game, and later the DLC, in co-op with a friend. We did this over Steam so there was a bit of lag, but I had a controller and a friend to help me through. I enjoyed the game a lot more, to the point where I was the one pushing us to do the DLC together, but it still didn't quite enamour me like I'd wanted it to. My main complaint at the time was the design of some of the bosses. I felt that a lot of them relied on being able to pay attention to cues and bullets coming from multiple parts of the screen, often with them all acting completely independently. I have a huge amount of trouble processing all of that information, so oftentimes I found bosses just far too overwhelming. Not a design issue or anything, more of a personal one.
Fast forward to 2 days ago, I think about Cuphead again and have the sudden urge to replay it and try to actually beat it by myself. Armed with much more knowledge and familiarity, as well as an input device that doesn't make me want to die, I wanted to see how I got on with it now. And... I binged most of it in one day. Then finished it off the following morning. It's really fun! And I'm glad it finally feels like it clicked with me.
Ironically enough, my chief complaint about the boss design was actually reversed. Maybe it's because I wasn't sitting in call with someone else and I could just get into my own 'zone', or maybe it's just because I held a vague familiarity with all the bosses coming off my earlier playthrough, but all of the bosses I found overwhelming actually ended up being some of my favourites. The main one here is Captain Brineybeard, who on my first full playthrough I just could not keep up with him when the cannonballs came out, but this time it all just fell into place. The telegraphs on everything are so good it's unreal, and the cannonballs have such a strong rhythm that you don't really need to even think about them. Taking my previously most-hated boss down and turning it into one of my favourites felt like heaven. (edit: i beat brineybeard on expert as well and it felt downright transcendental. i can count on one hand how many games have made me feel like this)
But I said my opinion was reversed, not improved, so I still do have some complaining to do! This time, my frustrations were aimed at the amount of RNG fuckery that felt present in some particular phases. For the record, I'm not at all saying RNG shouldn't be in the game or anything, I think that would be a very silly thing to say. But sometimes the way different things line up can put you in really icky spots, simply because they happened to line up that way. A couple of examples I have are phase 3 of the carnival boss (i dont know its name) and phase 1 of the Devil. To not get cheap shot by the horse in the carnival boss, you need to be around the middle of the screen and not be jumping (regardless of where you are, because the yellow horse will catch your jump regardless). This can be rather difficult if, I don't know, a passenger car comes through at the same time the horse does. Do I hop over and just hope I make it in time, or do I stay underneath and get carried underneath the horse, forcing a hit anyway? For the Devil, I had multiple times where he'd do the snake head thing that covers most of the screen would coincide with an imp coming out of the side you're stuck on. I guess you can just guess when the imp comes out and try to jump over it? Or maybe you can hide under one of the gaps in the Devil's neck and try to time a smoke dash as he pulls back. But both of those feel like huge asks compared to what the rest of the fight expects from you. There are more examples of this that I had, but those are the ones that stuck out to me.
To end off, I have a cool fact that I recently discovered about the game. Did you know that Dr. Kahl's Robot was actually developed as a wartime torture device to extract information from prisoners? Its use has since been declared a war-crime as of 1949 due to its addition to the Geneva Convention.
Fast forward to 2 days ago, I think about Cuphead again and have the sudden urge to replay it and try to actually beat it by myself. Armed with much more knowledge and familiarity, as well as an input device that doesn't make me want to die, I wanted to see how I got on with it now. And... I binged most of it in one day. Then finished it off the following morning. It's really fun! And I'm glad it finally feels like it clicked with me.
Ironically enough, my chief complaint about the boss design was actually reversed. Maybe it's because I wasn't sitting in call with someone else and I could just get into my own 'zone', or maybe it's just because I held a vague familiarity with all the bosses coming off my earlier playthrough, but all of the bosses I found overwhelming actually ended up being some of my favourites. The main one here is Captain Brineybeard, who on my first full playthrough I just could not keep up with him when the cannonballs came out, but this time it all just fell into place. The telegraphs on everything are so good it's unreal, and the cannonballs have such a strong rhythm that you don't really need to even think about them. Taking my previously most-hated boss down and turning it into one of my favourites felt like heaven. (edit: i beat brineybeard on expert as well and it felt downright transcendental. i can count on one hand how many games have made me feel like this)
But I said my opinion was reversed, not improved, so I still do have some complaining to do! This time, my frustrations were aimed at the amount of RNG fuckery that felt present in some particular phases. For the record, I'm not at all saying RNG shouldn't be in the game or anything, I think that would be a very silly thing to say. But sometimes the way different things line up can put you in really icky spots, simply because they happened to line up that way. A couple of examples I have are phase 3 of the carnival boss (i dont know its name) and phase 1 of the Devil. To not get cheap shot by the horse in the carnival boss, you need to be around the middle of the screen and not be jumping (regardless of where you are, because the yellow horse will catch your jump regardless). This can be rather difficult if, I don't know, a passenger car comes through at the same time the horse does. Do I hop over and just hope I make it in time, or do I stay underneath and get carried underneath the horse, forcing a hit anyway? For the Devil, I had multiple times where he'd do the snake head thing that covers most of the screen would coincide with an imp coming out of the side you're stuck on. I guess you can just guess when the imp comes out and try to jump over it? Or maybe you can hide under one of the gaps in the Devil's neck and try to time a smoke dash as he pulls back. But both of those feel like huge asks compared to what the rest of the fight expects from you. There are more examples of this that I had, but those are the ones that stuck out to me.
To end off, I have a cool fact that I recently discovered about the game. Did you know that Dr. Kahl's Robot was actually developed as a wartime torture device to extract information from prisoners? Its use has since been declared a war-crime as of 1949 due to its addition to the Geneva Convention.