Hello everyone and welcome back to Kralizec Gaming.Today we are going to take a look at Cuphead. This classic gun and run game with a heavy emphasis on boss battles promises the amazing visuals inspired by the classic cartoons of the 1930, an equally amazing soundtrack from the same era combined with engaging modern mechanics. Whether it can deliver on that promise is the question we will try to answer today. Cuphead is available on Steam for 19 Euros and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.

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Video Review

Text Review

Before we get into the review of the actual game, there is some history we should talk about first. Cuphead was originally presented to the public way back in January of 2014 and the developers were planning to release in the same year. Then on E3 2014 it was postponed to 2015. Then into 2016. Then into 2017. But it’s 2017 and we finally got our hands on Cuphead. And straight off the bat, I can say that the delays probably were warranted as the game is purely awesome!
And there’s one more thing I need to mention. Since my girlfriend isn’t home currently, I haven’t been able to use her to play co-op with me, so I haven’t gotten to play co-op at all.

Story

Somewhat nontraditionally we will start the review with a look at the game’s story. You play as Cuphead and Mugman (well, you do in co-op, in single-player you play as Cuphead) two brothers living on the magical Inkwell Isle who one day during their plays found themselves far from home in the Devil’s Casino. Here, being unwise youngsters, they managed to lose their souls in a game of dice against the devil. Now they are presented with a simple choice. They have to travel the Isle, collecting debts that are owed to the devil, otherwise he will claim their souls.

Gameplay

And that nicely leads us into the gameplay. Your job in Cuphead is to fight bosses. And occasionally there will be a run and gun level thrown into the mix, but most of the time you will be purely fighting bosses. Altogether there are 19 boss fights in this indie game, each with many phases and unique mechanics that you will need to master to even stand a chance against them.

At its core, Cuphead may seem like a pretty simple game. You move to avoid incoming attacks and you shoot your weapon (well, magical finger in this case) to deal damage. But as any Dark Souls player will tell you, moving and attacking can create one hell of a complicated and complex game if implemented correctly.
So let’s first take a look at an overview of the basic movement abilities you have as there are essentially just three. You basic movement, which is done by the courser keys (or whatever keys you rebind it to, as everything is rebindable) a jump on the z key and a dash performed by the shift key. Or, like me, you can choose to play Cuphead on a controller. I know I often say I don’t play many games on a controller, but Cuphead just seemed to control easier when using one. At least it did for me once I changed the bindings even there a bit. Probably the most interesting of these movement abilities is the jump, as whenever you see something pink on the screen and you jump towards it and then jump again, it will give you a charge to your super-attack. But, timing this in the midst of a fight, well, I will honestly say I never even gave it a try because just focusing on avoiding taking damage and dealing some back was more than enough for me.

Next we should take a look at the tools you have at your disposal to deal damage. And again, there are three, though depending on how you look at it, you might count just two. You start with your basic attack. Which is you forming a gun shape with your hand and firing little bullets. Seriously, that’s exactly what it is! And it’s charming as hell! Then you have the ability to switch between the bullets that come of your hand. There is a decent number of them available, but you first have to collect them through your journey on the isle. And last, but certainly not least, you have your super-attack, but before you can use it, it first needs to be charged either by attacking your foes or by, as previously mentioned, timing your jumps exactly on the pink things appearing on screen.

There’s one more thing that should be talked about when it comes to the combat. You guys know that I said that the vast majority of the game, apart from a few levels, are purely boss fights. But there are two kinds of boss encounters. Ones that you’d pretty much expect, just you as Cuphead fighting a boss character (or more, or some of his goons), but there are also bosses which you must fight in an aeroplane. Yes, an aeroplane. At that point, how the game feels changes significantly as it resembles more of a shoot’em up than anything else, sometimes even feeling like a bullet hell.

And that’s it for the basic things Cuphead provides you with. But it wouldn’t be a game these days without an option to upgrade your character in some ways so Cuphead provides exactly that option to you. Apart from the already mentioned choices for weapons, you can also collect charms which will give you different benefits, like the one I like, that makes you invulnerable during your dash (yay, it’s more like Dark Souls!) or one the continuously charges your Super Attack any many more. But you can have only one active at any given time and to be honest, the one giving you immunity frames just seems like far superior to all the other, maybe with the exception of the one restoring your health in certain encounters, specially the ones that feel like a shoot’em up.
The way you acquire these charms is by collecting gold coins in the levels that aren’t boss fights, the ones that are the classic run and gun kind of levels, which are as probably the most generic part of Cuphead, as they feel like pretty run of the mill platformer levels. But back to the charms – as you collect this gold, you can then later on use it to buy these charms in shops placed around the map.

And that’s pretty much it for the mechanics of Cuphead. And honestly, it’s more than enough. The fights feel tough, but fair most of the time. There were times when I felt like Cuphead was a little bit unfair, but never did it feel like it’s just completely unfair like the fight is just unbeatable without an upgrade or something like that. And even when the bosses feel extremely hard at times, they are just fun and that’s the most important thing in a game. And to be completely honest, I’m pretty sure this game will make my personal top games of the year list.

Graphics

Now that we covered the gameplay aspects of Cuphead, it’s time to take a look at the graphics of Cuphead. And well, they are just freaking awesome. Inspired by cartoons from the 1930 period – by classics or rubber hose animation like Fleischer Studios or Disney and just by looking at any given image from the game you can see how much love, work and dedication was put into making Cuphead.

I mean seriously, every little detail in game was hand-drawn and has amazing personality.
Yes, there a few images that are a bit too much reminiscent of characters from the cartoons of old, specially I’d say the ship captain boss, who reminds me of Bluto from Popeye, but in general you can say that 99 % of the characters and images in Cuphead are amazing original pieces of art.

And Cuphead is precisely that graphically, a piece of art and is the exactly what you should use in arguments with people whether video games are art.

Music

Then we have the music. Oh god the music. Man, am I happy to get a game with great music after a few games with lackluster music, because the music in Cuphead is equally amazing as the visuals are. A completely original jazz soundtrack has been created for Cuphead and it fits the game perfectly.
I’m not a music critic by any means, but I do know when I hear good music. But the melodies themselves aren’t the thing I love the most about it. The thing I love the most about it are the lyrics. I mean, seriously, just take a moment in game to listen to them and you will feel amazed how amazingly funny they are whenever included.

Performance

Well, and the last part of the review, the performance of Cuphead. And as you’d expect, the game runs well, it’s not a particularly demanding game, if you take a look at the minimum requirements you can see that it requires a graphics card that is getting close to being 10 years old by this point. Even most cheap noteboooks should be able to run Cuphead well these days.
I did experience one crash during playing though, but one crash isn’t really an indicator of general instability, so I won’t make any conclusions based on it.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion: Cuphead is simply put amazing. Graphically it’s almost certainly the best looking 2D game of the year, the music fits the theme of the game amazingly. And then we have the gameplay. The gameplay is fun and hard and definitely was worth the delays in development.
The only potential issue for buyers may be the price. 20 bucks aren't really that cheap, but I personally believe the game is more than worth the price. So unless you are really strapped for money right now, go and buy Cuphead. It’s awesome!

So, that’s it for today guys. Hope you like the review and if you did, please consider upvoting the review and following my blog. And comment, if you have something you would like to add. See you guys later with more gaming content.

disclaimer: All the images have been taken directly of the Steam game page