Tech: Cuphead review

The "run and gun" shooter genre may be decades-old, but it's more popular than ever thanks to indie games like Broforce, Mercenary Kings, and the subject of today's review, Cuphead:



Cuphead is a brilliant mashup of Fleischer and Disney-style '30s animation and the pitched shooting battles of Gunstar Heroes. In the game, you guide your beverage-containing hero through a manic series of bossfights, platforming levels, and the occasional horizontal biplane shoot-em-up stage. Every single artistic element in Cuphead, from the hand-drawn animation to the brassy jazz soundtrack, perfectly evokes the period (albeit with some bonkers surreal twists - a pair of frogs turn into a giant slot machine, for smeg's sake).

But it would all be nothing without good gameplay, and Cuphead delivers. Most of the game is devoted to battles with multi-stage bosses, whose constantly shifting forms and semi-randomized attacks require different tactics, even when retrying the same boss again. The difficulty is high, though not quite Nintendo hard, since the game allows you to instantly retry bosses without any penalty. Frustration is also mostly avoided thanks to the excellent controls and varied arsenal, which ensures you seldom feel stuck.

That's not to say there isn't a little uneven difficulty - I beat most bosses in a few tries, but several had me pulling my hair out. I will also fault the game for a lack of straight platforming stages (there are only six in the whole game) and no online multiplayer (at least, not without some hi-jinx). Still, this is easily the best Xbox One game released last year, and a must-buy if you're a fan of old-school shooters.

Rating: 91/100

P.S. - I didn't realize it until after I was done playing the game, but if the phrase "labor of love" ever applied to something, it does to Cuphead. The developer, StudioMDHR, is essentially Chad and Jared Moldenhauer and their friends and family, and it's quite incredible that they could develop a game like this in their first go-around. It didn't affect my score or anything, but I really hope we see more artfully crafted titles from them: