Cuphead review: Bugs (not the bunny) mar stellar retro shooter | Technobubble

Back in 1992, my brother and I would climb the wall behind the old condo we lived in and walk to the nearby Target.

Our goal?

To play “Contra III: The Alien Wars,” which was on display at the store’s gaming section. Having played all previous Contra games prior, the Super NES version was like a religious experience. It looked great and it played great, and my brother and I would make that trip several times until we finished the game — our hearts filled with satisfaction and beaming with pride for pulling off the tough feat without a code for 30 lives.

My brother hung up his gaming gloves many, many years ago. To this day, however, I still look back fondly at the times we played and finished such classic shooters as Gunstar Heroes and Contra Hard Corps, the latter still being one of the most difficult games I have ever come across. Needless to say, those experiences made me an avid fan of the classic run-and-gun shooter genre.

To say, then, that Cuphead was on my radar is an understatement. As someone who felt starved of old-school shooters since 3D gaming took over, I certainly wouldn’t pass up a chance to play a promising rendition of the genre. So when my young cousin Ericson came over one night to ask if I got the game, I quickly ponied up $19.99 and started downloading it on my Xbox One. An hour later, we both had a controller in hand with big smiles on our faces. We had so much fun, my cousin kept telling his dad to pick him up later every time he called.

This is a cousin, by the way, who didn’t have as much experience with old-school shooters and it showed. When we first started playing, the guy couldn’t duck and shoot at the same time, dying quickly before I polished off the introductory boss fight by myself. In that sense, I could see why folks say the game is incredibly hard. Personally, I thought Hard Corps was definitely harder. But if most of your experience comes from first-person shooters and racing games, Cuphead can feel downright impossible.

For veterans of the genre, however, Cuphead is challenging, for sure, but not soul-crushing. Even I doubt that I can finish Contra III today given how my cognition and reflexes aren’t what they used to be. Cuphead, on the other hand, feels doable. Certain bosses might take a bazillion tries but I can see the patterns and know I can handle them. I mean, I still know what to do with Hard Corps (or even against Mike Tyson in Punch-Out!) but I don’t think I have the reflexive wherewithal to pull that stuff off anymore.

All that being said, Cuphead’s shooting is a fun romp filled with tough love. It’s hard but not unfairly so, which encourages you to keep trying one last time over and over until the last time becomes the fifth-to-last time. At first, you might get destroyed a quarter into a boss fight. With each try, however, your progress goes a bit further until you consistently reach the final phase of a fight and eventually knock out its big baddie. Just like the old games of yore, finishing off a Cuphead boss or run-and-gun stage feels like an accomplishment. I can’t help but laugh every time my cousin raises his fist and goes “yes!” before prostrating on the couch with relief every single time we finish a tough stage. This is the same guy who usually has a deadpan reaction to other games he plays as he isn’t really the expressive type. With Cuphead, however, his face a veritable plethora of emotions.

I also feel proud about how quickly he picked up the nuances of the genre. During the first hour of the game, I was teaching him really basic stuff like the ability to keep the shoot button pressed while moving. By day two of our Cuphead session, he was consistently doing better than me as his understanding of the genre meshed with his youthful reflexes. It was like playing with my younger brother all over again.

Where Cuphead excels at, in particular, is pattern placement. Most boss fights start out simply with one pattern for you to worry about, which isn’t too bad. By the next phase, however, it gives you more stuff to keep track of, like a little foe that shoots from above or a tiny little jelly bean that sneakily tries to clip you from below. Once you get to the later phases of a fight, Cuphead starts throwing the kitchen sink by introducing more elements and letting your brain process even more information. It’s akin to moving from juggling two balls to six. Sometimes, it will even condition you to react to patterns a certain way, only to change that later on to fake you out. This means an attack that you used to be able to address by dashing changes ever so slightly and that dash move that used to work before suddenly ends up getting you in trouble. It’s the kind of trollish move that veterans of the genre can appreciate.

The shooting itself feels rock-solid. For the most part, brothers Cuphead and Mugman move exactly how I want them to, which is the first order of business for any classic shooter worth its chops. You want players worrying about the stuff on the screen and reacting on reflex as opposed to fighting with the controls. Folks who have played later Contra games before will quickly adapt to the moves, which include the ability to alternate between equipped weapons and press down jump to descend from a platform.

You can also do special moves by filling up a meter indicated by cards each time you attack a foe. Use one card and you can do a basic special that changes depending on the weapon you’re using. Use a full set of cards and you can dish out an even more powerful attack. One neat feature when playing co-op is the ability to resurrect a dead ally by doing a well-timed jumping parry slap. This actually led to many epic moments where my cousin and I did five or so consecutive resurrects in a row before seeing the “Knock Out” message onscreen after killing a boss.

To add some diversity, Cuphead also lets you use coins you collect in the course of the game to power up your two protagonists. This includes different shot types such as a spread, homing and powerful charge weapon. You can also use them to unlock special abilities, including an extra heart or the ability to automatically parry once in a run. My personal recommendation, however, is to get the smoke bomb teleport, which makes you invincible mid-dash.

While the gameplay certainly has substance, Cuphead also benefits from plenty of style. For many, the prime calling card for the game is actually its visuals, which emulates the look of cartoons from the 1930s. As someone who developed a fondness for Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry and Tex Avery cartoons thanks to my late grandfather, I absolutely love the art style for Cuphead. Whether it be the character designs, the color palette or even the film-scratch filter, Cuphead looks like a dead-ringer for shows from that era. Even the music and game announcer’s voice and choice of words harken back to those cartoons and shows of yore, which I found to be an audiovisual treat.

As great as Cuphead is, however, it does suffer from some notable drawbacks. One is its focus on pure boss fights, which make up the bulk of the game. Although I love boss fights, I prefer them to come after some serious running and gunning. Cuphead has its share of run-and-gun sections, for sure, but those are few and far between. As a result, the game feels more like a glorified boss rush as opposed to a pure run-and-gun shooter.

What really knocks down the game a peg, however, is its assortment of bugs. Some are minor but can affect your ability to finish a stage. There were several times, for example, when certain foes would glitch out and stop attacking, which might seem like a godsend if you’re having trouble finishing a stage as you can finsih it off much more easily. Other times, you see the opposite where some foes become invincible and don’t receive damage no matter how long you shoot them.

The worse bug, however, is the quit-game glitch, which completely erased all our progress. This occurred when we ended up quitting the game from the menu that pops up when you fail a boss fight. I initially thought that it only impacted PC versions of the game. The copy I bought however, was for Xbox One and it was still an issue. I still remember the look of devastation on my cousin’s face when he realized that the hours upon hours of hard work and toil we went through to take down all those bosses were now rendered moot. Although the achievements we unlocked still remain, they just now serve as cruel reminders to losing all the hard-earned progress we made through the game.

I was so upset at the time that I even considered giving the game a score of 7 out of 10. Then I took a deep breath and told myself to wait a few days before I wrote my review so I wouldn’t write something in the heat of the moment while I was still feeling salty and ticked off. Those issues could be patched after all. As such, I decided not to factor the bugs as much into the score. All that being said, it would be disingenuous not to factor them at all, especially in a game that boasts the difficulty that Cuphead does. If bugs aren’t an issue for you, then I would give the game a score of 8.5 (the lack of more run-and-gun segments prevent me from giving it a 9 out of 10). Otherwise, feel free to check out my final score below.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Cuphead is that rare new game that introduces a whole new IP that boasts not just excellent mechanics but also a gorgeous art style that's taken straight out of the early Golden Age of cartoons. Unfortunately, its main antagonist is not the in-game devil but a horrible bug that literally wiped out hours upon hours of my hard-earned progress. I still love the game despite that. But not as unconditionally as I used to.

• Rating: 8 out of 10
• Cost: $19.99; PC, XB1 (reviewed)
• http://www.cupheadgame.com/

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