Cuphead being delayed means it stands to be a much larger game, with challenging platforming sections rubbing shoulders with the game's quirky boss encounters. If all of this sounds completely bonkers, it's because it is. Like in the game's 'Botanic Panic' stage, where we're presented with a big, mud-spitting potato to vanquish, before battling a giant carrot able to conjure bizarre telekinetic projectiles from its forehead. Cuphead's raison d'etre huge battles that have you facing huge bullet sponge adversaries, often across multiple forms. Cuphead is a game that is also guaranteed to be an absolute blast in 2-player local co-op, as you band together to fulfil the deal you made with the devil to do his bidding, shooting your way through the game's numerous platform levels and screen-filling boss fights.Īh, the boss fights. It's addictive as hell.Ĭoins you collect during the platform sections can also be spent at the game's shop, boosting your firepower with spread shot or homing missile power-ups, for instance. Of course, this will only fuel your desire to try and try again, until you beat each of Cuphead's levels, perhaps even aiming for the perfect run. While the number of hits you can take and lives are limited during each level, dying means having to retry from the beginning, with the game over screen showing how far you managed to get through the stage. As someone who grew up with scrolling shmups like these, Cuphead feels nostalgic in a whole different way, beyond its classic animated Disney look. Whether you're playing solo as the eponymous Cuphead or his blue, non-bendy straw-headed partner-in-crime Mugman, you're able to run and jump through levels, shooting forward, backwards, up, diagonally or while laying prone, chucking massive fireballs: almost exactly like Contra/Probotector. Leaping gaps isn't always safe either, as snapping plants leap up, chomping at the air. Little, harmless looking floral enemies charge from left, right and centre, some firing bullets our way, others just charging on to the screen, putting our reflexes to the test. We kick things off with a bit of platforming in the 'Forest Frolics' chapter, opting for the normal difficulty over the alternative easy setting, quickly discovering that it's anything but 'normal'. Initially conceived as a boss rush title, Cuphead now has its own world map (there'll be several different worlds to visit) that you can saunter around, completing its new platforming sections or boss battles in whatever order you like.
Its wonderful art style is also the reason I persevered with the game for so long, and why it saw huge queues at E3 snaking around Xbox's sprawling booth. A 2D side-scrolling shooter oozing with animated charm, it's impossible not to fall hopelessly in love with Cuphead. Cuphead is like a bouncy vintage 1930s Disney Contra gorgeous to look at, unlike any other video game I've played before from a visual standpoint, and just as uncompromisingly rock hard as Contra.
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