Ah Cuphead… If you’re a gamer, then no doubt you’ve already heard of this infamous game. I hardly need to spout what’s already known. But for those unfamiliar, I will. Cuphead is a charming looking game designed around the art styles of the cartoons of the 1930’s, particularly early Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks, and Max Fleischer. Of course, this adorable looking game has a catch: it is impossibly difficult…
If you’re a longtime reader, or know me at all, then you know that I am no masochist when it comes to games. Games that are hard just for the sake of hard get no respect from me. Games that are hard due to just plain bad design get no respect from me. But there are those few precious gems that are difficult, but designed in such a meticulously crafted way that with enough experience and persistence, you can learn the game’s design, and persevere in a rewarding and fun way, such as one of my all time favorites: Punch-Out!!.
Cuphead (CH) is not one of these gems…
I’m just going to lay that out for all to see right now. I will of course go into detailed analysis for why I feel this way. But it needs to be said outright. This game is receiving far too much mindless praise due to two facts: its art style and its difficulty. And if there’s one thing I cannot abide is when a game is wrongfully praised simply because it is “hard.”
You might be asking right now, why on this great green earth would I ever play a game like CH? To explain it in a word? Boredom. I was bored. Have been for a very long time. And I figured at the very least, this would give me something to do, something to challenge myself (of course, it wasn’t a good challenge, and it didn’t even last me a week, but I digress). Plus, I will admit the art style did a bit to lure me in like so many others. As a young, young child, I watched a lot of old Fleischer and Disney cartoons (I’m often told that young baby Matt was particularly fond of Betty Boop). So there was a bit of nostalgic curiosity there, at the very least.
But enough intro, let’s get to the dang analysis already.
CH is a run n’ gun/bullet hell all set in the world of an old-timey cartoon. The player takes on the role of the titular anthropomorphic cup, or his brother Mugman (you can also play 2 player co-op thanks to this set up, but I can’t imagine what a nightmare that would be having to juggle a second player among all that chaos). Cuphead and Mugman decide to head over to the bad side of town, and play around in the (literal) Devil’s Casino. Of course, the devil being the crafty jerk that he is tricks the brothers into a gamble they can’t win. So, in exchange for their freedom, they agree to go collect the “soul contracts” of the other residents of Inkwell Isle that owe the Devil his due. With that tiny bit of narrative setup, the player then embarks on an adventure to fight a number of impossibly difficult, larger than life bosses.
The game starts in the Elder Kettle’s house, where the player can opt in for the tutorial. The tutorial is one of the most literal tutorials I think I’ve ever seen. It’s like playing an interactive version of an old game manual. There are words explaining (almost) every movement and ability the duo can perform in game and the player can practice them as much as they want.
As difficult as the game is, it is thankfully simple in its control design. You can move left or right, you can duck, you can jump, and you can shoot (in 8 directions, should you hold a second button to keep your character in place). All pretty standard stuff. You can also dash (either on the ground or in the air), a mechanic that is seemingly becoming more and more common since Mighty No. 9 (another awful game…). However, this dash mechanic is virtually useless without a certain upgrade (more on that later).
Another more unique mechanic is something the game calls “parrying.” On rare instances the player can parry an attack. What this means, however, is something very specific, and not what it really sounds like. Being a bullet hell, you will be bombarded by projectiles in the boss fights more often than not. However, there are times when those projectiles (or sometimes enemies or objects) will glow pink. Anything in the game that is pink can be parried. To do this, the player must jump on the pink item in question, and press the parry button right before landing on it (otherwise, you’ll take damage just like you would after jumping on any other normal enemy/projectile). If you successfully parry, you will bounce higher in the air and your special meter will fill a good amount.
Speaking of special meters, might as well talk about that right now. When playing the game, a meter (shown by way of a row of cards slowly rising up until fully visible) will slowly fill with each successful hit landed on an enemy. When one card is fully visible, the next card will start to rise. You can get a row of five cards total. You can use one card at a time to unleash an EX attack. This is a powered up version of your normal attack and will do something different depending on which gun you have equipped. For example, with the standard “pea shooter” weapon, instead of shooting tiny pellets at a fast pace, it will fire off a massive MegaMan-esque charge shot style burst. I’m not going to go into all the different EX attacks, but I think you get the idea.
There is one caveat to the special meter though, and its a caveat that the game in no way explains at all.
Eventually, you’ll come across some mausoleums in the game. These are special parry-only stages, and should you succeed, you’ll unlock special moves, which are different from EX attacks. But they use the special meter all the same. Again, this is not explained in game at all. In order to use one of these special moves, you’ll need to equip it, then, in battle, after getting all five cards, you press the same button you’d press for an EX attack. This will use up all the cards in one go. I will note that there’s only three special moves in the game: a powerful horizontal beam attack (which will leave you extremely vulnerable after using because you cannot move your character during the attack…), a very brief invincibility buff, and an extremely confusing ability that allows you to control Cuphead and his ghost at the same time, in an attempt to deal double damage which doesn’t really work at all and just adds chaos to too much chaos as it is.
Aside from the issues I’ve already griped on about these special moves, I’d like to point out just how poor an idea it was to map it to the same button that makes use of the EX attacks. There were times where, say, I didn’t want invincibility, but would have liked to use an EX attack, but I couldn’t because my meter was full to five cards. So, I had no choice.
As far as movement and mechanics are concerned, that’s all there is, though. For ground fights…
Yes, there are fights that take place in the air as well, and everything you’ve learned on the ground becomes completely useless. In the air, you’re put in a small plane. Your weapon turns into a small machine gun style attack (or a bomb that can only be dropped at an arc), your EX attacks and special moves are replaced by a default airplane only EX attack and special move. And you can no longer even use dash, as that’s been replaced by an inferior and unwieldy shrinking mechanic.
I’ll also note the the game truly takes on the definition of bullet hell in the air. There’s so much crap flying at you at all times in these fights that its nearly unmanageable.
The game changes all the rules in the air. In fact the game just loves to change the rules on the fly, which is one of the reasons I dislike it so much. There are only a small handful of cardinal rules of game design. And CH wantonly breaks each and every one. Most egregiously though is this: Do not lie to the player.
While I was annoyed by the airplane mechanics, I do understand that games sometimes change up mechanics for the sake of variety in select stages. And although it was annoying, it was understandable. However, when you establish hard and fast rules of the game, in no way should you change those rules after they’ve been established. That is lying to the player.
An example of this was found early on, in one of the few, terribly designed sidescroller run n’ gun levels (most of the game is purely boss fights). At a certain point, the player will encounter platforms that get destroyed after landing on them, only for them to reappear a short while later. Fine. That’s fine. That’s a common platforming trope, and I’ve been accustomed to that for years now. I learned what platforms got destroyed. I knew what they looked like. I died at first because I wasn’t expecting it, but then I knew better, and I knew I needed to move fast through the area with nothing but these platforms.
Imagine my great shock then, when I’m blazing through this area, platforms destroying under my feet, when I run out of platforms. I’m met with a large gap of nothingness, and a few precious platforms behind me which will surely be destroyed any second. What do I do? I panic. Because this game is one of the most stressful games I’ve ever played. And I jumped into the abyss. Only to die. Only to see at the last second that a small boss appeared at the end of the run n’gun stage (which had never happened previously). Only to see that the previously unsafe platforms were not getting destroyed anymore…
That my friends is lying to the player. That is a cardinal rule that should not be broken. And anyone who says that is a good thing that it was broken, does not understand basic design principles. There are other examples of this, but I think I’ve made my point and harped on this long enough. So let’s move on to another serious design sin: randomness.
Now, I know what you might be thinking. What’s wrong with an element of randomness in game design? It’s a video game, you should expect some random elements in the AI to make things interesting. And yes! I agree! The randomness in CH is a different story altogether though. In a game that is almost exclusively focused on big boss fights, there is far too much randomness to ever be considered acceptable.
Traditionally, video game bosses follow set patterns. Players learn to best bosses by learning the patterns. Naturally, failure is a part of this process, I won’t deny that. I don’t dislike CH because I died, or even due to the fact that i died a lot. I dislike it because the deaths were unfair. Most of the bosses in CH do indeed have sets of attacks that they perform, most of which come with audio or visual cues to let the player know what attack is coming (albeit briefly), so they may counter or dodge it. But there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to the attack patterns themselves. I restarted certain fights many many times, and each time, the boss opened with a different attack. No pattern. Randomness.
Also note that I said most come with warning cues. Some do not. There were plenty of times where I was fighting a boss, and out of nowhere I was hit with an attack that I had absolutely no way of knowing it was even coming. I remember one death in particular where I was in a boss rush from hell (literally…), I had one heart/health/hitpoint/whatever left. I was fighting a giant flying 8-ball. I was standing off to the side, ready to avoid a projectile he had flung my way, when suddenly and without warning of any kind, a cube of pool cue chalk dropped right down on my head, killing me instantly. Unfair randomness.
Worst of all though, is the randomness of having to deal with multiple attack patterns at one time. In a normal boss fight, even in one with no set pattern of attacks, the player can at least rest easy knowing that they’ll only be hit with one attack at a time. This is not the case in CH. In the fight with the big bad himself, the devil, this is the most apparent (or perhaps its the best remember for me because it was the most recent fight…). The devil has certain attacks. Attacks that after a long time, and many many deaths, I was able to learn. But he would often not wait for one attack to finish before moving on to the next attack. This meant I was, at any given time, trying to avoid 1-3 attacks at once. And there were times when avoidance was simply and literally impossible due to the sheer randomness and overwhelming force in which the attacks were performed.
Cardinal rule: do not force the player to rely on sheer dumb luck to succeed or fail.
I mean, for example in Punch-Out!!, when I’m fighting Bald Bull, I’m never going to expect him to perform a Bull Rush, right hook, and a left uppercut all at once. Such a move would be ridiculously unreasonable and completely unavoidable. And yet, the equivalent is exactly what was happening in CH at its most random, worst moments.
Please note, I’m not whining and griping because it’s too hard, and that I couldn’t beat it. I have beaten it. I don’t analyze any game that I haven’t finished. That is not the point. I am griping because these are serious design issues that should be addressed, but very few seem to be willing to do so, because the game is so “pretty and unique.”
But enough harping on that. There are a couple more elements of the game that are worth discussing, so I’ll touch on those.
I mentioned earlier that there is a dash mechanic in the game. However, dashing does not mean invulnerability. If you dash into an enemy, you’re still going to take damage. Unless, you buy a certain item. Cuphead can equip one item or “charm” at a time to make things a little easier. Emhasis on “little.”
These charms can be purchased with coins at a shop called Porkrind’s Emporium. Coins can be collected in the very few sidescroller levels. But there are only five coins per level. And once they’re collected, they’re collected for good. No going back to grind for more. This ain’t Mario Bros. So you’d better be sure to collect all the coins you can to buy the best charms. Weapons can also be bought at the emporium as well.
Of course, “best” charms is pretty subjective. Personally, my favorite charm was the Smoke Bomb. This item allowed you to dash through enemies without taking damage. I found this ability invaluable and I honestly cannot imagine playing the game without it. It should have just been the default ability of the dash mechanic. And because this charm was so invaluable, I refused to even consider using anything else. Which limited me severely in ways to play the game, to be quite frank.
Of course, some of the charms are completely useless, anyway. There are two different charms that give you additional health (base of three, can be upgraded to a max of five). However, using these seemingly invaluable charms will reduce the damage of all of your weapons significantly. Making them a complete waste of time.
Just another example of punishing the player for wanting to play at their pace. The designer (I do not say designers because I watched the credits, and found no sign of a design team at all, which is completely apparent just by the way the game plays…) clearly wanted to punish the player for wanting to play the game in an easier way. Especially in the boss fights.
I was shocked to learn that you had the option of a normal or simple difficulty when reaching a boss fight. Naturally, I chose simple. Because I like to enjoy my games. I do not enjoy being unfairly punished. That is not fun.
Of course, when I beat the boss, I was told that I could not progress unless I beat the boss on the normal difficulty setting. So, I thought to myself, at least I got some practice, I guess. And went in at normal… I did not get practice at all. Simple mode leaves out entire sections of fights. Boss fights are made up of various phases, deal enough damage and the boss will incorporate new attacks, more often than not, changing their form and the fight altogether.
I will note that with each death, it shows a progress bar, separated by lines indicating the various phases. So, at the very least you always know how many phases there are, and how close (or how far) you were to actually beating the freaking boss.
In closing, the game does look amazing. I will never deny it that. The world and its characters are undeniably charming and even after all the torture of the actual game itself, I still love the way it looks. Its got a fun narrative. It’s juicy as all get out, right down to the scratchy film finish. And the amazing 1930’s swing music. It’s all great. In fact, I’ve heard rumor that they might make the franchise into a proper cartoon on Netflix. And honestly, that’s really where this belongs, in a passive form of media. It’s something to look at and listen to rather than to play.
Because the game itself… The gameplay… The design… They’re awful. Unforgivable design flaws. Unnecessary, soul crushing difficulty. Terribly designed platforming sections. Completely random boss attack patterns. And so on. The game isn’t just “difficult.” It’s poorly designed. And should they ever make a sequel, I sincerely hope StudioMDHR gets some actual designers on staff, or at the very least, learn from the first game, rather than be blinded by the ignorant praise of the masses, and make the game something truly great, something truly worth praising. Instead of something that just looks great.
