The Triple A (An Average Amateur) Review: Cuphead

Hello Steemit! Chrispy99 here and I’m back again with another review for you. This time we are going to look at Cuphead. If you are new to my reviews, my review will be based on my experience with the game. I won’t focus too much on the technical details and mainly focus on what kind of game to expect and how would this be seen from an average gamer’s perspective. With that said, here we go.

Cuphead is a two dimensional side scrolling cooperative shooter about two brothers who end up on the wrong side of a deal with the devil and have to collect the various debts of others to win back their souls. The story is very entertaining with its combination of classic western cartoon animation and dark themes making a very unique, fun, and somewhat satirical/sarcastic experience. The gameplay is very solid allowing for drop in and out cooperative play. However, with its limit of only being on local cooperative play, it negatively affects a huge portion of the gaming population considering that many games today, especially in the PC market, have online cooperative play instead of couch cooperative. Although there are a couple of methods (on the PC version) that allow for an online experience, if the intention was to solely stick to couch cooperative play, the two versions of the game (PC and xbox) do not really match the demographic. One demographic that would thrive on that concept would be on the Nintendo switch with its portability and ability to have two controllers at any point but let’s let the companies fight that out if they want a port of that to be made.

From an average gamer’s perspective, this game is very well done at the $20 mark for games. It is often praised for its level of difficulty, some of which believe it should be on the level of the Dark Souls series. Although I do agree with it having some significant difficulty to an average gamer, I would not consider it a Dark Souls level difficulty. Side scrolling platformers have a history of having a similar level of difficulty in the early ages of gaming when arcade cabinets were popular. Many kids like me would flock over trying to beat the game with the least amount of quarters possible due to the deaths becoming permanent and having to restart from the beginning. Back then, the Internet was very limited at the time and information about each cabinet game was not easily accessible. If a game was considered too hard to play, not many kids would flock and give it quarters to try and beat it. This is where the difficulty of Cuphead I believe resides at. It maintains a level of difficulty that shows any player is capable of beating each of the levels on their first run but punishes immensely for mistakes. How this differs from Dark Souls is that the player is introduced to their limitations at the very beginning and maintains that standard throughout the game. Although there are variations and equipments that increase your chances for survival, the number of lives and the damage you take is consistent. You have 3 hits total at each level and the game shows that you do not necessarily have to take a hit in order to move onto the next level. And this is where the intrigue and subculture of this game has grown since its release. It appeals to the enthusiasts who enjoy a good challenge but also is not too difficult that anyone has to learn to “git gud” in that regard.

Overall, Cuphead is a great game that demonstrates a great balance of difficulty without deterring casual audiences away. It is a great game to buy at for $20 but I would only recommend the game if you either enjoy that level of challenge reminiscent of arcade cabinets or have a close by friend who wants to play cooperatively to beat a game. Until they release a patch or update that allows for online cooperation, I would not recommend it beyond those types of gamers because even though there are methods around it, it does diminish the experience of playing through the game with a friend on equal terms. There are things such as lag input and being forced to play on keyboard (if controller is preferred) that can give one player a disadvantage when trying to play cooperatively.

That’s the end of my post you guys! Thanks for taking time to read it. I would love to hear your thoughts on the game in the comments. Tell me what you think about it. Would you consider the difficulty to be on the level of Dark Souls? Am I wrong about its level of difficulty? I wanna hear it down below! Thank you again Steemit!!!

All images are from Google Pictures