Have you ever tried writing anything of length about one of your favorite games (or book, TV show, movie, recipe, park, etc…)? It’s tough. How can you put into words how much joy you’ve gotten out of something like a video game? Do you explain the game as if you were writing a review? Talk about the aspects which really grabbed you? Compared it to other greats?
There’s no one answer for this question, at least not that I’ve found. It’s essentially impossible to put into words why something is a favorite, for me anyway. I can explain everything about a game, discuss why it works so well, and exclaim that I love the thing, but that still falls short of what separates it from the mountain of other really, really great video games.
Nonetheless; here we are. Cuphead is absolutely one of my favorite video games ever. It is a game I had heard about while I spent many years solely playing FPS titles. The adorable flower boss turning into a demented spewer of seeds trying to destroy your cute coffee mug character is genius marketing. I didn’t play it until I exited my FPS phase and started seeing what games I had missed in the last 15 years or so. I first tried Cuphead three years ago at the time of this writing and have played it through four full times since, including grabbing the PlayStation platinum trophy.
When I discuss video games with people, particularly their favorites, one thing that others tend to say fairly often is “I play through that game every year or two.” This was an entirely foreign concept to me until recently. Growing up I would play a game for a while, almost certainly NOT beating it even once, then sell or trade it to try the next thing. I don’t regret this mindset, but it made it tough to develop favorites. Donkey Kong Country was always a standby for me, I played the first few levels dozens of times, but getting out of the first world or two was rare territory for me. Not a skill issue, just that, although I beat the game once, I never felt the need to revisit everything, the first handful of levels were sufficient. Ditto for other favorites such as Super Mario World, Banjo-Kazooie, and others. I could play many of the first levels in those games with my eyes closed at this point.
Given the choice, I would have rather tried something, anything, new rather than replaying favorites. Hearing others have games they’ve owned for 20 years and still revisit on a regular basis made me a bit jealous. For as long as I can remember video games have been a part of my life, but I never made a connection with a game so strong that I wanted to play it front-to-back dozens of times. Maybe jealousy isn’t the proper emotion here, perhaps it was more curiosity. What would compel so many people to replay a game that much? I was clearly missing something, but what was it, exactly?
So, when I mentioned earlier that I’ve beaten Cuphead four times (three of which included the DLC) in the past years; that says a lot.
The immediate draw of Cuphead was the unique art style. Countless games have a retro look to them, but that almost always means “pixelated.” Studio MDHR went with a different version of retro for Cuphead, taking the art style all the way back to the early days of hand drawn cartoons. Think Steamboat Willie, in color. Yes, who wouldn’t want to recreate nearly 100 year old hand drawn cartoons as a cornerstone of a new video game? It’s an extremely unique, eye-catching concept to start from, but it would fall flat if the gameplay didn’t hold up.
The magic of Cuphead’s gameplay is how well it suits the “one more try” hook which will have you playing way later into the night than you ever planned. The game, for the uninitiated, is a series of tough-as-nails boss fights. The majority of them have you on foot, jumping, dodging, dashing, and parrying countless projectiles headed your way while trying to drain the bullet sponge bosses. A few twists come in with flying and run-and-gun levels which have you as a fighter plane and running through a more traditional side-scrolling action game, respectively. Each of the bosses have multiple phases and you will almost certainly need to get to each phase a few times before being able to get through to the next.
The hope is that each death teaches you something, but that’s not true; sometimes the only thing you learn is that your controller is clearly broken because you definitely hit the parry button at the right time and definitely didn’t mess up again!! The bosses are tough but they never feel cheap once you’ve spent some time with them. They each have their own patterns and although they may seem impossible at first, just wait until you get those 150 practice deaths out of the way, you’ll feel fully in control after that.
All of this leads to incredible moments of defeating a boss with one HP left and being surrounded by projectiles heading straight for you. There will be dozens of attempts that end long before this moment, and likely a handful which end in death while only a hit or two away from victory. It’s the pure pain of seeing where you finished on the death screen timescale for the fight; “my nose is across the finish line!!!” is a common refrain (translation: you were within a few shots of victory). You will immediately launch another attempt only to find yourself taking two early hits, writing off the attempt, quickly hitting restart and trying it all over again.
I don’t know if it is the sense of accomplishment of defeating these difficult bosses which is the main pull, or the sense of relief that I don’t have to face that <expletive deleted> boss again! At least until next time I decide to play from the beginning. It’s likely a mix of the two, accomplishment and relief often go hand-and-hand in my experience. Whatever the combination of those two, Cuphead’s formula has perfected the balance between controller-throwing difficulty and massive satisfaction when you finally conquer the current beast.
Don’t let that smile linger too long, however, as the next boss is probably even tougher than the last.
