Cuphead

Cuphead is an instant classic. Everything about the game points to a kind of polish that few game developers can even hope to achieve. From the animation to the music to the level design, every aspect of Cuphead comes together to deliver an action platforming experience that will take its place in the history books before long.

Cuphead makes use of a cartoon style that should be instantly recognizable by anyone who grew up in India during the 80s or 90s. Endless reruns of Max Fleischer, Tex Avery and MGM cartoons have thoroughly ingrained that manic, zany energy and grainy aesthetic in our collective memory. Add to that the fact that for any kid growing up around that time, platformers were possibly the most favorite gaming genre. Cuphead is an amalgam of that kind of retroplatforming and hand drawn animation, but it is not stuck in the past. Every aspect of gameplay has been refined till it plays out almost flawlessly. The controls feel responsive like very few 2D games before it, and everything just looks so beautiful you'd be torn between playing Cuphead and gawking at its scenery and animation.

Others have mentioned time and again that this is a hard game. I will not disagree, but it's the kind of difficulty that rewards you for your skill in spades. Boss battles are not trials of patience alone, or even merely pattern recognition; they test your platforming skills and reflexes in ways which are just downright fun and exciting to execute. Long story short, you'll feel like a total badass after you dodge that projectile or land that special move, in the midst of a hundred enemies charging towards you and filling the whole screen with a vigorous, joyous sense of movement and life.

Cuphead is very much a game you want to pace yourself through. The boss battles are so well conceived that it'd be a crime to plow through them (assuming you can) one after another and feeling them become repetitive. It is to Cuphead's credit that even this rarely happens. Even when I felt a kind of fatigue creeping in after I died for the 15th time, I was still marveling inwardly at Cuphead's relentless ability to reinvent itself every step of the way. You're constantly being surprised with something new in this game, and it'd be doing this game a grave disservice if you played it just to get to that next level. This is not so much a game to "finish" as it is an experience to be savored.

The only shortcoming Cuphead has, in my opinion, is a lack of traditional platforming levels. There are a few of these scattered here and there, and while they aren't the most imaginative, they're certainly a lot of fun, and offer a nice balance to the incessant rush of bosses. While traveling through the overhead map is calming after you defeat a boss (after dying for the 20th time or so, something that feels like you're running a triathlon), Cuphead could still have done with more relaxing levels which allowed the player to appreciate the gorgeous hand drawn scenery without the constant fear of death.

Still, it's not something you'll hold against this gem for too long. Cuphead is the kind of game that comes around once every blue moon, and gloriously takes its place alongside the likes of other indie masterpieces like Inside and Hyper Light Drifter as a truly inspired vision. There is nothing quite like it in the market today, and if you have even a remote fondness for side-scrollers, you owe it to yourself to play it.