Video Gamers Podcast - My Cuphead Is Killing Me (Cuphead) - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

Gaming hosts Paul and Josh are jumping into the insanely colorful (and difficult) world of Cuphead. Known for its high level of difficulty throughout the gaming world, Cuphead is a masterpiece of action, art and rage inducing bosses. It’s time for another gaming deep dive as we break down everything you could want to know about Cuphead, how the multiplayer stacks up, how we rate it in make love, marry or murder, and where it falls on our leaderboard. Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram Subscribe on YouTube Visit us on the web Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, Josh here. I just wanted to take a second and let you know about this amazing new product called MultiplayerSquad.com. It's the greatest new addition to gaming. Well, I mean practically life. It's sure to fill you with glee, help you make new friends, and expose you to all sorts of awesome memes. It's got the best community of gamers around, and more than that, it's the best way to help support the show and let us keep providing awesome content. What? I gotta read this disclaimer for legal reasons. Warning. MultiplayerSquad.com can cause feelings of joy, happiness, companionship, ownage, and all-around sense of being awesome.

If you notice yourself acting more like Josh, please discontinue use immediately and seek professional help. Hey, who put that in there? Paul! A brawl is surely brewing. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Each Monday, we break down a particular game or a gaming subject, and today we have a very special one for you guys.

We are going to be doing a deep dive into a little game you might have heard of called Cuphead. We're going to discuss the art style, some of the mechanics, some of the secrets in the game, and most importantly, what our overall impressions of the game were. And then we'll finish up the show by reading some community reviews, play Make Love, Marry, or Murder, and we will see where Cuphead ranks on our overall leaderboard where we compare all the games that we have covered to date. But first things first, we need some introductions. And this time, I'm going to introduce my co-host first, because he's the cuphead of today's episode, the gambler who just might

throw one more set of dice at the craps table on a devil's wager. It's Josh. No snake eyes. No snake eyes. No snake... Oh, man. Uh-oh. We're in trouble now, Paul. And then I'm the mug man of today's episode. You know, I understand the danger of taking a deal with the devil, and I'm in the background yelling, good gosh, Cuphead, no, just as the dice leave his hands. I'm your host, Paul. Before we jump into Cuphead, we wanted to read a couple of reviews that you guys have left for the podcast. Oh, boy.

We're getting closer to 200. We've been saying it. And we are closer, man. And one of these reviews, kudos to this guy. I'll just read his first, because he was trying to be the 200th review. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, all right.

So, this review comes in from Ananamua. I kind of like that name, Ananamua. And he says, or she says, a great podcast. I was trying lots of podcasts and this was the best one. By the way, I'm trying to get the 200th review. I like it so much. Well, Annamua, there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is you are not a 200th review. The good news is we read your review anyway.

Yes. It's like back in the day when you would call the radio station, am I the 14th caller? And then you'd hang up, call right back, am I the 14th caller? Yeah. Yep. Well, I'm sorry, Anonymous, but thank you for the review. Yes.

And you still made it on the show. So, you know. All right. And then this next one comes in from Caspi Kane, and it is titled So Amazing. So I started listening to podcasts like a few weeks ago and stumbled upon this gem. I love this podcast. Just hearing you guys speak adds some light to my day, and I have learned to take my love for video gaming and want to pursue it as a job. So if y'all are thinking about listening to these guys, then you really should.

It's a fun and fresh, and you will always enjoy it. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, CaspiCane, we made it our job, except that we don't, you know, get paid for it. It's like a permanent unpaid internship. Yes, exactly. And my boss really sucks, man. Oh, goodness. I don't want to hear it.

Like I'm the boss that's hilarious. All right. Well, I think it's time for Cuphead. This match will get red hot. Go! All right. From Studio MDHR Entertainment Inc., it's a little bit of a mouthful, Cuphead is a classic run-and-gun action game heavily focused on boss battles.

Inspired by cartoons of the 1930s, the visuals and audio are painstakingly created with the same techniques of the era, i.e. traditional hand-drawn cell animation, watercolor backgrounds, and original jazz recordings. All right, I don't even know where to start with all of this, Josh, because the story, the animation style, the gameplay, they all kind of blend together. But covering Cuphead was your idea. So I was kind of curious as to what made you pick up Cuphead to start off with? Why are we covering it here on the show? So, I mean, you guys pick on me for being old.

There is just a sliver of truth to that. Just a tiny grain of truth to that you know just a tiny grain of of truth if you will but like this way you share with us that you worked for walt disney back in the 1930s i did yes no i mean won't go way back he he promised me that uh i could freeze my head too for science they have a spot reserved next to him with your name on it. But Cuphead reminded me of those games of my youth where they are side scrollers, platformers, shooters, hard, hard games. The difficulty level of games nowadays is nothing like it was back then. We talk about the Nintendo hard, the Nintendo hard games, you know, Nintendo hard where in the early days of Nintendo games were really

difficult. And Cuphead just seemed like the perfect throwback to that. And so I had picked this game up a while back, long before the, we talked about doing it for the show. And it just, just draws your attention. There's something about, I mean, almost everybody has heard of Cuphead, and if they haven't, then they have probably seen some snippets of gameplay and that animation style and the art style.

But yeah, I wanted something that kind of just captured those, I'll call them the glory days of my youth, of playing these really hard games where it took a lot of skill and patience to get through them. Yeah, I don't remember where I first learned about Cuphead, but I feel like the last few years it's just kind of been around in the ether. I don't remember seeing trailers. I don't remember ever watching anyone streaming it. I just remember always seeing the little animated teacup with the big eyes and the face, and it obviously was a throwback to the 30s. I honestly did not really know anything about this

game before starting it for the show, and it was a little bit different than what I expected. I thought it was more of like a kiddie game. I did not realize it was actually one of those tough as nails, more of a platformer, you know, run and gun style. So I actually found it to be quite a bit different than what I thought it would be. But let's talk a little bit about the story of Cuphead. Because right off the bat, they kind of hit you with like, the beginning of a fairy tale or the beginning of a Disney movie where you get this book that turns open and you start learning about this fable of Cuphead and Mugman. Do you want to tell the people a little bit about the storyline in this game? It's funny because you kind of alluded to

it in the intro of the show. But yes, you're living the perfect life, man. And Cuphead is your jolly, just not worried about anything in the world. And Mugman is his sidekick that's along for the ride and is probably a little bit more of the voice of reason amongst the two. But you know, like friends are going to do, they decide to go to the casino. And it's Devil's Casino. That should have been their first clue. When you see a casino's name that is the Devil's Casino, maybe you shouldn't go. And it's also filled with a lot of shady characters. Like, no one in this Devil's Casino looks like a good guy. Right. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, you're probably not in a good place. And then, you know, so they're having a great night. They're winning lots of money.

And then the devil's like, hey, let's make it. I'll make a bet. Okay. Number two. Number one, don't go to Devil's Casino. Number two, don't make a bet with the devil. Okay. So they make a bet.

And of course, they lose. And so the devil has now, like, conscripted them for eternity for eternity and then you know they they kind of so the devil gives them the option to say hey look i'll let you work off you know this debt that you have to me if you go and you collect all of the like the bounties i guess on these other bosses or souls that owe him money, I guess. Yeah, I had no idea that the storyline had anything to do with the devil and a deal with the devil. I was very surprised because when I jumped in, I immediately assumed this was more of a kid game

and none of it is heavy or serious. It's all just silly and in good fun. But it did surprise me right off the bat. So now, all of a sudden, you've got Cuphead and Mugman running around. And now the game heavily focuses where you are battling all of these bosses. And there's different types of levels. And we're going to break all those things down here in just a minute. But I think probably the number one thing that leaves an impression on everyone is the animation style. So the name of this kind of animation I have learned today from Wikipedia is called rubber hose animation. What?

And so this is like where the characters don't really have well-defined limbs. They have like very long, loose, rounded off arms and legs. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. So their bodies are very fluid. Cuphead is continually bouncing on his knees, and it's very reminiscent of the old school Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie. It very much looks like it's from that era. Yeah. I mean, this is the one thing that stands out first in this game. Like I said, you know, obviously the gameplay is what actually stands out in this. But when you see Cuphead for the first time, you just see this old, like grainy, like the game is intentionally grainy as if it's from like the 30s or the 40s.

And this cartoony, very muted, nothing is like super colorful. It's all like these dull color palettes. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of color in the game. But what I mean is they're not like super vibrant. Like you can tell like it looks older in that sense. But yeah, and I never knew. The noodle arms thing is perfect, dude, because so many bosses

are like that and so many different things in some of the levels are like that. Um, but it just, I don't know that there's another game that has the feel to it. Like that cuphead does like, if you showed me two seconds of any boss or any level in cuphead, I could look at that and go, that's cuphead a hundred percent. I bet my house. Oh, yeah. You know? And so that's a testament to the developers, really, to come up with an art style or to be so true to that art style, I guess, to make that stand out like that. Yeah. And when I was reading about how they developed the animation in this game, did you know that the animations were hand-drawn by one of the brothers who made this game? No.

Hand-drawn? Hand-drawn. Okay, if you're listening, have you ever made a flipbook? When I was a kid. Do you know how long it takes? Yes, I did the stickman flipbook, too. But do you know how long that takes to just do... I mean, dude, it takes forever. Can you imagine hand drawing animation?

Oh, no. I mean, it would take forever. And even the old Disney movies, they're really short for a reason. Sleeping Beauty, my three-year-old loves watching it. And I almost hate putting that on because it's like 62 minutes. Yeah. Because it was all hand-drawn. That stuff takes forever. But yeah, so the brothers who started this game, they started working on it in 2010, and this game did not release until 2017, and they ended up with a team of 14 people working on it. So when they say in that Steam description I read earlier that it was a painstaking process, that's not a joke because they were hand-drawing these animations. But I really love, as Josh mentioned before, they make it look like it was made in the 30s. So it's not just in that style.

They add the film grain. They add scratches. Like if it were old school film that eroded over time, it's got pops and ticks in the audio where it sounds like it's playing on a really old, bad record player. And all of that stuff just really adds to the aesthetics. And I think that it leaves such a distinct style that it really serves the game well. I think it was totally worth that painstaking process. Do you think that that's off-putting to some people, though? Because I think, kind of like you said, you thought the game was kind of kiddy, almost. So I have to wonder,

there's got to be people that see this art style or see snippets of Cuphead and then just go, yeah, this is a weird kid's game. I saw him like shooting like chocolate bars and, you know, there's the, you know, the, the food like boss level, you know, and stuff like that. And it just, it all looks very weird to a lot of people. And so I have to wonder if you don't, if you haven't looked into it very much, I almost wonder if that art style wouldn't be off putting to some people, not for the style itself, but just in that it gives them the wrong impression of what this game is. Yeah, I think you're right, because it was off-putting to me. For someone who didn't see any video footage, all I saw was just the still frame of the game, and that did not draw my interest at all. But after playing it, I can really appreciate that animation style,

especially since you and I are old enough that we grew up watching a lot of hand-drawn animation. I don't know how you feel, but when I see the modern-day Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoons that are all completely CGI, it's just not the same. I don't like them as much. It doesn't mean it's worse, but it's just not what I grew up with. And so, obviously, these guys who worked on this game, the Moldenhauer brothers, they're around our age. They grew up watching those old school Looney Tunes and obviously wanted this game to be a tip to that. All right. So, I think this is what most people are going to care about the most. Let's talk a little bit about the gameplay. So this game is run-and-gun style, and there is also

a progression system with earning and swapping out weapons. So I thought we could first talk about some of the different types of levels. So I don't think I'm missing any, but I think there's four types. There are just straight up boss battles. There are the mausoleum fights, which we might have to talk about a little bit, the run and gun missions and air combat. Don't say it,

Paul, dude. What is that? Your frustrations with the air combat in this game, Josh? You could have just stopped at three, and it would have been fine. You know? Uh-huh. Maybe one option too many?

Oh, man. All right. We'll give our thoughts on the air combat missions. But yes, so I do like that they do have different stages, as much as I hate the air combat ones. They do a very good job because it does keep the game kind of fresh. And it is neat that you can just straight up the way that like so the way that the game works is there's like an overworld map, so to speak, where you can actually walk around without fighting anybody. And you can talk to like little characters that are on the map. And you just go up to these

like kind of random, well, they're not really random, I guess, but you go up to like a tent, like there's a circus kind of theme, right? On one world. So it's like, you can go up to a tent or you can go up to like a roller coaster, or you can go up to this like merry-go-round and you just walk up to it and you hit the button and that's the level, right? So then it'll put you in that level. And some of those are just a boss. Like, you don't have to run through a level to fight a boss. It's just, here's the boss fight. And then other levels, like you mentioned, are run and gun. So you are just constantly running from left to right,

trying to get through the level. And there's usually a smaller mini-boss at the end, or something that you have to shoot a few times to kind of get through and kill um the mausoleum levels are you know more like uh timing based like because there's like the jump one that i don't know how many different ones there are because you've made it further than i have but those are basically just timing like your your parries the the flags i don't know what they call it is a parry yeah they call it's, but it's not a traditional Perry. It's not a Perry, which is weird. That's why it's throwing me off.

And then there's the stupid, stupid, terrible, horrible butthead airplane levels. Yeah, so what is it? Like, after the first world that you beat, like, you meet somebody and they're like, oh, hey, I can give you an airplane

and that way you can fly to the next world and then of course you have to find an airplane boss and it's it's like it's fine i guess yeah the the air combat missions i found to be by far the most difficult and probably the least fun out of the bunch so So the one thing about Cuphead, like we've mentioned that it is a tough as nails, old school, tough game. But what it really comes down to is very precise timing, whether that's timing with your jumps or using your evade abilities or using the parry system. So in this game, there are constantly enemies and items being thrown at you in waves. They're coming behind you. They're in front of

you, top, bottom. And sometimes they have a pink outline. And what that means is you can jump on top of it and hit jump again, and then you parry that enemy. And so some levels are built entirely on using your timing to be able to parry things. And if you are off by the tiniest bit in some of these fights, it will be the difference between beating that level or dying early. It requires a lot of playing the same levels over and over to learn the patterns, to learn the tips and the hints of what's going to happen when, and then being able to time everything properly. And it can be rather frustrating, especially with air combat, because the game is continually pushing you forward. In the run and gun levels, it's more like playing Mario. You decide when to move

forward and when the screen progresses, but the air combat, you're constantly evading. And I think that timing is even more hard. It just throws me off too, because you go from like being cuphead and getting used to like your characters, you know, movements, right? Like, because when you're cuphead, you can dash, right? And that's how you avoid, you can avoid some damage and you can kind of, you know, oh, I'm about to get shot and you can dash a certain direction or something like that. And then in the airplane, you can dash, but it's a completely like different animation. And so it's like where I was very good at dashing as Cuphead, like on the ground levels, I would

always forget to dash in the airplane because it's more just up and down, up and down, up and down, like flying around the screen, you know, flying forward. Oh, there's something coming. I got to fly backwards. But then, you know, they do this game's like terrible, right? Because they'll shoot something at you. So you dodge it and then it hits the back of the screen and that will break and ricochet back forward. You know what I mean? i mean so it's like yeah it's like you said there's stuff like every direction every which way you think you dodged a bullet and then that bullet breaks into three bullets and comes flying back at you um but yeah i i'm not a fan of the airplane levels i do like that they do add variety to the game so in that sense, they're great, but they're just hard, man.

Yes, absolutely. I think the air combat missions are just the least like the others, because the other three all feel very similar. And then the air combat is just a little bit of, why are we doing this? I love watching a lot of cooking shows, and a lot of times the critics always say, okay, you gave us a trio of something. Well, now I have three things that I can potentially complain about. And in this case, it's definitely the air combat, at least for you and me. Then we jumped into multiplayer and it was on what I think was probably the second hardest level in the whole game. It was. And when you try to do it multiplayer, it's just even more difficult. And I mean, I guess we could talk a little bit about the multiplayer aspect now. Do you feel like this is a true multiplayer game?

How do you feel about it? I don't really. I mean, it is a phenomenal couch co-op game. You know what I mean? If you have a big TV and I'm assuming this game is available on all the consoles, but it's just... If you've got somebody that you can plop on the couch on your 65-inch TV and play this game with, it's an absolute blast over PC. You, you kind of have to finagle a little bit to get multiplayer to work. Well, we played through the, uh, steam sharing remote play. Um, and it works just fine if there's not any lag, but in a game like cuphead,

even a half second of lag, you're, you're toast. You know what I mean? So it's like, this is not one of the games that lends itself well to having internet issues, because you will die and you will rage. Yeah. Well, and not only that, there is just so much clutter on the screen at all times that I found it difficult to follow which character was me. Because what I learned in this game rather early on is that you do not look at your character. You have to be paying attention to everything on the outskirts. And that way you can time your jumps and your dodges and all of that. And so when you're not directly looking at your character and you're looking around and now all of a sudden you're trying to dodge. I was having trouble immediately telling which one was you and which

was me. And I found it to be much easier to play solo. It's very true. Which is a little bit of a bummer because I think this game is great, but I find it very difficult to play multiplayer. It is difficult multiplayer. And that's, you hit the nail on the head right there. It is just having another character on the screen, because there is so much going on on the screen at any given moment that one more moving object, which is your buddy on the screen is so distracting and so much harder. It really is like, because you know, you're dodging things so inevitably your two characters will be overlapped and then you know you run forward a half inch and my brain goes oh i'm forward a half inch and then it's like and then you get shot you know and you lose a health or

whatever yeah it's it's a heck of a lot harder to play multiplayer i mean it is fun like i said i think it's just it needs to be like this is one of those couch co-op games on a shared TV, like sitting side by side kind of thing. Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. And one of the other difficulties is that when you parry something, the screen freezes for about a quarter second. But that is long enough that if I'm trying to do a precise jump while you parry something, it's totally going to throw off my timing. And so it just, it weirdly does not lend well to multiplayer, even though it very easily could. I almost feel like if they tweaked things to make it multiplayer, it would be fine. But the way it currently is, it definitely plays better solo. Yeah, for sure. All right. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about are the different weapons, because I think this is probably the funnest thing to tinker with in the game.

So in Cuphead, whenever you do a run and gun level, there are five coins that are dispersed throughout the levels. Sometimes it's very obvious where they are. Sometimes they're a little bit more hidden. It kind of reminds me of like hidden objects in Super Mario World on Super Nintendo. Yeah, trying to get all the stars or something. It's not required by any means. No, but if you do unlock the coins and then beat the level, now you have that money that you can go spend at Pork Rind's shop. This big old

hefty pig who apparently has nothing to sell other than these potions and weapons in his shop. But let's talk about a little bit of the weapons. What are some of the options of what you can buy? So you start off with your little finger, you know, your little finger gun, right? I mean, I love that he looks like he's snapping at somebody who's just like repeatedly pointing at them, you know, but you know, he's giving them the old Fonzie like, Hey, and that's, you know, but so you start off with the pea shooter and that's just a single shot, rapid fire. And then you, as you get these coins and you go to the shop, you can unlock new, like new weapons, I guess. And some of them are neat. They're all very different which i

really like um like there's one that's like homing missiles so you shoot out these little green little like i don't know i'd say they're like leafs but i don't know they're like these little green arrows and they just swirl around and they home in on everything but they're very weak like they don't do much damage at all but it lets you focus on your character and then not really focus on, you know, trying to shoot the things that are in the levels. Um, and then I thought I would like that one.

And I feel like it's a good beginner weapon because again, it lets you really focus on your character, but I feel like it does such little damage that it's actually a detriment. It's pretty weak. Yeah. And so there's that one. Do you want to talk about the EX shots, or do you want to come back to that later? We can talk about it now if you want. So every weapon has what they call an EX shot. So you basically get a charged-up version of it,

and they're honestly pretty different than the weapon itself so the ex1 for the like the little homing missile one is like a leaf shield like like all i can think about is the leaf shield from megaman yes that's exactly what i was gonna say it is exactly the leaf shield from megaman when you kill leaf man and you get like the four leaves that swirl in a circle around your guy yep that's exactly what you get in cuphead yeah but the problem is is it doesn't protect you yeah it doesn't really do anything instead like i don't understand this one man it's like if it protected you it would be like great but instead it's like just this little spinning thing and it's like you don't want stuff to get close to you. So that was a little counterintuitive.

I didn't like that one very much. Um, and then my favorite, I'll let you talk about some of the other ones, but my favorite is the, uh, like the three way shot or the split shot. They call it.

Oh, the spread. Yeah. Yeah. So that one super fast. It's, it shoots very, very fast,

but it's also very short-ranged. So it kind of just makes this wall of death a few feet in front of you, and that's it, which is great. So it's super high damage if you get close to things, but that's also risk-reward, right? Because if you're close to stuff, chances are something's going to spit out or shoot out at you and you have less time to kind of dodge that. But that wound up being one of my favorite weapons. And then the EX shot for that is instead of like a wave of like a split shot going one direction, it shoots out like all eight directions. So it's very good if there's a lot of things on the screen to kind of clear those out. Yeah yeah so one funny thing about this game is that i never use any ex shots really oh i do because i just let them fully charge because then you can use a super which is then a completely separate

ability yeah so i legitimately don't even know what some of the EX shots are, because I just never even tried. So I did complete and finish Cuphead, and I never used the EX shot even once on spread. And I probably used that weapon for about two thirds of the game. Really? Which is kind of funny. Wow. Now, I did use it on accident with the chaser with the homing missiles for the leaf shield, but that was only on accident. Yeah, that's funny. So one of my favorite weapons is the roundabout. And that is a really neat one because it works kind of like a boomerang.

So you throw out these little rings and they go forward maybe half the screen, but then they go backward all the way off screen. So they actually run further behind you. And that's really interesting because in this game, you're doing so much running back and forth that what you do with the roundabout is you actually want to constantly throw it in the opposite direction, and then they'll fly and hit stuff behind you, which is really helpful if you have a boss chasing you and you're constantly running to the right, you're just throwing out these boomerangs and then they're flying behind you and hitting

the bosses. And I thought that was really clever. But there's also the lobber, which is really only useful in one or two levels where you're kind of lobbing out these little purple blobs that will fall more. So if you're fighting enemies below you, it's really good. And then there's also the charge shot, which is kind of known for being one of the easiest ways to beat bosses. You press and hold the button and then it releases a giant shot that does a ton of damage. And so you can actually run stuff down pretty quickly, except it only fires one little blob

at a time, which is not going to help you burn down ads. So a lot of Cuphead is learning these levels and what weapon types are going to work best and then swapping out your loadout and running it again and then seeing what works best. Yeah. Trial and error is huge in Cuphead to be honest. And you know, it's funny because like one of my favorite weapons is just the

default weapon. Like, believe it or not, the pea shooter is what you're used to. Like when you play shooter games, just that single like rapid fire shot where there's nothing complicated, there's nothing goofy about it. You know, it fires so fast that it feels like it does a lot of damage, even though I know there's other weapons that are higher DPS, I guess. But it's one of my favorites because it's like the good old trusty. It's nothing fancy. I know what's going to happen. I know it'll go from one end of the screen to the other.

I liked the roundabout. I think it's a really unique weapon but it it for me it added so much to the noise on the screen because you have like eight of those things bouncing around and flying around yeah exactly that it like i wound up just getting distracted it's like like watching butterflies man it's like oh look at oh i just got shot darn it it definitely does clutter the screen. Yeah, I definitely agree with you there. Now, on an unrelated note, I assume you played this on a controller? Oh, absolutely.

What kind of masochist would play this on mouse and keyboard? Yeah, I rank this one right with Rocket League, where you can play mouse and keyboard, but my goodness, you will not be able to perform well if you are. Yeah, if you're that crazy person, then don't be crazy anymore. Play with a controller. Yeah, this game's very much built for it. Great console game. It plays great on PC, of course, but I feel like this game probably lends better to consoles simply because it's definitely best with a controller, best couch co-op yeah probably the way to go so i think the only thing we really didn't mention a whole lot

about the gameplay before we'll move on is that you can also buy different charms so you have one charm slot so you have a regular dash where your character will shoot forward and then you can buy a smoke bomb so that'll actually make your character disappear and then reappear forward, which is very useful while dodging. Because if you try to dash through an enemy, the smoke will go through them. But if you don't have a smoke bomb, you're going to get hit and you're going to take damage to your HP. You can also have coffee, which will just continually build up your meter, so you don't have to shoot stuff as much. There's also where you can just have a bonus heart, but it slightly lowers your damage. So it is interesting in that you have these different charms, you have these different

weapons. You also have three different super abilities you can switch between. So one of them is just a giant beam that does a ton of damage, or you can turn invisible, invincible, sorry, invincible for a few seconds or another one where you separate body and soul and you have two versions that are fighting at the same time. And so I have a question for you, Josh. Oh, okay.

So this game has a story, right? Yeah. Does it have a system of progression and loot? Yeah. Oh, no. I know where you're going with this. You dirty rat. No, Cuphead is not an RPG. So if anyone didn't hear that episode from, I don't know, two or three weeks ago we defined an rpg as having a storyline and a system of progression and loot and that's exactly what cuphead has but this game is not an rpg absolutely maybe we need to redefine what an rpg is maybe just a little yeah i think i also

said you had to be on a quest and this game you are absolutely on a quest but And this game, you are absolutely on a quest. But no, this one is not an RPG. All right. And then were there any levels that you found particularly memorable? Any of that kind of stuck out? Because I know one thing, and not to steal your thunder, but I know at one point you said you kind of felt like a lot of the bosses were all, in some sense, kind of the same in a way. It's interesting because the fights, there is a variety of fights, but I don't know if this is one of the detriments to the art style or just the sheer number in the game. But it's weird because there's not too many boss fights that are like that super memorable fight. You know what I mean? Like a lot of other games.

Like Dark Souls, right? I love Dark Souls games. But it's like you remember that super tough boss. Like Ornstein and Smough, right? It's like, oh, I'll still remember that fight. Whereas Cuphead, there's just so many bosses, man. It's not like you fight four bosses and that's it. There's 20 bosses, maybe? Something like that's it. There's 20 bosses, maybe?

Something like that, yeah. There's a huge number. And because you can just walk up and fight a boss at any given moment, you know what I mean, without having to go through a level or anything, they just tend to blur together to me. I do remember the Carnation guy, the Carny Carnation or whatever he is, where it's like, you're fighting a flower. Oh yeah. You know? And it's like, wait, I'm about to beat up this flower guy.

Like what's going on there? Well, and he starts off with this big smile and looks all cute. And then all of a sudden he gets like the pointed nose and the thorns come out. And yeah, he starts chucking stuff at you. Yeah. And I mean,

you know, so there's him. I mean, one of the first bosses is a potato. It's like bosses is a potato potato and then he turns into a carrot and then, you know, root vegetables. Yeah.

I mean, you know, it should be said that in these boss fights, there's always like progression or phases in these boss fights. Like that's one of the things where it's like, you know, trial and error, right?

You're going to die 50 times while you're trying these bosses because you'll fight phase one and then phase two will come along and you'll get wrecked. And then you'll die 800 more times before you make phase three. I don't know, man. For me, I think the

first airplane boss, which was the... It's like the lady. She, you know, she's like peddling a bicycle. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's the one with the big half moon at the end where it's like the last phase is the

big half moon. I don't remember the boss's name either. Yeah. But where you've got the UFOs coming up, shooting out the beams vertically, and then they're in the half moon at the end. That's exactly it. Like that one was memorable to me because I think it was the first airplane level, which when you first get to that, you're like,

ooh, this is going to be neat. And then you realize very quickly that the airplane levels suck. But yeah, I don't know. What about you, Mr. I beat the whole game? Is the devil fight the... Yeah. Is that the crowning... The devil fight is fun.

Not terribly memorable. Although I did find it hilarious that you are constantly shooting him in the eyes. I don't know who thought in this final battle you have to shoot the devil in the eyes. He's got these big giant eyes, which I thought was funny, and he has three distinct parts that you have to shoot and destroy. And depending on what you choose to destroy first, then it changes all the mechanics of the game. And I think that was the level I was on the most. It probably took me a good two or three play sessions of playing for like 20 to 30 minutes because i can't play this game for hours on end it's it's good in short doses and so it took me like a day and a half where i did like two or three play sessions to beat it that one was really tough but i think my biggest complaint was the dice king so the dice king is the to last boss, but what happens is you have to

fight three mini bosses before you fight him. And the entire fight is maybe eight minutes. And the problem is that you learn the first fight, well, that's like a two minute fight. So now I'm working on progression on fight two. So now it's like four minutes for every run. And so pretty soon I have to play eight minutes just to get to the Dice King. And now I'm starting to learn where I'm going to die in the first eight seconds. Okay, well now I know these cards come out and I have to parry them and time it. And so I found myself getting more frustrated because I would waste eight minutes of the easy content that I already have down just to learn the new stuff. But that fight was memorable for a negative reason for me.

I'll say this. One of the things that this game does very, very well and that I really like is that when you're doing these boss fights or any level for that matter when you die it shows you how close you were to the end of the level yeah and so i love that aspect because it like you know you're gonna die a hundred times right but it's like you get to see how close you were to actually beating that boss and the worst thing ever is you know they use like a flag a flag system to say hey here's phase one here's phase two and then here's the end and your guy is like touching the finish line like the last part and you're like dude i died like if i could have just shot him like three more times man like are you kidding me and so never mind that system's terrible i hate it i hopped on reddit after i

beat the game and i just sorted as the top posts of all time and one guy posted where it literally says knockout and you died at the same time no he died he didn't get oh he didn't get credit oh no and i was like oh that poor guy that would be the worst. That would be terrible. Yeah. All right, so just a couple last things, and then we'll move on to the community reviews. First of all, did you know that they are developing a show for this on Netflix? A Cuphead show?

If you search for Cuphead on Netflix, it'll pop up with a screen saying coming soon, and they are making it for kids, and it's going to have built-in humor for adults. But yeah, they're actually turning Cuphead into an animated series. I don't know about that, man. That's just kind of weird. Is there enough story?

He's an interesting character because he's, let's be honest, he's a cup. Exactly. But it's like, is he interesting enough that this is lending itself to an actual series? Like, I don't know about that. Yeah, it's not like they're drawing from a whole lot of deep lore in Cuphead. Cuphead does not focus on story. There is a thread of story in this game. It's really just about the boss fights. But yeah, they're actually making a Netflix show, which I thought was funny.

And then also, did you know that you can pass all the run and gun missions without firing your gun and you will be rewarded with a pacifist flag on each of those missions? No! I had no idea until after I beat it. Is there not? Because I thought there's like little guys like I... There's the one where it's like the carnival, but I thought you had to shoot something at the end. Can you just sit there and dodge it until the level's over?

You can pop like your invincibility super and run past it, and then you'll run over the finish line. Really? So you can go back and play all of the running guns and earn the pacifist flags which is hilarious i've watched those videos and it looks rough like some of those would be very difficult to do yeah but i they don't they don't really tell you that in the game they hint at it where one guy says oh i see you've learned the way of

a pacifist but they don't totally explain but if you get all the pacifist flags, then you can unlock black and white mode. So then it's really old school 30s cartoon style, which is kind of funny. Yeah, I'll take things I will never do for a thousand, Paul. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. And then the last question that I have for you here in this part of the show bomb where you're actually invulnerable during your dash. So most people will go with the extra hit point because it's kind of like an extra life, right? But I found that I did much better if I used the invulnerable dash more than having that one extra hit point. But I mean, just be patient. You know, you will learn like there is a pattern to most levels and to most bosses and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, learn a dash is probably the number one thing for me. Yeah, I think that's a great tip. I think I kind of

mentioned it a little bit earlier, but paying attention to clues in the background will really help with boss fights. Like, I remember there's one level where there's a ship, and at random, they'll fire cannonballs across the bottom. And I was so focused on looking at my guy that I never noticed when cannonballs were coming. And then all of a sudden, I realized, oh, the ship actually takes a big, deep breath. And then all of a sudden I realized, oh, the ship actually takes a big deep breath. And then all of a sudden the cannonball comes out. So, okay, well now I know I have to look at the ship. And then every once in a while they would pull in a shark and you'd have to run all the way to the right to evade the shark. Well, you can actually see the shark swimming in the background. So I realized, oh, this is that kind of game where you just have

to pay attention to these little details. And then the more you pay attention to everything on the screen, the easier you'll find those fights to be. Yeah, that's like the Beppy the Clown one. Like there's a roller coaster with spikes on it that comes and kind of travels across the bottom of the level. And it's, yeah, right. It's terrible. But you can actually see the roller coaster going up the hill in the background so that you know it's actually about to come so that's another thing yeah there's a ton of like

context clues to all the fights and once you start to realize those it definitely does help a lot all right well it's that time of the show you guys heard what we think josh you got a couple steam reviews for us from the community i do yep um boy there's uh almost all of the negative reviews on this focus on one thing um and you'll you'll kind of pick that up here real quick but this one here this this one's a little bit longer so i'm going to read it first so this is a positive review um and it says thanks to this game i hate, and there's a list, frogs, slime balls, running gun levels, zeppelins, clowns, candy people, birds, running gun levels, dragons, bees, pirates and pirate ships, dice, and nudist devils. You know what? The bees.

I hated the bees level. That was a tough one also. So I'm with that guy. The bees. And then, so, here's a, this is just a short and sweet negative. Game made me get big angry and break my keyboard. I hate it here. Okay, so number one,

the reason you hate this game is because you were playing it with a keyboard. Yeah, that is, yeah. Unless he's throwing the controller and then breaking the keyboard. I don't know why he with a keyboard. Yeah, that is... Yeah, unless he's throwing the controller and then breaking the keyboard. I don't know why he's breaking it. Yeah. All right, so positive.

I've never had more fun losing at something. Okay. Because this game... Yeah, that's fair. I mean, honestly, it's so stinking hard that you're going to die. This is not the kind of game where if you don't like difficult games, don't buy Cuphead. If you don't like difficult games, this is not the game for you.

But yeah, it's true. It is. I mean, it's a lot of fun, but you're going to die. There's even a well in the game that you can walk up to, and it will tell you how many total times you've died. Yeah. So the game is designed that way. It's almost a badge of honor if you die like a thousand times while beating this game.

Yeah. So this one actually made me laugh. It's a positive review. What I thought I was buying. A 1930s family cartoon fun time. What I actually bought. Freaking Dark Souls 4. A lot of the reviews equated this game to dark souls for its difficulty level and yeah a lot

of people are just equating this to dark souls 4 oh how funny despite being nothing like it mechanically but sharing that difficulty oh absolutely yeah you can't you've got to be okay with dying like repeatedly and then losing your progress. Like you have to go back to the beginning of the level or wherever, uh, for that one. Uh, this one was funny because you, I wasn't going to read this one,

but since you said it, so at the start of every level, uh, the boss fight, there's an announcer that kind of announces like, you know, Hey, this is,

it's going to be a big fight. So yeah, this is the announcer by the way. Yeah. This one goes, uh, this is a positive one. This match will get red hot!

Go! Dies 12 seconds later. That's a good point, yeah. Not so much a red hot fight. Yeah. And then, you know, that's enough. Honestly, like I said, the majority of negative reviews were this game's too hard. Like, you know, there was a thousand negative reviews where this game's too hard. There was a thousand negative reviews where, this game's too hard, I died a whole bunch, I refunded it because I couldn't beat any of the levels.

It's just the nature of the game. That's what some of the community thought, Paul. Now it's our turn, buddy, to guess. Yeah, so we always play this game of who can be more accurate in guessing what percentage of scores are positive on Steam. I wrote my guess down before I pulled the Steam review, because if you see overwhelmingly positive, that kind of gives you a hint. So I wrote down 92%. I know the game's very beloved. I'm now thinking I probably went a little low, but I went 92%. Oh, really? See, I went lower than that. I know this game is very well received,

but it's so difficult that I thought that it was going to lend itself to a lot of people that are like, I bought it. It's too hard for me. I hate it. Don't buy this game. So I went 89%. Okay. And what's that? The actual percentage is 95% overwhelmingly positive on steam. So you win once again,

a more fair, sweet victory. Yeah. I mean, it's great. It's a great game. I mean, it's 95% on steam is no joke, dude. That's in the

upper echelon of games. And that says something about Cuphead for sure. The only thing, the only caution that I'll give is that you have to know what you're getting into. And you have to know that this is a difficult game where you will die a lot but it is such a well put together game yeah absolutely i feel like out of all the difficult platform type games like this this one i think leaves the biggest impression because i love super meat boy i love celeste but i think in 10 years i'm gonna remember Cuphead much clearer than I will the others because all of it just works together so well. The graphics, the sound, the gameplay, all of that.

Yeah. Well, Paul, you won again. So we're just going to start calling this your segment. This is the Paul make love make love marry or murder segment all right should we hit that music oh play that sweet music paul get everybody in the mood hey there baby if i could rearrange the alphabet i'd put you and I together. All right, welcome to Make, Love, Marry, or Murder. This is where Josh and I decide how we want to rate this game. And I think I'm going to let you go first, Josh.

Do you want to make love, marry, or murder? I know you're not going to marry. I'm not going to marry Cuphead, but I'm also not going to murder Cuphead either. It's a straight up make love for me. Cuphead is a game that is a ton of fun for eight hours. In my opinion, unless you're one of those people that wants to beat everything on expert mode, 100% achievements, all that stuff. You mentioned the pacifist thing. That is 1000% not

me. There is no chance in this world that I will ever even attempt that but I get that there's some people that really want to just kind of completely beat a game and hey power to you if that's you but this is the like the definition of like make love for me it's a ton of fun for a little while but then it's not a game that you're going to pick up later on for replayability reasons. And if you buy this game knowing what you're getting into, then I don't think you're going to want to murder it because you know you're getting into a difficult game. So I think make love all day. I'm very much with you on that one. I really enjoyed playing this game most of the time. I found it to be incredibly frustrating

at times, but it was really only two, maybe three levels. I will say this game is rather short. Like you spend a fair amount of time playing it because of all the deaths. But honestly, when you beat a level, it's two minutes, like on average, maybe a little bit shorter. And when you add all of it up, maybe you'll get 20 hours out of this game, but it's actually kind of short. It is fun, but it's not always fun. I will say that I found the game to be in the beginning kind of neutral. Then I started really liking it. And then I got stuck on a level and thought, man, I'm going to have to power through this game just for the sake of the show. I'm really hating it. And then once I got past that

level, it got really fun again. And I kind of liked it a lot from that point on. So I do think that it is overall a make love game. I think it is worth checking out. But you're not going to get 100 hours out of this game. For sure. There's no way you're going to get 100 hours out of this game for sure. There's no way you're going to get a long-term play out of this. It's the perfect game to have in your library because it's generally not like any other game in your library. When I'm tired of playing Rocket League and I need a break from Divinity because I've been playing that way too much lately, Cuphead's the kind of game where it's like, oh, you know what?

This is different than all my other games. Let me hop into Cuphead and play six minutes, and then I realize, oh man, I don't have the patience for this right now. But it's really fun. It's a good game to have because it's not like any other game that's probably in your library.

Yeah, and I would say it doesn't lend terribly well to replayability simply because once you learn the mechanics it's almost like muscle memory so if you pop back to an old level maybe you forget initially but as soon as you see it then you figure it out pretty quick so it's almost like riding a bike it's it's the discovery of learning those fights the first time where i think it's a lot more fun and magical and you lose that on multiple playthroughs. Yeah. All right. Well,

let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up. All right, Josh, I've got our leaderboard up here. And if you are a new listener to the show, basically we have a leaderboard currently of 37 games that we have covered. And despite them all being from radically different genres, we have decided to rank all of these against one another. So we have our top couple of games, which would be Overwatch, Apex Legends, Rocket League, Rust.

They go all the way down to the bottom, where we have the likes of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, despite sinking a thousand hours into that game. Man, it's so bad now. And then Sea of Thieves and Overcooked 2. Josh, I don't even know where to start looking at this. Here's the problem with this one. I've been thinking about,

we're going to get to the leaderboard segment soon. I've kind of been dreading it a little bit because I love the leaderboard, but here's the problem. Cuphead's a great game. In and of itself, it's a phenomenal video game. It's so well done in every aspect that it's hard to find a lot of fault with it.

But then from a multiplayer standpoint, because it does offer multiplayer, you know, and our leaderboard is multiplayer games. It's like I like my thought process is it's going to be way down there on the leaderboard because I don't think it lends itself really well to multiplayer. Yeah, it's very tough to gauge because this will definitely fall in that world of no pun intended rim world where it is a single player game. You can play it multiplayer, but it's not really when it shines its best like when i'm looking at our leaderboard i would much rather play cuphead solo than hop into a game of gtfo with you but we're not just ranking playing the solo experience it's the multiplayer

so i do think it's going to take a big hit i think it's going to sound like we're down on Cuphead, but we're really not. I think this has to go somewhere around 23-ish, like right around that RimWorld, GTFO, Phasmophobia, Payday 2 area. I think I would put it above Payday 2. It's just a matter of how far above. That's where I'm at. Yeah, I was in the 27, 28 range, to be honest. I kept looking at Fall Guys and going, would I rather play Fall Guys multiplayer or would I rather play Cuphead multiplayer? Oh, I'd rather play Cuphead. See, Cuphead's a better game by far. And that's the problem, right? Because it's like Fall Guys is a really good multiplayer game, but it's a terrible game.

Whereas Cuphead's a great game, but it's not very good multiplayer. I'm fine GTFO around there. I mean, multiplayer, I'd rather play GTFO all day, to be honest with you, because that game's a lot of fun with friends. You know, I would put Cuphead below that okay um do you want to put it above or below phasmophobia i think i'm gonna talk me into either i want to put it below we had so much fun with phasmophobia for a little while like i get the replay abilities not there and it got old really quick but yeah phasmophobia like i still play with my daughter and it's fun to just get scared and you know scream and stuff like that like i actually enjoy phasmophobia like i still play with my daughter and it's fun to just get

scared and you know scream and stuff like that like i actually enjoy phasmophobia from a multiplayer aspect um so i would put cuphead below that but i would put it above payday too okay i think that's fair i think cuphead is a far far better game than phasmophobia but from a multiplayer perspective i'm i'm with you right so let's go ahead and lock it in at number 25 below phasmophobia, but from a multiplayer perspective, I'm with you. So let's go ahead and lock it in at number 25, below Phasmophobia, above Payday, and then that'll push Fall Guys down a little further,

which is fine with me. My goal is we really need to push Valorant here out of the top 30, and we're getting closer. We only gotta push it down two more times and it'll be out of the top 30. Boy, it's funny to hear, like, remember when we put Val put valorant so low and it was still fairly new and everybody got mad because it was like valorant's like the new hotness and then now like nobody is cares about valorant anymore because unless you're a pro it was a little bit of a flash in the pan yeah but

yeah all right well that's all that we have for you guys here today for Cuphead. Hope you guys enjoyed the show. If you were curious to know what game we are going to be covering next two Mondays from now, Josh is already dancing. I will let you do the honors, my friend. What are we doing? I'm dancing because I've been playing this game so much lately. All right.

So you guys have heard me. I think I've talked about it the last three episodes. It's not a new game, but man, is this game just got its hooks in me right now. So Divinity Original Sin 2 is one of, and I'm still maintaining this, one of the best RPGs I have ever played. Like, hands down, it's there. But they made it fully multiplayer compatible to where you can play together and we have never played this multiplayer i have 147 hours in this game and like 50 of those are in the last week i have been just completely engrossed in this game again, and I am super, super excited and curious to see how it works in multiplayer. Yeah. And I'm going to warn you, Paul, that I have read a few little stories about how you can just 100% troll your people that you're playing with in this game.

I've heard this. Yeah. So I, I will promise some shenanigans, um, are going to happen. As someone who likes to read a lot of things in this game, I have no doubt that you're going to come mess with me when I'm in the middle of doing something in the game. I'm, I'm ready for it. Yeah. I know it's coming. Yes. But so it'll be interesting because it's an amazing role-playing game so i'm really really curious to see how that translates to actual multiplayer um it does actually have like a dungeon master like option to where you can fully generate like dnd campaigns that people can play in game like using the the engine. We will probably not get into that

just as a fair warning to everybody, but I can't wait to see how it actually winds up stacking up from a multiplayer aspect. Yeah, I'm very excited. It's been a while since we've played a really immersive multiplayer game, so I'm very excited to jump into that one, especially knowing that we can spend a ton of time in that game. So please go ahead and rate our show five stars, leave a review, please subscribe to the show, and then please hit us up on social media. You can find us everywhere at MultiplayerPod, and you can find us on YouTube at MultiplayerPodcast. And then also, if you would like to help support the show, as Josh and I mentioned, we don't get paid to do this show, but we do have some very generous Patreon supporters. So if you'd like to help support the show to make sure that we can keep releasing episodes every Monday and Thursday, you can find that at MultiplayerSquad.com.

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Alright. And just remember, Josh has to read every review no matter what it says, so take advantage of the emotes, the emotional inflections in those reviews, and Josh will read it. I've promised. I will read word for word. Everything that is written in the 200th review.

So, all right. See you guys on Thursday. See you guys. Well, if you want to, please, I'm going to reword that.

While clearing my throat. My sore throat's coming.