Let’s talk about rage games. Sometimes they’re called twitch or precision
platformers, like Super Meat Boy, 1001 Spikes or Wings of Vi, but they don’t have to be
platformers - Hotline Miami, Dark Souls or even many roguelikes could fit into this category. They’re not for everyone, but despite the
name of the genre, they’re some of my personal favorite types of games out there. The goal of a rage game is to have such high
difficulty that when the player finally conquers the challenge, the result is overwhelming
accomplishment. Often this means they’ll have to retry over
and over again learning patterns and perfecting their movement, but the key is making sure
the obstacles in your way are fair and that you have total control over your character. However, this might seem too repetitive or
require too much dedication for some, resulting in many just quitting along the way. Another genre I love is boss rush games - Furi
was one of my favorite titles last year, for much the same reason: extreme trial that
leads to elation when you triumph. So, when Cuphead finally came onto the scene,
a precision platformer combined with a boss rush game that has some of the most unbelievable
animation I’ve ever seen, you’d think it would have been a perfect 10/10 for me. Tutorial jokes aside, it is an incredibly
difficult game, but the unique art style drew in many players that weren’t used to this
type of challenge. So what we’re left with is a bunch of gamers
arguing about how hard is too hard, the pros and cons of difficulty settings, and my favorite,
the elitists assuming everyone complaining just isn’t good enough or worth the time
of day. But I’m not interested in those arguments
- what I want to focus on today is if Cuphead is successful at being a good rage game. Does the task leave you with a sense of satisfaction
where you go “wooo, I did it! What an awesome boss!”, or does it fall
flat where you find yourself saying “aw man, finally this boss is over”. Unfortunately for me, I ended up in the 2nd
camp more than I would have liked. I want to break down why this is, but I have
to give you a few disclaimers before we dive in: 1) this is just my opinion. I wish it was assumed by viewers that a creator’s
opinion is implied, but because of the analytical nature of my videos, some people take my word
as law, so know going in that if you enjoyed every single second of Cuphead that is perfectly
fine. This is why I’m going to try and be as detailed
as possible however, and hopefully show you rather than tell you why I felt the way I
did when playing Cuphead, to put some evidence behind my words. And 2) You gotta understand that when a particular
clip shows me messing up or dying to something that looks like it could have been avoided,
it’s a lot harder in the actual heat of battle to see and evade these things. If you analyze any footage of someone playing
a game, you’re gonna find lots of places where they could have dodged here, or been
more efficient there, but remember that they’re not going to be perfect. So when I mention a specific part of a boss
that I felt was frustrating, realize that hindsight is 20/20 and I probably notice my
mistakes when I look back at it too, but more importantly, it doesn’t change how I felt
when I was actually playing. In other words, cool it with the git gud stuff
and I’ll try to be as objective as possible, deal? Okay so, to be fair, Cuphead has a lot of
boss fights that are really stellar. The entire first world felt great, and Captain
Brineybeard and Grim Matchstick were some of my favorite encounters in the whole game. They also happened to be some of the ones
I struggled on the most, but every time the battles felt fair and winnable, I just needed
to put in the work and learn how to prevent getting hit the next time. In fact, after taking about an hour to finally
beat Grim Matchstick, I destroyed him first try when I streamed the game later that night. This is the foundation of a rage game - presenting
a seemingly insurmountable challenge, but then slowly mastering it with each new attempt. King Dice is a wonderful last marathon before
the final boss - each individual match is totally manageable and only has 1 or 2 patterns
to memorize, but the struggle comes from combining them all together in one shot. When I finally reached the end and realized
I had to battle King Dice himself, I was so furious, but in a good way. The duel achieves this because most of the
difficulty is put into your own hands - you decide which space to land on by parrying
the dice, so you can gain more health or take a break at the safe markers. And King Dice only has one set of attacks
as well. It’s all still challenging, but split up
into digestible chunks. The problem is, that not every boss feels
this way. A couple of key factors have easily changed
them from being motivationally punishing to purely aggravating. The first aspect isn’t a big one, but I
think it did add to the annoyance, and that’s the lack of visible health. Now Cuphead does technically have health bars,
but it only shows them to you after you die “WHAT? Are you kidding me? If I had known I was that close I would’ve
just powered through instead of hanging back, agh!” I think adding these in postmortem only serves
to raise your irritation, but if they had been present the entire fight, it probably
would have changed tactics completely and let you feel more in control. A huge reason games like Dark Souls thrive
is because you have to decide second to second what your next move is going to be. Whether you dodge and stay cautious, or move
in guns a blazin’ will depend on how much health the enemy has left, and it adds to
the satisfaction knowing that you masterminded the entire bout with the right moves at the
perfect times. Without knowing the boss’s health, you’re
often just shooting in the dark hoping that it’s enough to kill it, but then oh man,
nope guess that wasn’t enough. And then when you actually do best it, normally
it catches you off guard, minimizing that instant feeling of ecstasy. The difference is pretty apparent - “oh
man, one more hit okay okay, here we go aaaand, YES!” versus “uhh okay, what’s he doing,
how much more health does he have, c’mon, c'mon OH okay I guess I beat him then, alright”. This may not be true for everyone, but I know
for myself it felt like a combination of surprise and relief instead of gratification and accomplishment. Those may sound similar, but they actually
are worlds apart. Now what’s interesting is that other games
can still give you that feeling without a health bar. Volgarr the Viking is one of my all time favorite
games, and every time I conquered a boss I was ecstatic, but it doesn’t show you enemy
health...what’s the difference? Well I think a huge part is that there’s
almost nothing random in these encounters, everything is calculated and you can predict
what will happen next and respond accordingly. Cuphead has a lot of randomness, and I’m
talking about more than just which attack the boss decides to do next - that type of
randomness can be a good thing, causing the player to think on their feet. Entering a brand new fight and getting completely
whalloped is part of the fun, you learn patterns and overcome eventually. It felt satisfying to learn that you can avoid
Wally Warble’s colored eggs by simply going above or below them on the left side of the
screen, or that you can avoid damage from Phantom Train no matter where your trolly
car is during some of the phases. But the kind of randomness that Cuphead has
often leads to unavoidable damage or unpredictable deaths. Let me give you some examples:
When Beppi the Clown enters his horse riding phase he has a move where he shoots out horseshoes
in the middle of the screen in a straight line, but there’s also a roller coaster
that comes by on a fixed timer that you need to jump on and avoid passengers. Because of the random nature of when Beppi
will enter this attack and when the roller coaster will drive by, this can lead to getting
cornered and taking damage some of the time. Of course, you could just use the smoke bomb
powerup to dodge through them, but that’s not the point. What if I would rather use another charm instead? Every attack should be avoidable if the player
has enough skill. This just feels like bad luck with no way
to avoid it. Cala Maria has something very similar with
her last phase where she’ll launch out a green blast that’ll turn you to stone until
you mash enough buttons to break free. This move has very little telegraph and takes
place in a small winding shaft with spike walls and green bubbles floating by as well,
so more often than not you basically have to take the hit and pray that another obstacle
doesn’t show up in your way before you can move again. This is another great example of how it might
look like there’s something I could do to prevent this, but in the moment, it felt helpless
and caused many frustrating deaths at the very end of the fight. Even the final boss, The Devil, has a trick
like this - when he becomes a dragon and slithers on screen from either side, the demons in
the background will randomly enter from the left or right, but if they just happen to
walk in as you’re stuck in the corner because of the dragon attack, it can be near impossible
to avoid getting hit from them as they enter screen, you don’t have enough time to kill
them with this little room. Not to mention that these pillars in the foreground
impede your vision so you can’t see what’s happening at all. In fact, this is weird - it only happened
on the left side of the screen, but even when a demon isn’t present, I’ll still take
damage from seemingly nothing at all when The Devil does this attack. I would love to know what hit me but I can’t
see it. This also happens with Dr. Kahl’s Robot,
all the junk in the foreground makes it very difficult to see everything that can hit you
clearly, and when you have to avoid so many projectiles at once, this can feel extremely
defeating. On top of all this, there are many other situations
that while I COULD avoid them with enough practice or planning ahead, it still felt
limiting and thwarting in the moment, like the moving cloud platforms combined with the
flame kids jumping up at you during Grim Matchstick’s fight, they do have a telegraph and will leap
a certain way based on your position but depending on the cloud placement, a degree of this feels
out of your control, or during Rumor Honeybottom’s middle phase she will send magic triangles
or spheres at you, but again depending on how the platforms pan out, good luck! It’s important to point out that because
of the random nature of these factors, this doesn’t happen every single battle, but
over time it starts to wear down your morale and enthusiasm until you just hope to get
a better pattern next time. Lastly, some of the bosses in Cuphead simply
have too much going on at once. Every brawl other than the first one against
The Root Pack has multiple obstacles you need to look out for at the same time, which inherently
isn’t a bad thing. Captain Brineybeard at one point could have
the barrel at the top, the ship shooting cannonballs, dogfish jumping onto the dock and the pink
squid’s pellets coming at you, but all of these are predictable and avoidable with the
right timing and prep. On the other hand, scuffles like Dr Kahl’s
Robot have so many elements going at the same time it can get overwhelming really quickly
depending on which part of the body you take out first. 2 obstacles at the same time are perfectly
manageable, and even 3 can be alright some of the time, but Cuphead tends to pile it
on thick, especially for the final phases of a lot of bosses, which can be the most
disheartening because when you die you have to do the entire match over. It’s discouraging to do so well, then get
demolished by too much chaos in the final moments. Even worse, sometimes I felt like I should
just restart the fight on purpose if I take a dumb hit early on because I know I’ll
need the extra health to survive in the later stages. I should reinforce that not every boss in
Cuphead felt this way, and while it is obviously beatable, the feeling that it gives the
player is the important factor I’m focusing on here. And this is true of any game - if you stick
it out, of course you’ll be able to prevail eventually, but when the game will give you
scenarios that seem impossible some of the time, it can drastically halt a player’s
desire to want to finish it. But hey, I still enjoyed my time with Cuphead
overall, and the art style truly took my breath away - the polish in the animation is so apparent
and in my opinion it has joined the prestigious ranks of relatively short experiences that
are still worth every penny. I’m curious to know your impressions of
Cuphead - did you feel like the difficulty was satisfying? What impressed you most, and what are some
other ways you think it could have improved? Tell me in the comments below and let’s
talk about it. I hope you understand where I’m coming with
this video - the goal wasn’t to harp on Cuphead but rather analyze why the best rage
games of all time are held in such high regard, and look at what Cuphead could have done to
be considered one of them. But I hope designers will continue to think
outside the box and that we’ll see games in the future rise to the top and give us
some of the most gratifying challenges we’ve ever seen. I’ll see you guys next time, stay frosty
my friends! Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode,
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