Cuphead VS the Fandom

hey guys it's good game cuphead is incredible for more than just its most every shot you'll and feel like a minor vicar if uh turley unique style makes it an instant breath of fresh air everyone seems to love cope head although it does have a few minor problems that bring it down from that this is going to be an extensive look a cup head and talking about its fandom because of this the video is going to be split into two separate parts the first reviewing the game itself and the second part reviewing the fandom among other things I was originally going to make these topics into two separate videos but instead I'll leave timestamps here so you can jump straight to the part that you're most interested in in short this is where we bully the game and this is where we bully children not yet you need to eat your greens before you get the pudding Cup head is extraordinary and it feels like we only got it by the skin of our teeth we made that by the skin of our teeth [Music] alright that was a bit hyperbolic but still cuphead is an amazing game you'll come for the style and most probably stay for the substance because I can safely say for the most part the gameplay of Cup head matches up with the gorgeously animated in homage to the downright hypnotically inducing animations of the 1930s the game originally began development in 2010 just to put in perspective how long ago that was raywilliamjohnson was the undeclared king of youtube and Bed Intruder was going viral [Music] now I know that seven years doesn't sound like a lot especially game development wise because a lot of games that are held as classics today took even longer to craft welcome to Team Fortress 2 after 9 years in development hopefully it will have been worth the wait but my point is games that continuously get delayed usually follow one of two roads firstly the path of Ascension where your game becomes an instant classic adore by many for its blend of atmosphere nonlinear storytelling and breaking conventions to bring something new to the table at this point all you have to be worried about is people saying your game is too good and saying it's overrated [Music] hey everyone it's your boy blended 95 here making video on why Bioshock suck you see these pipes clearly they stole these from Mario and these robots here clearly they stole it from the film wall-e thank you for watching and be sure to LIKE and subscribe for my gift card giveaway and secondly you have the path of blight a cold dark and miserable place where delayed games were crushed under the pressure of fluctuating budgets psychopathic producers and downsizing downsizing I have no problem with that I've been recommending downsizing since I first got here where's that guy holding puppy dog zero now cope head was slated for release in 2015 then pushed to 2016 and finally in 2017 were able to experience it in its full cope loving glory and we're gonna say her party came well I actually haven't even finished it you see that there's just one bus he's very hard alright so yeah I haven't played the full game yet here's a quick montage of me completing it is that it's not a human got some Pinocchio looking at okay - should I even carry on I'll carry on I'm gonna carry on alright let's just keep Phil whoa what is that what it's like a floating ass alright it just died I'm sure the wiki will give a very descriptive backstory they're shown too hard to dodge to be fair just keep moving yeah that weren't even that hard to dodge okay there was no indication you guys remember that really gay music video from a couple years ago showing like the Twitter bird basically destroying society and ruining lives this is that but we got this we got this okay we got this one in the chaff we got this ìiím a pirate living boy the CEO oh you have homosexual tendencies Wow okay all right mate we get it all right I need seven eyes I need seven eyes I cannot I mean the gay meant too hard you know you just got to kind of concentrate on your surroundings and then you'll be fine can you get dogs barking what are the Ducks do damage they're not even real they're dead targets this stationary talk like he done no of course you're not done right okay you're moving in the opposite direction oh it's time for the super how do I use the super there we go all right he's got like little flame embers throwing themselves towards me oh wow that was that was actually a really crap bus it's a shark that's a shark hot get back in the option [ __ ] is that is that is our dogfish that's dogfish that's not even a real that's a work of fiction but I'm looking for a 2 3 2 wait wait I got this calculus 3 2 3 what 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 wow that was that slab that was a really embarrassing attack move I should probably go words are nuts do the devil watched it okay you know what I kind of reacted a little bit though that wasn't even that bad that was yeah when to sail ago Oh riff Oh riff why am I even fine at this point [Music] yeah kill you Oh kill you okay stop doing that you're working just like throw myself in the ocean why the clouds moving towards him you know that was so scummy sir I have to say hey I hope you manage to parry four times in a row obey are so proud you could bust busted on your first let me let me let me just get rid of these things there we go that's another face holy jesus christ whoa you at nothing kid you ain't nothing you think you're something but you nothing you nothing you ain't no umm you at no man I am my own man I got no problems with you sir how far was like it's good actually it's beyond good it's amazing so much effort has been put into cuphead and when I mean ever I mean efforts not the lowercase version mind that's reserved for your mate Peter their honor ironically thinks the Kinect was the best choice Microsoft have ever made because that thing in our hands that thing that's evolved in our hands have got more and more complex and got more and more buttons actually has been the biggest barrier because what we want to create is a connection to our worlds and that's what I believe natal does what designers and what this industry does when the table will change the landscape of games that we play you know connective I'll be honest it was a disaster on Cup head is a game crafted by people who cared about their product the creator's carried in Chad Moulton Howe where my my saying that right Moira they care deeply about this game and took the steps to make sure that people were talking about it years after it was released when the first trailer for cuphead was released all the way back in 2015 it blew people away but some critics said the game simply just looked like a boss rush mode and back in 2015 yeah that's exactly what the game was gonna be the truth is that we started cuphead as a three-person team just working on the weekend with such a small team we knew to keep our scope small there were just a few bosses and a couple of weapons and everything was less insane after which the brothers remortgage both their houses putting themselves in the red in like a year and with the new capital they could expand the scope of their game now in comparison just think of all the game devs that made a Kickstarter fund their game then called it a day when the money started rolling in from what started as a fun bus rush game is now a much larger canvas sure the buses are still the main selling point of the game but there's so much more now running gun sections fighting an onslaught of smaller foes over world exploration packed full of shortcuts there are loads of secrets to be found and even characters to interact with in some much-needed downtime something studio MD HR could have never achieved without taking that massive risk putting their houses on the line and probably selling their soul to the devil you know I mean they probably did now although the game is a triumph especially in its visual Department I wouldn't call it a masterpiece because it's just not there's a fair few problems in this game that definitely drag it down but that's something I'll talk about later keep in mind I love cuphead it's an amazing game but if you're giving it a 10 out of 10 you're an idiot all right you are dumb stop it i J I feel that ten danger but in compared you players well cope heads I mean you could play smog man but the game's only local carp at the moment there's a way you can play a smoke man in single-player but then you'd have to call the game mocha man anyways the game takes place in inkwell Isle a world full of young cops old Kells and Satan makes sense right the two protagonists cuphead and mug man find themselves far from home and enter the devil's casino they find themselves on a winning streak at gambling getting the attention of the devil who makes them an offer win one more time and all the loot in the casino is theirs but if they fail the devil will take their soul honestly that's one of the worst punishments imaginable unable to escape a living hand and of course they take the devil's offer and foul miserably I mean or what happen if they didn't cup heads do deal with the devil because now we're rich and we're making player unknowns battlegrounds to the brothers plead for another option the devil sways saying that if they collect every soul contract in day to him the brothers may own a pardon basically he's the self-declared judge and he's offering these two legal immunity for helping him with the case it's kind of like Judge Dredd if it's not the to rush back to article who gives them a potion to buff up their vigor which also gives them the beginning firing type and then the brothers begin their journey on an epic quest to right wrongs by helping the devil anyway is it brothers or brother the NPCs are just as confused they always talk as the two of you are there even though I'm playing this on my own I guess everyone's just got double vision [Music] alternatively before beginning your quest you can up for the tutorial which is a real test of endurance it's like the seven-day survivor achievement from Dead Rising boy instead of seven days it's seven months or years where are my ink well-oiled the land where the game takes place is split up into four areas the first is a forest themed area with buses accompanying the theme like garden vegetables plants and animals you know I got no idea what this is but the boy throws a mean punch to be honest I've never liked boxing gloves every time I have a run-in with them they just bring me misery what is this looks like a boxing glove the first style reminds me of most opening worlds for platformers cheery and brights but in cope heads world it's even more deceptive than you'd find in most games as everything here is out to kill you except the onion he just cries a lot [Music] the second islands theme is more like a fare or carnival it has buses like clowns eggs on toast genies and Dragons she goes it's just dog sauce they the third Isle is more like a city with tall skyscrapers owned by bees theater players run by psychotic killers and a pirate living on the coastline you know the usual oh did I mention Medusa as well uh I'm The Iron Giant oh and majora's mask the only way to transition between each of these Isles is through the dye house where you meet king dies who gives you an update on your progress also just listen to that music this is just a level transition and you can feel how much effort that put into these areas alone with unique visuals music and an animated King dice to vote although one thing I found weird is how animated everything is in-game but during the very few cutscenes everything is a still image it kind of contradicts the point of having everything lively and animated but it's more of a nitpick than anything else the fourth and final island is less of an island more like a giant casino where you battle the devil's lackeys and then finally the big boy himself it's actually quite ironic that fighting the devil is probably the most normal thing about this game [Music] [Applause] and now the syrup is out the way I just want to make something clear Cup heads will kick your ass I've drawn a chart of this games difficulty and I'd say it's at least a hundred percent accurate you're gonna die in this game a lot and cope had his mechanics put in place to alleviate the horrible pain of failure and also to keep pushing you to make progress whether that's the progress bar being shown motivating you to get up again and tackle that bus because you were just so close the mocking message a bus gives you when you die giving you that thirst for revenge just to shut him up god I just or the fact each stage except this one is incredibly short being just a few minutes long so failure doesn't leave that lasting stain like an endurance boss fight every enemy every projectile every color of every enemy and every projectile has to be analyzed with pinpoint accuracy and this is where the animation comes in and how it works so perfectly with the game cop heads art style is heavily influenced by early 1900s cartoons such as Fleischer Studios Disney and Benton cartoons in their early days were a new spectacle something you'd go to see because it was something fairly new and everyone was talking about it and ironically nearly a hundred years later this same effect is applied to cop head there has never been anything like Cobb head style in a video game developed for this intention I mean sure there are other games out there like bendy using the classic early Disney style but cop head is totally disconnected from the horror genre where Bendis monsters have to be purposely contorted and horrific looking to scare the player kupets foes can move with vigor and vibe much like the cartoons of old used to both of these games are juxtapositions using the family-friendly Association of early cartoons in the art style but the actual game being either horror or straight of brutal in its difficulty either of which you wouldn't think of when seeing a 1930s animation and that is just genius cuphead capitalizes on an art style called rubber hosing this can be defined by characters constant flowing curves without hinged body parts parts of your body that simply can't bend but we've cuphead pretty much everything has an ebb and flow to it making the game world feel even more animated and alive and this is one of cup heads biggest strengths and that is the art style every single character and cup head is hand drawn I swear these guys were just on a quest to punish themselves and you know what it was toll worth it the payoff I mean not punishing yourself - boy I pulled up everything in this game just jumps out at you all of its animated in 24 frames a second you'd see in traditional animation meanwhile the game itself runs at a silky 60 it's this perfect bridge between old cartoons of the early 1900's and video game standards today keep in mind each boss has multiple attacks and multiple faces with their own sets of attacks meaning hundreds of frames and needed for each bus basically being an animator sucks everything just pups in this game especially the bosses making bombastic animations letting the player know if they're going to perform a telegraphed attack or moving to the next phase of their fight some of these moments are definitely better demonstrate than others though I know it's myself taking damage multiple times because even though I was safe from enemy damage I'd still get hit regardless you can clearly tell how much they cared about the visuals of the game also including all the little stuff as well when browsing the overworld map of the game you can tell what can be interacted with and what can't with bus areas sketched over multiple times to form a jiggling animation loop giving the area's clear definition from the rest of the watercolor painted background even at the end of the game after collecting all the soul contracts you have the choice of joining the devil a totally defunct choice that you know will undo all the progress you made to get here but the choice is still there by the way I did pick this option first and now it doesn't delete you save like some people are saying it just plays the credits with a sadder tone hammering that stupid choice you made then puts you right back outside the devil's house giving you another option to fight him and conclude the game proper it's just nice to see that the guys at studio mdh are putting all this effort into the smaller stuff that most people wouldn't even notice on their first run I mean look at this turtle for instance he's on the dark and most players would approach him from the left because it's the most simple and there's no point walking on a bridge that goes nowhere just to talk to the guy I tried going on his right side expecting him to look again on the left like he dropped his glasses or something but instead he acts turned his head to look at me even though I'm sure next to no players would approach him from this angle I hold of a second what was I talking about again oh yeah the difficulty unless you're some sort of game a god that refers to your PC as my battle station you're going to die in Cup heads a lot the game is comprised of three main stages running guns sections where you've run a gauntlet from start to finish fighting smaller foes and collecting coins the aforementioned boss fights and an aerial variant of said boss fight the running gun sections first they function much like running gun games of old like contra where the objective isn't necessarily to kill the enemies more just make it to the end of the stage some of the lay of rolling gun stages do have minibuses of sorts that you have to fight to proceed well have to with very large quotation marks as in these stages there's usually always a way to avoid every single enemy this is usually the hardest way to complete these levels and cuphead fully acknowledges that rewarding you with a p4 pacifist rank if you complete any of these stages without firing a shot one problem I have with these run and gun stages is the lack of flow or overall rhythm when playing these levels I never felt like I was making actual progress or fighting increasingly difficult enemies it felt very uncoordinated almost like the devs slept a bunch of random enemies together and said hey good luck man and getting that coveted pacifist rank for these levels usually ended up with me constantly retrying over and over hoping there was a hole in the enemy spawns this time and most of it I was using specific power-ups to choose the AI not to say I hated these stages they were incredibly enjoyable but I found a lot of the time I was dying at the midpoint of each stage whether difficulty would spontaneously peak and not near the end where you shouldn't find the most resistance this doesn't apply to the final running gun stage I always make it to the end and then get killed by one of those shrimps although these sections of the game can be fun they're definitely not the main focus of cuphead and I think the devs realized this as well making the boss fights vastly outnumbered the amount of run-and-gun levels it's probably better to visualize the rolling gun sections as side content to the game as I think we can all agree that if the game was mostly running on stages with the occasional bus fight maybe at the end of each aisle the game wouldn't get nearly as much praise thankfully that criticism about the run and gun stages doesn't really carry over to the bus fights in cuphead because these battles are outstanding each one has their own tone and atmosphere and I'm not just talking about the watercolour backdrops or the buses themselves I'm talking about the music hey when you enter a bus fight and that music slowly starts building up it's one of the best experiences you can have in this game they've put as much effort into crafting the music in this game as they have with the animation and it is truly stellar stuff forming this amazing cocktail of animation and music it all just blends together you can read the expressions on these guys faces and it's usually something along the lines of I want you dead except the onion he just cries again why you find him why he doesn't even fight back Iggy cries his tears attack you that's messed up man most of them definitely have this evil menacing appearance about them extremely fingers they've all dealt with the devil at one point or another the animation plays into their attacks but it's usually a double edged sword with some attacks being incredibly well telegraphed giving you ample time to prepare an evade to just this the aerial battles are similar by design but you just have a more open canvas these are usually reserved for larger buses that take up a huge amount of the screen in these sections moving around as much as possible is definitely you go to to surviving because you'll find many more projectiles to avoid here than anywhere else in the game you could also turn into a micro plane to fly around quicker and evade faster but the trade-off with this is your shots are about as effective as a poorly constructed hate video but I think Suggs and he thugs particles stuck in these arenas you have two kinds of firing types a barrage of missiles that does somewhat moderate damage and as a secondary you can drop bombs up as well these have an incredibly short range but do heavy damage if they make their target each of these also has a special move with the barrage of missiles turning into a giant Chomper that literally jumps through I mean look it's just eating him and the secondary attack dropping bombers fires a barrage of magnets that hold men on their opponents [ __ ] magnets how do they work as well as these two special attacks if you fill up every single card in the super meter you can unleash a mega attack with this you propel yourself as a gigantic bomb and if you make your target you recreate the fallout in truck war now you're probably wondering if cup head and mug man have any way to defend themselves some sort of Arsenal before talking strict weapons cup headers the ability to parry certain enemy attacks wow that's just like that other game you know the one that everyone keeps comparing into yeah you can parry by jumping up in the air and then hitting the jump button again cuphead straw turns into a hand and high-fives whatever he's trying to parry into oblivion at times both projectiles and enemies themselves can be parried this can be incredibly useful for screen clearing especially during bus fights when you can make the screen slightly less clawed by parrying one of the enemy projectiles keep in mind you can only parry pink objects so don't try to be a self-declared para guards because you'll die faster than the playerbase of lawbreakers Xbox fan boys getting really salty when you begin the game proper you're given this vigor I mean potion from Elder kettle just don't drink random liquid strangers give you this potion gives you your starring power the peace schewe your basic workhorse it has good range and decent damage to boot not the best of the pack abuse leaves it's your starting weapon but it has the most minor drawback of any further firing type you require your Special Attack for this weapon which you can fill by damaging baddies and also powering things you release a massive Hadouken in any direction for more damage each special use up one card and you can hold up to five now you can fill up all cards to unlock a super special move but I'll talk about that later to acquire any more weapons you'll need to visit the game shop pork rinds Emporium where you can buy more shot types as well as charms which I'll get into later no no no that kind of junk apart from your standard piece you earth that's not a joke by the way that's the actual name of the weapon you can purchase five additional firing types from pork rind chaser lubber round about spreads and charge chaser is by far the weakest dps firing mode in the entire game you fire discount mario stars that homed in on their target much like children to a rice come meal you can adopt a fire-and-forget technique with these as long as you're holding the firing button your shots should eventually connect with the target although what target you want to hear isn't always your choice which I found out the hard way this is definitely the firing type for helping people struggling with certain levels or bosses as you don't need to concentrate on hitting your enemies as much you can then dedicate your massive intelligence to platforming and avoiding enemy projectiles to further back this up the special attack of the chaser rounds forms a protective barrier around the player helping them to prevent taking further damage libraries up next and quite a weird ammo type you toss a large ball that bounces a couple feet before exploding the range of these is complete garbage but on the other hand these shots do above-average damage the special attack for these is just throwing a larger version that's it really I mean if it helps you could imagine their basketballs and your Fresh Prince of bel-air now let's take a trip down under mates because our next firing type is round about with this potion you're firing boomerangs at the baddies deal in average damage like an undercooked shrimp at the barbie but here's the catch mate if you're firing towards your shots or retreat faster than the Germans retreated from Stalingrad but if your fire backwards then your shots will fly towards your foes put you at a bit of a disadvantage but it is great for foes you gotta run away from so you can put the focus on platforming and the boomerangs can focus on the killing you know when I mean mate I'm never doing that again I'm so sorry and now for our final two shots and my personal favorites spreads and Church spreads works much like a shotgun nananana not that kind of shotgun you guys remember frag rounds from battlefield 3 before the patch [Applause] with spread you fire five triangles of death with every shot I'm much like a shotgun range is key the closer you are to an enemy the more damage will inflict and oh boy if you're at point-blank range the busses won't know what him your special attack for this is firing even larger triangles of death or while I like to call mega triangles in every single direction ensuring at least one enemy is gonna get impaled by these bad boys seriously with this firing type you won't be jumping around avoiding busses like the plague you'll be hugging them and obviously this works better with some enemies than others and this is why spread isn't particularly my first choice but my second so whenever I'm about to jump on a level I'll always put it in my backups lot as you can switch from one firing type to a secondary on the fly and now coop kin and Mugg gender allow me to present to you my first go-to firing type charge seriously charge shots kick-ass I genuinely don't think up heads devs understand how devastating this weapon is it's drawback is that firing it uncharged is about as effective as YouTube trying to speak to its creators we know you have a lot of questions about the subsidy on YouTube and we've decided to go straight to the source Zindzi is the park manager I'm but oh boy when you charge this baby it does immense damage here's a quick example of how effective it is I was stuck on the matchstick bus I died about 20 times just never able to kill the thing and then I switched to charge shots kill them first try now obviously charge shots aren't perfect during smaller waves of enemies most frequently found in the run and gun stages enemies usually die in one shot anyway so it's kind of a waste so what I usually do is combine spread and charge so I could dominate pretty much any playing field I don't know whether it was just my play style but once I had the combo of spread and charge I never felt the need to change up my shot types they all just seemed totally inferior compared to the raw damage charged shots and spread can do and I never felt that the charged up time or the limited range was a problem for me that moment when I beat matchstick with my charge shots after failing so many times with other firing modes was an amazing one like I put the final piece in a puzzle and I just wish I had more moments like that when a bus was decimating me over and over and switching to an ammo type I barely used gave me a massive upper hand during the fight not turning the bus into a cakewalk mind you but making you feel like you're having more of an impact than your last attempt as well as shot types pork rind also sells charms these are basically the game's perks sometimes even giving you unique attacks you can only equip one of these at any time Hart gives you an extra hit point of damage but reduces your overall damage output by 5% twin heart doubles the previous giving you two additional hit points meaning you can take up to five hits in the field before going down but your damage is reduced by 10% a lot of people refer to the hearts as the noob trap but honestly I don't see the problem with them if you're getting be over and over by a particular level or bus go ahead and use them even though you're you're a [ __ ] Coffee fills your super meter continuously but honestly I think it's easily the worst charm I mean just look at how slow that fills up three weeks later 2,000 years later [Music] you also have two charms that directly affect your periodontal II does a Perry for you when you jump and make contact with anything Perry able again I didn't find much use for this charm there was only two levels in the entire game where I found it useful The Phantom Express where the entire fight takes place on this platform you need to continuously move it by powering these valves to avoid enemy attacks and the King dice boss fight where you parry this dice to decide what part of the board should progress to I'll talk about him Leia the wedge stone charm is actually quite useful turning your parry attack into an axe meaning that most enemies can be parried even if they're not the usual pink this is most helpful if you need some airtime riding on enemies to avoid others below so I wouldn't really use this outside running gun stages as enemy projectiles still can't be parried making it pretty much useless on boss fights you can still technically use it on bosses but there's not really much point the damage is quite mine ooh and it'll usually end up with you taking a hit in return now we've got one more charm and this is easily the best of the lot the smoke bomb enhances your dash ability letting you go invisible during the - meaning that you can dash from one place to the next without taking any damage in-between this is without doubt the most overpowered charm and although it's great it makes all the other charms seem pretty much obsolete I mean would you want the ability to dash around like a ninja or an extra hit point ironically the smoke bomb is only useless when it can't be used like in the aerial battles so then you should just replace it with something else now initially I used the smoke bomb just to avoid enemy projectiles but the smoke - isn't just a smoke - it's a smoke teleport meaning you can actually bypass enemies entirely if you time it right seriously if you go onto any cuphead video on youtube I bet at least nine out of ten of the people playing the game will be using the smoke bomb it just makes all other charms obsolete which cell great but honestly it's kind of a problem because by having something so overpowered in the game you're bottlenecked into two choices purposely handicapping yourself by not using it or using it and making the game a hell of a lot easier I'm not saying I don't like the concept of the smoke bomb I think it's amazing but in this situation I have to criticize it for actually being too effective especially compared to the other charms I probably wouldn't even be complaining if there wasn't such a huge divide between the applicability of them [Music] perfect organism its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility I can't lie to you about your chances but you have my sympathies [Music] and finally the top of cop heads catalog of weapons we have the supers supers a special attacks that can be found throughout each world of cop heads they can't be bought from shops however you'll need to seek out these mausoleums and inside you'll have to stop ghosts from destroying this chalice if you didn't pick up already these ghosts invulnerable to damage because you know if you you can't kill ghosts so the next best thing is to parry them into oblivion once all the ghosts are defeated the chalice will reward you with a super there are three different super rods who can acquire in the game energy beam invincibility and giant ghosts each of these can be used in game once you max out the super mere which means filling all five of these cards with energy beam you fire out all your milky goodness onto the enemy in a focus direct attack that deals a ton of damage invincibility which is my personal favorite grunts five seconds of invulnerable a five seconds doesn't sound like a lot but if you combine it with the spread firing modes you can hog your enemy carefree knowing you won't have to trade any damage just be sure to give yourself a second or two to get back somewhere safe because being greedy with this super can be very punishing you know get up get out the final super are giant ghosts I never really used to often I found it more cumbersome than other supers make sense it's the last one you unlock canonically but still I found it more trouble than it was worth when activated you form a buff boy ghost version of yourself that spins around dealing damage to anything it comes in contact with the problem is the ghost doesn't control itself you do it's controlled by the player if you move left the ghost moves left right makes the ghost go right and so on but let's say you move to the right and remain stationary the ghost won't stop it will keep moving until he disappears off screen where I assume Bill Murray catches him and this is really bad if say you're fighting a bus and you need to watch your footing so usually this ends up with you taking damage because you're essentially playing two characters at once your ghost also drops a heart at the end of its cycle which you can parry I thought this will give you an extra hit point back for all the trouble he's put you through but no it just slightly fills up your super bar plus half the time you actually can't get to this heart because it's too far away or an enemy's blocking it meaning you might have to take even more damage just to reach it for a slight increase to your super so it really boils down to are you gonna pick a character that spawns another character and you have to control said character while maintaining the safety of your original character then bringing that spawned character back to your original character just to fill up your super meter just a bit or are you gonna take five seconds of no damage this isn't even really a criticism it's more of a preference I'm sure that there are many players out there that have much better management than me and they can perform this juggling act but for me I'm happy with my five seconds of invulnerable a now although there are way too many bosses to speak about for this video I just want to talk about a few buses that really caught my attention dr. cohle's robot or as I like to call him the iron join there really isn't any boss like him in the game the concept of the fight is genius but it's executed quite poorly basically most buses in cuphead you shoot them to do damage moving on to the next stage until you finally knock him out with this guy you have three possible areas to attack him and destroying each progresses the fight in a unique way destroying his laser he starts firing not some bolts are his mouth destroy his chest and he'll start using his hands to either hit you or pull him towards you with a magnet and lastly destroying his gut gets rid of the space invader looking asses and gives you black bums that home in towards you and also they have a massive explosion radius to boot it's a shame that when you get past this initial part of the boss fight it just devolves into dodging projectiles oh look at this guy he changes from a blue to a red crystal what does it do nothing I guess they tried to catch someone off it was colorblind yeah I don't know man oh okay I'm about to put on these glasses first time [Music] [Music] some of the more grim matchstick is another fantastic bus but definitely more style of a substance this is the first bus you fight canonically on moving platforms where there's no ground below and this brings an extra level of difficulty into the game some of that difficulty is straight-up unfair but that's something I'll talk about later on going from chasing him and beating the hunter for him to pull a complete 180 chasing you making you the Haunted is just great not to mention when he enters his final stage just when you think you've killed him waiting for that knockout prompt to appear on screen then he just grows stronger with the background taking a tonal shift as well it's great stuff I'm probably over reading this fight a bit too much but I do have this bus engrained into my head as I'm sure it's the one I died the most - giving me that special love-hate relationship towards him one problem I had with this fight was the fireball attack on its final stage unlike most projectiles you can actually fire at this thing destroying it split up into four separate shots but they can sometimes delay or not just register your hit at all meaning you destroy them but still take the damage calla Maria is also one to mention her fight is varied with a lot of cool mechanics she has a tendency to indirectly damage the player using the environment to her advantage in this case the ocean itself goes over she gives good luck for example when she has a group of eels gang up on you she'll never actually attack the player but instead use a Medusa like stone freezing ability making the player unable to move for a few seconds this could be circumvented by mashing the buttons to free yourself sooner where did you say freeing yourself by mashing buttons there's a game that did that actually it's called out I really like this fight a lot of busses in general summon minions to attack Hubert Keller Maria trying to hinder you in a non damaging way is an interesting concept much like the magnet from junkyard jive and finally King dice can you all stop compare me to emplace it's not funny at this point this bus was definitely an experiment and I'm fairly happy with the results your port on a gambling table and King dice hands you would die that you have to parry to land on either one two or three looking at the board you have spaces where you fight bosses save spaces as well and start over each of the buses you fight here are accompanied by these beautiful backdrops changing as the fight goes on keep in mind these aren't really bus is more like bus juniors that's somewhere in between a natural bus and a mini bus they have somewhat similar health to a bus but their attacks are much more avoidable this is basically an endurance run trying to get to the end of the board to be King dice each of these boss battles including King dice and nothing of know seriously this fight is just parrying at the right time and even that can be cheesed but combining this entire collection of buses into one stage is fantastic keeping in mind if you die at any point on this board you've gotta start all the way over there's no checkpoints raising the tension and you finally feel like you're making that climb of progression the progression I talked about earlier and I wish the game had more moments like this when you finally beat the guy and you feel like you've just climbed a mountain you know when Samurai Jack finally killed a coup that's at least 75% of what this felt like to me oh you're probably wondering what I'm gonna bring up the devil's fight the climactic end of the game I'm not the boss is actually fairly underwhelming not a bad bus fight book it's basically a bar of chocolate someone's already taken a bite out of and it was probably King dice now if they switched it up and had King dice is the final boss they gave him his own fight and not just that single attack that he has this would have been a great send-off to the game the devil's boss fight is good more serviceable just not an amazing boss fight I like the fact that when you beat him halfway he'd do a cup out and transition you to another level where you're to fight a bigger form of himself but it really just boiled down to balancing on platforms avoiding mobs and shooting one of the biggest hit boxes in this entire game oh and plus you made him cry he's probably cuz you beat up that onion overall I love the bosses in this game some definitely work better than others though but I never felt two buses look the same they all bother and flare to the fight sure some enemies do have attack patterns that are extremely similar but that's worthy of a password each is so memorable and distinguished each of the boss battles can be played in one of two difficulties simple and regular simple is what the name suggests a simplified version of the boss fight it will usually skip an entire stage of the boss fight cutting the time to be in half I don't suggest playing the game through simple difficulty because you won't get the full experience and the game does actually cut you off near the end making you unable to complete the game unless you play the rest in at least regular I know a lot of people have complained about this as well it's essentially what they used to do in old games where you complete your part of the game on an easier difficulty and it refused to let you pass this is an incredibly common trope in old games I can see why people would complain but honestly I think you just gotta put your big-boy pants on and tackle it on regular you're getting the full experience there and you're gathering more knowledge as you play making the game more manageable as you progress it's got an incredibly steep learning curve hear me out but it'll definitely be worth your time and when you beat the game best the devil and burn all the soul contracts freeing or the inhabitants of inkwell oil you complete the game and also unlock expert difficulty mode bosses here move much faster sometimes they even have unique attack animations not seen before as previously playing through the game you could only get up to an a-rank which levels the game out to 100% I actually thought 100 percent was the highest rating you could get but then when I checked my data screen and saw that I was over a hundred percent I realized why I had to do it's really nice that even though you complete the game there's still more stuff to do pushing those completionists to their capacity well listen ma I've got all the achievements in Dark Souls 3 and the orange box that though they're the only two games I need 100% alright now although I love cuphead to bits there is something I wanted to talk about something dark unspeakable the ahran chief system straight-up cop head has a horrible orangey system this essentially means their enemy placement enemy attacks and even the platform's you balance yourself on are pretty much random sure there's some consistency you're not launching a Minecraft world and hoping for the idyllic world you dreamed of pretty much every game has orangey to some extent and that's totally fine it's a necessity in the video game industry in worms a timed explosive may or may not go off that's because of orangey sometimes an enemy may miss their shot on you that's because of orangey a bus may do one attack instead of another that's because of orangey on the soft side orangey changes at the playing field leaving you wondering what the next move will be but on the harder end it's black and white between you getting your attack or being killed as a rule of thumb usually the harder a game is the more polish and RNG system needs to be in a shooter where you can soak up damage like a sponge and health is either auto regenerating or close by orangey isn't as focused on because who cares if you can take a few shots when you could basically get the health back seconds later compare that to a game like yeah and I'm so sorry for doing this Dark Souls where death can be delivered in a single blow by RNG but because the developers are aware of this they focus so heavily on making sure it's as fair as possible even though it's random mostly by making attacks telegraphed so you know what attack is coming and what direction so first time players can see an attack coming and returning players know the exact attack and what time they need to dodge cuphead does not have a polished orangey system honestly it's pretty god-awful and easily the worst thing about this otherwise fantastic game one of the best examples of bad rng is the grim matchstick bus bowel as I mentioned before the battle takes place in the sky so instead of being on solid ground you jump around on clouds but clouds are made of dead YouTube channels the problem is the clouds follow a rule of R and G and this can lead to some points in the battle where clouds will spawn far away from the player or just stray off not spawn at all meaning in some scenarios you have to just straight-up take damage just to proceed this isn't just something you can sui under the rug IVA fairness is critical in a game like cuphead where you can only take three hits before dying or five if this is one of the worst examples but you can feel this wave ripple throughout the entire game sometimes you'll make it to the end of a level because an enemy didn't appear sometimes you won't because they did an orangy isn't just an after effect haunting the game's code it's been purposely manipulated by the devs Jimmy the gray is a bus you fight on the second island of the game this can be an easy or difficult fight depending entirely on RNG Jimmy opens up with one of three possible bus phases Haunted swords that are painfully easy to dodge Sphinx cats that are also fairly easy to avoid and then the curse chest this chest throws tons of treasure at you hard to avoid and sometimes not even being fair with its damage I was now worth grabbing what the [ __ ] was that now if all three of these opening attacks were similar in difficulty there wouldn't be a problem but they're not you have two easy opening attacks and then a difficult one this isn't the only boss either right next to Jimmy's arena is Baroness von bonbon but before you fight her and the diabetic child of Monster House you have to take on three out of four possible minibuses just to be able to fight her this can either be a jawbreaker candy corn waffle cupcake or a gumball machine the jawbreaker is painfully easy it follows you in a slow pattern making it easy to avoid on top of that the death animation is the longest by far giving you the most time to take a breather before the next stage the candy corn is a step up following a pattern of hugging the edges of the screen then transitioning in the middle all while spitting out smaller corn or as I like to call them candy children they flow up to the top of the screen again not too difficult but definitely requires more attention the waffle flies around quickly in a circular motion on top of that as well he'll explode sending eight pieces of waffle to each side of the screen a lot of attention is needed for these attacks the cupcake will jump and land leaving behind a wave of icing in either direction taking up a huge amount of the arena and finally the gumball machine even though he only takes up a small section of the area he spews out gumballs continuously needing your full attention as if any of these makes contact with you you'll take damage now the problem isn't with the bus's alone but the fact that they're subject to the RNG system meaning there is an equal chance that any of these mini buses will spawn at once in the three bus slots available before you take on baroness von bonbon and that isn't even the problem it's a good system that encourages replayability the problem is with every mini bus defeated the screen becomes more cluttered killed the jawbreaker well out comes the gumball machine and also tiny jellybeans because you just progressed in the next stage of the fight killed the gumball machine well here comes the waffle with more jellybeans and as well we'll throw in the Baroness herself firing at you where you wish you had the jawbreaker to fight now right it's actually reached the point where speedrunners cheese the game by reloading a level if they didn't get the opening stage they wanted restarting levels because they're fighting an early bus or difficult attack pattern too early now I know a lot of people are gonna say oh good but this isn't the case of learning the attacks even getting a better firing mode or charm with this bus you're a total victim to the RNG system and it can be easy or hard depending on total luck when I got the top Rank's on some buses and P for pacifist in the run and gun sections a lot of the time I didn't feel congratulated I just felt that I got off lucky that the algorithm was in my favor which really defeats the point of taking on such a high challenge now I just want to say again I love cuphead I think it's a very important game that should be remembered for years to come I know it kinda looks like I'm humbling the game right now of a very minor stuff but a lot of people seem to overlook these glaring flaws mainly because they're too busy focusing on the fantastic art style and music and hey buddy I totally agree with you the music is fantastic how I was listening to it while editing this video and the art style is reviving something old and bringing it into the new generation a move that I totally respect and ironically it's actually got me hooked on some thirty's cartoons right now but if a game has a problem it needs to be addressed no matter how amazing its presentation is copied as a character is incredibly responsive and for the most part every death felt like it was my own fault not the games and after beating the game I had this huge dumbass smile on my face because I wanted to go back and get the s ranks I want to master the game and all its buses and that hook of replayability is getting increasingly rare so if a cop had to drag me back is just astounding if you really want to enjoy cop head I'd suggest playing each level at least three times the first time to get an overall feel for the level or the boss the second to precisely learn every enemy's attack patterns or the buses attack patterns and third to not focus on surviving but the level itself how its animated and how the backgrounds contrasts with it I know I'm sounding like an arthouse boy right now but I didn't even realize how well these guys are animated until watching the footage back after recording because I was too busy focusing on surviving I was also pleasantly surprised to see the Unity logo at the end of the games credits like it was some kind of reverse joke hear me out the Unity engine is a great tool it's created games like super ha ha stone and Kerbal space program but because of its easy accessibility loads of people have opened up their own Chum buckets spewing out constant garbage the game isn't even theirs they'll just buy a bunch of random game assets and stick them in the game hoping to turn a profit and because of this reason unity has a lot of bad association towards it but it's really nice to see a game like compared rise from the rubble giving unity a lot of that much-needed respect back also after watching this video please go on to studio m da chars youtube channel and just look at the animation process for this game or even the music it'll make you empathize with the talent part into this game these people cared deeply about their craft [Music] cuphead is a great game I want to go back as soon as I finish this video to get those P ranks and those s ranks the game may not be accessible to everyone whether that's the difficulty or the RNG aspect but its style and art is something everyone's got to appreciate firsthand it'll kick your ass sometimes fair other times not but overall cuphead is worth your time now assuming this is a review you're probably wondering what number I'm gonna give it out of five at ten hundred oh here we go boys there's just so much game here to mess around with and enjoy and if you've ever been a fan that got burnt out in the franchise or finally looking to jump in for the first time there's no finer point than black ops 2 more call duty black ops 2 keep it at IGN [Music] now I know what you're thinking is the cuphead fandom worse than the Rick and Morty fandom there seems to be this trend of video games becoming extremely successful and its success usually cultivates a massive following and as we all know the larger the following the larger the sum of all of its parts and now cops owners seem to be a thing don't you just love people I mean that's fine again man you do you all I'm saying is if this art of it there's gonna be NSFW of it you know it at this point the fandom has a reach critical we're more talking about at Def Con to the nuclear fallout is probably coming but we're safe for the time being I turn my back we're going to DEFCON 1 bendy 5 dots of Freddy's and games even outside the jump-scare genre like undertale all seemed to fall into this chasm of bad fandoms never to be seen again much like any movement though it's not the actual majority bits garbage not these entire fan bases that are bad it's just how vocal the garbage minority are ironically the fandom itself is probably the least offensive part of Cup heads following the worst aspect is something much more evil the mainstream imagine a world where you couldn't finish a sentence without adding an emoji that my friends is the mainstream and from the mainstream that comes hype culture the ability to make a game popular and slam it down pretty much within the same day remember no man's sky how much hype that game got even though Sean Morey was more dishonest than patches will you be able to play with your friends yeah can you grief other players no even though no man's sky was a bad game or at least incredibly miss marketed and misled by Sean Murray the hype around the game bought it all the way up into the heavens with praise and obviously the main difference is here cuphead is actually a good competent game it wasn't miss marketed with a man telling fallacies every second sentence but hype culture as a whole has that ability to turn a bunch of adoring fans into people non-stop complaining about a game because they were blinded by its magnificence to begin with then slowly realizing the cracks the game has I do like this game cuphead just think it's a bit overrated alright I did give it a 10 out of 10 you see yes a glowing review on Steam saying it's the best game of our generation oh so now I'm going to give it a negative review because it led me astray you see or you do realize you are dense right the game lied to me blend it means he won't just rot another review are you actually honest about the games criticisms that would be dishonest by the way have you seen my cup so now her name's zhang quan tell the programmes a mug and cup going back to the review section this is why i was so critical of the game because a lot of people seem to be blinded by cup heads amazing art style of music ignoring the real problems with the game mechanically so I'll boil it down to the no man's sky effect with the amazing click of video game journalists rushing to my cockles saying there was Willie Kelly worth or maybe whatever we're using weasel sentences like some could have said or people have said you've probably noticed the little Dark Souls references I've sprinkled across this video that's because these same people compared Dark Souls to everything everything is the ex of Dark Souls Super Mario odyssey's the platformer Dark Souls b-movie is the movie of Dark Souls Dark Souls is the Dark Souls of Dark Souls to kill the monsters moving away from the external stuff the devs themselves can accidentally cast themselves into the exact same pit and that is called fan servicing games like phenom weren't ruined by the mainstream alone it was the negligence from the developers own part and negligence to change anything and just keep churning out the same stuff over and over to pander to the masses nothing's wrong with capitalizing on an itch hear me out pretty much every youtuber on this site that has a series title go viral well then try to replicate said title in future videos hoping to bring some consistent views to the channel but it's that haphazard attitude of just riding the wave without actually trying to control it it's an easy game to start but incredibly difficult to maintain as usually this narrative bridge where a game's story and overall universe is shaped other developers and when it crosses that bridge it stops being led by the developers and more by the fanbase which isn't a bad thing there are many games that would purposely vague law making the player base read into it and interpret it in their own way with breadcrumbs left around is either notes or audio recordings now thankfully cuphead doesn't have this narrative it's a simple game will you be buses and get to the end and the self-awareness the game has with this concept in its art style it's like you're playing a Saturday morning cartoon so thankfully I think this game is safe from channels trying to make mountains out of a molehill because that's really not the point of this game that should be left to games that want to be interpret they ask you to interpret them games that are vague on purpose cuphead is fun the characters have fun the gameplays from the whole game is fun it doesn't have this complex law or narrative there needs to be interpreted honestly cope ed is a whole experience it doesn't even really need a sequel even though it probably will because the amount of copies it sold the game has a beginning and it has an end it's incredibly conclusive and if you are more than that then there's more to explore and look around on the Isle I'm sure there's some ranks that you've missed we don't want to know the link between cup headed dark art guy he's gonna he's gonna know I don't want to go on a white knight rampage but in short form your own opinions experience the game for yourself if you think it's a great game power T if you think it's a bad game be vocal about your opinions but be sure you know what you're saying and you've done proper research but one thing is a fact studio mdh are put their heart and soul into this game and it is paid off and for that they have my full respect because these are clearly people that even though it was a painstaking process they enjoyed it nonetheless we want cuphead to age like a fine wine something to remember about video games and how style can stand out not Alex Jones going on about how cuphead is infected the minds of the youth even though that'd be pretty funny scanning manipulate scientific data stops take over blast control world government shut down infrastructure everything to China thank you for making it to the end of this video in all honesty it's probably about thirty of you as I'm sure half the people didn't even click on this video because they saw the length and the other half clicked off within the first minute because it wasn't about Jake Paul and if you're wondering about my mic quality I'm recording this segment with an xbox live headset I forgot to record an outro and I've packed my microwave so I thought I'd just whip this thing out because I really care about the quality of my content now you're probably wondering why I was gone for a month this is the longest time I haven't uploaded a lot of people have had their own game theories the majority of them saying that I am chronically depressed now although that may be true that isn't the reason why I haven't uploaded for the past month I've been incredibly busy and on top of that as well I've been kind of stuck in a creative rut this is what happened with my pets cut video I make content and then I get really bored of my content so at that point you've got one of two choices keep making the same content until it becomes even more redundant and you genuinely want to offer yourself or you take a step back take a breather and then come back with something new and fresh now I'm not saying this video is the second coming of Christ in fact there's probably a lot of things wrong with this video the pacing wasn't the best and I'm very sure I overcomplicated some parts of the game while completely neglecting other parts but please keep in mind this is my very first review of a game I have never reviewed a game in my entire life so with that being said I hope you enjoyed it I didn't want to just make a quick little AGN five minute review and then give it a 9 or 10 out of 10 at the end of the video I really wanted to dedicate this video looking into the game itself its mechanics and what I enjoyed and what I didn't a lot of this is thanks to chamois a very good friend of mine and he makes incredible game reviews that are also very depth definitely better than mine so if you enjoyed this video even just a little bit be sure to check out his channel as well they'll be a lot better paced they won't talk about weight I don't know I also spend a very small part of the video talking about the fandom and the external factors I wasn't even really going to include that part in the video but I felt like it needed to be said because game fandoms are always a constant topic thanks to the explosion of the Rick and Morty fandom and of course you've got video game journalists comparing everything to Dark Souls it physically hurts please stop doing that but yeah overall I hope you enjoyed the video I will be uploading again soon it's not gonna be a month gap don't worry I'm just kind of not sure what content to make at the moment I'm throwing this out there I've spent a good two weeks on it hoping that you guys enjoy it and it brings something new and if it's enjoyed to an extent I could definitely make content like this in the future because although this was definitely incredibly intensive and stressful to make I'm mostly happy with the end result and hopefully you are as well so yeah that's the end of the video I'm not sure how to conclude it so I'm just gonna read a Max Payne quote they were all gay before nobody shall we kiss goodnight for everything there at this point I've lift my finger that also stop comparing me to cater

Channel: Pyrocynical

Views: 8,236,028

Rating: 4.9263835 out of 5

Keywords: Cuphead, cuphead vs the fandom, Cuphead trailer, Cuphead Gameplay, Cuphead All Bosses, dark souls, cuphead review, cuphead analysis, cuphead critique, pyrocynical

Id: o-ZT-iVDU_Y

Length: 68min 44sec (4124 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 11 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Kuseltaja]

he actually made this video in a day but it took a month to upload because of his shit internet

[u/Pablinex]

Pyro back

[u/Jwrap]

Nothing against the memers, but may we discuss how well made this video was. In the past I've had issues with Pyro's differently toned videos(I.e. His videos on the content cops) because I felt his arguments were poorly constructed. However, in this video, they felt extremely well articulated and, ironically, despite this video being longer, felt barely repetitious. It didn't feel stretched for time nor forced for relevancy. However, my issues with it were(I'll correct where appropriate after locating timestamps):
- Despite having never played the game, it seems to me that both CupHead and MugMan are at risk of losing their souls to the devil, even in single player mode. This is why, despite both of them seemingly not being there, characters address them both Also, y'all can be used in the singular form. This was apparently a debated topic, not to a large degree, but debated nonetheless.I'm not sure why I thought I saw the word y'all.
- That Bull boss did indicate that it was about to attack. It's head jerked back, and it was distinct from it's general movement. It was more subtle and quicker than the tombstone, but was still there.

[u/trump_irl]

thank you daddy pyrocynical

[u/Daduch]

The great lesbian is alive baby!

[u/DoomProGamer]

I can finally rest in peace tonight

[u/[deleted]]

the lord has resurfaced

[u/Jwrap]

This is a good time to admit that the whole Mecca thing was a sham. I wanted to see how far we could go. A big thanks to all the people who caught on and supported the sham.

Also, minor complaint within the first minute but...why does the timestamp screen have 'The fandom' with a capital 'T', but 'the game' with a lowercase one? This in no way disregards video quality whatsoever, it was just something I wanted to mention.

[u/ShovelTem]

The fuck I was gone for like 2 months and now he he makes quality content