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Cuphead

Started by Moribunderast, September 30, 2017, 11:16:11 AM

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Barry Admin

#30
Quote from: Shay Chaise on October 02, 2017, 09:43:11 PM
I played Contra 3 on the SNES yesterday and I was amazed at how similar, no, identical, Cuphead feels. Even the controls are exactly - exactly - the same. That's a good thing.

You're bang on, I saw it mentioned in their list of influences yesterday. This is an interesting read: http://studiomdhr.com/what-kind-of-game-is-cuphead/

And from their FAQ:

QuoteSome of the games that influenced our design choices are: Gunstar Heroes, Contra III, Contra Hard Corps, Super Mario World, Street Fighter III, Mega Man, and the Thunderforce series.

Edit: every time I load up, say, Floral Fury, I fall in love with it all over again just looking at that kind of muted watercolour style used for the backgrounds. It's remarkable. So incredibly accurate, evocative and awesome.

biggytitbo

The way you can stand and rotate your gun is very contra-esque, that's true, but the platforming levels feel most like a snazzy, fleischer-esque ghouls and ghosts to me, just constant dying but fun enough to keep you wanting one more try.

I like to have the title screen of this on my telly as a sort of screen saver, the music is very relaxing.

Hollow

Loving this little 'modern' masterpiece...I'm loving the difficulty...just like the old days.

I'm stuck on that one with the gravity shift on world 2...I refuse to drop down to simple...I'll do it.

BeardFaceMan

For the people loving the music, you can buy the soundtrack on bandcamp, it's over 3 hours long, all original music, all played with a full big band. This looks more like you're playing a cartoon than Dragon's Lair ever did, this looks fucking jaw-dropping, in a tongue-rolling-out-like-a-carpet and eyes-popping-out-on-stalks kinda way. I can see why it was delayed, the amount of work that's gone into the audio and visuals is incredible.

Shay Chaise

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 02, 2017, 11:36:23 PM
The way you can stand and rotate your gun is very contra-esque, that's true, but the platforming levels feel most like a snazzy, fleischer-esque ghouls and ghosts to me

I don't know why you have to be so Contra-ry all the time. I literally played Contra the same day and the controls not only feel exactly the same, they are exactly the same, and the developers said the same.

biggytitbo

Yeah i see that definetly more that the feel of the platforming levels is Ghouls and GHost esque to me anyway, as is the difficulty curve.

Shay Chaise

Absolute cunt of a game. I feel like it's mocking me with the music and the hateful grinning bastards all over the place. Fuck off am I ever listening to the soundtrack, I'll go fuckin postal. Hateful hateful game. Guantanamo gaming.

biggytitbo

Spent about 3 hrs trying to beat the forest follies level and keep dying on the floating platforms. This is rock hard 8-bit hell all right, but as a lot of people have pointed out its difficult but never feels unfair about it. Its got that great 'one more go' quality because it never feels impossibly hard, just very challenging.

Barry Admin

It would be shit as fuck if it wasn't bastard hard. Well, it may still be enjoyable and look and sound awesome, but yeah, I love the "one more go" feeling with games like this, and that you slowly learn and adapt to each stage. Much better than most games these days, where you're just mindlessly grinding to get to your next checkpoint.

Shay Chaise

Yeah, every go, you learn a bit more and make a bit more progress and I expect that once you've cracked a level or boss, it'll be really fun to sail through. Bit Dark Souls in that respect, or rather, Dark Souls was very successful in cribbing that design philosophy from 2D arcade gaming and incorporating it into a totally different genre.

Barry Admin

Yes, and Dark Souls brought back that tremendous feeling of loss and frustration to gaming, wrapped in an utterly ingenious risk and reward mechanic. Suddenly, exploration became tense and thrilling - you are keen to push forward and see what's next, in the search for that next blessed bonfire, but there's so much at stake... That's why I'm in no rush to finish Dark Souls 3, having those unexplored areas to venture into for the first time is something I utterly relish.

Anyway I love the design philosophy behind Cuphead, and am really glad they have different waves that can pop up, so it doesn't really just become a game of memory - you've always got to keep reacting, and stay on your toes at all times. That's awesome.

Barry Admin

Another thing I love is the amount of dexterity it takes to do well at this, it's made playing on an arcade stick even better. I'm sure the joypad works fine, but the dpads these days are always gash, and it's very comfortable and convenient to have all the buttons resting right under your fingers.

You're always holding fire, but then you've also got to jump, dash, do EX shots, and change weapons. Haven't used the lock feature yet, but I'm sure it will come in useful. Anyway yeah, it's manic; while jumping and dashing I'm also switching weapons quite frequently (finding the planes bombs pretty powerful btw), sometimes having to switch back and forth just for that particular weapons EX shot.

Still only have the smoke bomb and the three-way attachment (shotgun really), really need to get more coins, but the homing shots just seem a bit cheap, might leave those for a while.

To continue sounding like an old fart, one thing I really miss from my Quake days is the idea of having to switch weapons all the time to account for different ranges and situations. Call of Duty and other games dumbed that all down to fuck, making the standard now just basically a primary and a secondary, plus some gadgets. In Quake III you didn't have just one gun that suits all. Rather you had to learn and try to master a whole variety of weapons - and really understand their ranges - or you stood no chance. You had to know when the other guy was far enough that he needed to be sniped with a railgun. Then you had to predict his movement to try and put some slow-moving rockets where he was going to land. Then you'd think about where that rocket would bump him to, so you could maybe close the distance and hit him with the lightning gun, plasma or shottie. And the time to kill was a lot higher, so maybe he'd try to retreat, and you'd switch to your machine gun to try and ding him with some low-damage rapid-fire bullets that would hopefully finish him off before he got a health or armour pickup.  At the same time you had to master advanced movement mechanics like bunny-hopping, rocket jumping and circle strafing to traverse the maps in a way that was so fluid, creative and exciting that it's never really been matched.

Indeed, Blops 3 got kind of close with their "advanced movement", but that's all getting ditched now because a lot of gamers just want to retreat to a back to basics/boots on ground approach.

Well this was a bit of a divergence, so I'll finish by saying that Cuphead has instantly become one of the absolute undisputed games of the year for me, and I hope this level of creativity and passion inspires a lot of developers.

madhair60

It's so good I don't want to play it any more. I don't want to finish it.

Barry Admin

How many deaths you upto out of interest madhair? Think I'm around 400, haven't checked to see if it counts when you hit retry after a bad start.

One of the memories it's brought back to me from Contra, I think, is jumping with the three-way gun. You get close to eg the big plant fuck, but only two of your streams of bullets are hitting, the bottom ones miss. So I jump up and down on the spot, meaning that at the height of my jump the top stream will pass over, but it's worth it for that sweet spot mid-jump where you're hitting him with all three at once. I'm quite sure I remember doing that in the Contra games a lot.

madhair60

Not sure. I'd be surprised if it's over 100. I might have tipped it over with this fucking dragon.

biggytitbo

Wooo managed to finally make it to the 2nd island, although seems to be all boss fights on here unfortunetly.


Ohh interesting how the 2nd island bosses seem more randomised though...

Moribunderast

Quote from: madhair60 on October 04, 2017, 08:30:30 AM
Not sure. I'd be surprised if it's over 100. I might have tipped it over with this fucking dragon.

I haven't played in a couple days but this is the bastard I'm stuck on. Like with the Baroness (who I finally defeated) I can get to his last phase with little issue but once that kicks off I'm in trouble. The 2nd world boss fights basically boil down to learning the early patterns, training yourself to get to the last phase with minimal-to-no damage and then hoping for a near-perfect run in that final phase. It's so addictive and compelling and while I normally reach a point with bastard hard games where I give up due to frustration or resigning that I'll never progress beyond a certain point, this game just has the perfect ingredients to keep me pushing on with the belief that a perfect run may be just around the corner.

madhair60

Beat the dragon now. Third phase is cunt.

Tips: the flamethrower only ever goes to the middle, so stay high up. Don't shoot the bullets either.

brat-sampson

Just to give all you scrubs a boost, the speedrun record for this is now under 40m ;)

biggytitbo

Island 2 has broken me for now so I've given up, especially that UTTER BITCH in the candy level. It has the benefit of being the kind of game you can just pick up and play though, because it's segmented into lots of small bits, so I'll probably keep dipping in and out to try and edge a bit further, or just to have it on as a lovely screensaver.

biggytitbo

Apparently if you go down to the bottom right of the second world map screen and talk to the pool it tells you how many times you've died. I don't want to know, it'll be deporessing.

EFB

I'm finally on to isle 2!!!


I am bad at this, bit it's fun.

biggytitbo

Yes its depressing how bad I am at this, hearing people talk about how it took them 5-6 hours to finish when it took me longer than that to get to the 2nd island.

Moribunderast

I fear this game has broken me. Can't defeat the fucking dragon no matter how many times I try. Keep getting to the last phase, very close to beating it and then eating one too many fireballs. Veering away from fun frustrating to just being aggravating. Might have to take a long break. I still adore the game, I've just never been great at this level of difficulty when it comes to platforming and bullet-hell and I fear I've reached my limit in terms of levels I can actually beat. I'm tempted to go down to 'Simple' just to see more of the game but it feels like any sense of achievement would be lost or severely diluted by doing so. The candy Baroness took me ages to beat but it felt great when I got past her - I just want that feeling against this cunting dragon! And several bosses after that. I think I need to hire a Cuphead tutor...

madhair60

Dragon is piss hard. Stay on the top level as the flamethrower in its third form only comes out in the centre.

Moribunderast

Quote from: madhair60 on October 10, 2017, 01:10:09 PM
Dragon is piss hard. Stay on the top level as the flamethrower in its third form only comes out in the centre.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing, trying to take my time, avoid the fireballs and use charge shot whenever possible but I eventually get hit too many times. The thing is a bullet sponge! When I next jump in I might just focus on a different boss for a while but I keep getting so close to getting that dragon down so I'm encouraged to persist. Should refocus on the djinn battle - I'd gotten quite close to beating that one. The flying bird and rollercoaster levels seem nightmarish from my few early attempts.

EFB

I found the bird one quite easy, but that probably comes from years of r-type...

The rollercoaster and dragon are arsing arses. I can get the the last phase on them... then it's over in seconds.

touchingcloth

[tag]Two girls, one cuphead.[/tag]

That's what goes through my mind each time I see this thread title.

biggytitbo

Duke Amiel Du H'ardcore on Cuphead's difficulty - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QidBCKYVCMA

Kelvin

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 13, 2017, 03:34:16 PM
Duke Amiel Du H'ardcore on Cuphead's difficulty - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QidBCKYVCMA

I was just coming here to post that. I love his Commentocracy series.