In the 21st century, nobody thought about the existence of a video game with a retro style of the 30s. This videogame was in development since 2010 in Canada by the brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer until 2015 where the video game was shown, due to the great reception it had from the audience, the brothers Chad and Jared decided to get rid of their house to make StudioMDHR and thus finally be able to have a larger team for development of the video game, making it possible to satisfy all its fans and that is how Cuphead "Don't make deals with the Devil" was finally born. It was released for Windows, Xbox One and Steam in 2018, later on Nitendo Switch in 2019 and it was finally listed to be released in 2020 for Playstation 4.
The charismatic protagonists of this story are Cuphead and Mugman, two inseparable brothers who lived in the house of their grandfather The Elder Kettle, everything went in peace and harmony for this pair of brothers; until one day they made the grave mistake of entering the Devil's casino run by King Dice. These ambitious brothers were winning games one after another, and being already blinded by their excessive greed, the Devil took advantage of the situation by proposing one more game to them in which if they won they could keep the casino, but if they lost he would keep their souls for the whole eternity.
The most obvious thing in this situation would be not having accepted and withdrawn with what they already had won because we all know that the Devil is not someone to be trused, but Cuphead didn´t see it that way and decided to accept the game which he lost instantly, so the rather sad and terrified brothers pray to the devil for their lives, he decides to give them one last chance by letting them live only if they bring them the soul contracts of each and every one of the inhabitants who have an outstanding debt with the Devil, so our heroes accept to preserve their lives and decide to embark on an adventure.
Cuphead is a 2D run and gun video game, a genre of video games that is quite weird to see today since there have been no new installments for more than a decade I think. This genre consists of, as its name indicates, running and shooting our enemies until the levels are completed. Through the game we will move through several mimi maps, each one has several levels that we will have to complete in order to get the soul contracts that the devil has asked us to do.
In the Cuphead levels, we can move in all directions we want, making consecutive jumps and even shoot all the enemies of the screen, saying all of this at the time you are reading this, it could make you think that it´s a very simple game, but that statement is something very far from reality, since each level of Cuphead is a great challenge for the players, since its difficulty is quite high and will make us resort to trial and error on many occasions until we can complete the game although this is still insufficient, since we will have to have good reflexes if not we want to die everytime, I was having a real bad time playing it because of its difficulty.
After we complete a Cuphead Run and Gun level we will obtain coins which we can use in the Porkrinds Emporiums to buy different types of weapons or power-ups which will help us destroy our enemies a little faster. One of the upgrades we can do with the coins is increasing the number of shots from our hands, which can be pretty useful, we can even increase a little bit the damage. I wouldn´t say it´s absolutely neccesary to do the upgrades but beleive me when I tell you the upgrades can help us a lot.
In each world of Cuphead we will be able to defeat one or more bosses. They can be plants, vegetables, clowns, skeletons, toads, ghosts and many more, and Cuphead has a great variety of bosses to defeat, each of them with patterns attack and totally unique abilities, so we can´t kill any of them in the same way we kill other bosses.
An example of this is that when we face Cagney Carnation, we will have to be on the ground shooting without getting on one of the platforms because then she will stretch and hit us but being on the ground next to her she will not reach us, so later it will throw seeds of small carnivorous plants that will try to eat us and we must destroy them while we attack the main enemy, as if this were not enough, it will throw us endless things that we must avoid and in its last phase it will stretch towards the ground so we can no longer be thinking that nothing will happen to us standin there, after that it will throw roots to the ground and make them rise so we will have to dodge it while we attack it until we defeat it completely.
Let´s talk about another boss: Barones Von Bon. This will be a different case becase first, we will fight a flying chocolate which we will have to destroy, but it will not be entirely easy because it is divided into squares, it´ll be trying to attack us while we have to dodge it, after finally destroying it, we will fight a kind of cherry pudding that will be jumping over and over again trying to kill us until we finish it with a machine comes out that will not be throwing us sweets while Barones Von Bon attacks us with shots, by destroying the candy machine, We will make her leave completely and she will begin to move with her castle which will throw sweets at us while she throws us small heads similar to hers, so we will have to dodge all that until we kill her.
As a side note, this game is not only Single Player, we can play it with a friend or relative if we want, we would control Cuphead and our companion would control his brother Mugman.
We´ll play a video game that doesn´t seek to have realistic graphics at all, this is because they are inspired only by the cartoons of the 30s of that time, so we could say that its cartoonish appearance, with low colors and a touch of antiquity remains. quite well to highlight its essence both in the story and in the playable, so although they are not realistic graphics, these are amazing for the way in which they have recreated the designs as if they were an old cartoon.
Cuphead captivates us not only visually and playable but also in the musical aspect due to that old music that surrounds it, with all the effects of old sounds that this entails, like the sound of a vinyl record while the music is playing in its introduction, and it is that there are in total more than 50 musical tracks composed by the IM8bit record company, which gives life to the game, since Cuphead with the look of the 30s that it has could not fit with any type of melodies, but these do it perfectly.
Cuphead is a great video game that makes us go back to the past with its visual aspects without ceasing to be fantastic, so without a doubt it is a game that we should all play at least once in our lives, since although it may be a somewhat difficult game is entertaining and motivates you to keep trying until you achieve it, in addition to that, its soundtrack is magnificent and makes us put in the context of the 30s making this an unforgettable playable experience. It is very likely that even with the passing of the decades Cuphead will continue to be mentioned as one of the best games in the history of this century.
Thank you so much for reading until the end, see you next time!
