I think this is one of the few times I've seen a demo floor darling that went through a by all accounts pretty hellish revamp process a few years back go on to A) actually be released and B) be pretty well-acclaimed and successful.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
There's something kind of funny about how it took until the 2010s for video games to accurately reflect the way animated films looked in the 1930s.
This game has a specialized style but does it very consistently, like Guacamelee does. Bonus points for consistency with an established style.
I wonder if there's a way to turn off the screen artifacts though. I also wonder if cartoons back then were actually desaturated in their colors or if it's just the fact that the originals have faded before getting digitally duplicated.
I know some retro games go to the extent of doing things like including scanlines and even screen bulge as features (You Have To Win The Game comes to mind) but those are usually optional features.
I may or may not receive flack for this but the game doesn't look that "hard", for how I define the term anyway.
Or to put it in a less inflammatory way maybe
your progress increments in Cuphead are very close together. The run-n-gun levels are short and the boss fights aren't particularly long either. So even though both are tricky it's not "hard" in the sense that it punishes you excessively (this is the same thing I mean when I say that Dark Souls isn't that hard).
My only problem with Cuphead is that a lot of the bosses do this kind of plate-spinny type thing where there are a lot of semi-independent threats you need to keep track of, and in some of the bosses they can combine in a way that feels unpredictable and unfair to make it so that you kinda have to get hit, especially in the bosses that involve autoscroll platforming.
It's not THAT pernicious in practice but it's there
That said, my favorite version of the plate spinny multiple threats thing is the robot boss, where you can choose which part of the boss you take out first to replace said threat with a different threat, which creates for this cool strategizing thing where you think about which is most threatening to you in its first form vs its second form and prioritize accordingly
On the other hand, Cuphead apparently gives you infinite lives whereas Alien Soldier doesn't. I can see that making a major difference.
It does. I'm used to "hard" meaning either it gives you limited lives and you have to have a relatively clean continuous run of the whole game even if the parts aren't all that bad individually, or it gives you infinite tries and you have to be picture perfect to do individual pieces once.
If this is infinite tries, it honestly looks pretty rudimentary and doesn't even approach half the stuff you fight in Ys or something on Normal (if you want to talk about spinny-plate bosses that will fuck you sideways, go talk to Galbalan, or just about everyone at the end of Origin). That doesn't make it bad -- it looks amazing and fun, and a lot of truly hard games are also bad -- just not particularly hard.
It seems strongly reminiscent of Gunstar Heroes's stage 4 - Black's "Silly Dice Maze" (sorry I don't have a better video). It's a board game of boss fights, and you can only roll 1, 2, or 3. And one of the bosses is disembodied eyes and teeth. And there's a "start over" space right before the final space.
Comments
The game is well animated though of course.
so I guess they did
I think the style honestly does a lot to make it feel more welcoming than it would be otherwise
he’s a Very Good Boy and I hope that there’s a way to play as him if you’re going it alone
s’kinda cool, even though we haven’t really interacted
This game has a specialized style but does it very consistently, like Guacamelee does.
Bonus points for consistency with an established style.
I wonder if there's a way to turn off the screen artifacts though.
I also wonder if cartoons back then were actually desaturated in their colors or if it's just the fact that the originals have faded before getting digitally duplicated.
you can say this about Alien Soldier too and nobody in their right mind thinks that one isn't hard
That said, my favorite version of the plate spinny multiple threats thing is the robot boss, where you can choose which part of the boss you take out first to replace said threat with a different threat, which creates for this cool strategizing thing where you think about which is most threatening to you in its first form vs its second form and prioritize accordingly
this is reminding me of parodius.
in a great way.
holy shit
this is like a vintage-1930s version of Parodius
(1 of 2)
(boss starts at about 2:13)
(2 of 2)
(boss starts at about 2:20)
An even more noticeable resemblance arises in the King Dice dice "maze".
It seems strongly reminiscent of Gunstar Heroes's stage 4 - Black's "Silly Dice Maze" (sorry I don't have a better video). It's a board game of boss fights, and you can only roll 1, 2, or 3. And one of the bosses is disembodied eyes and teeth. And there's a "start over" space right before the final space.
Also, the homing shot is green in both games.
maybe I'm just unlucky