Cuphead's biggest selling point has almost nothing to do with what it's like to play it. It was something that was immediately apparent when it was first shown onstage at Microsoft's 2015 E3 presentation with a trailer that clocked in at under a minute, because a minute was all you needed to see what made it like no other game out there: A complete and remarkably detailed commitment to re-creating the look and feel of 1930s animation, complete with caption cards and a ragtime soundtrack. Watch the trailer now, two years later, and it's still impressive:
It's a trailer that sells a look more than a game, but it's also not shy about the kind of game it wanted to be: An old, tough-as-nails shoot-’em-up, where most of the screen is taken up by things that will lead to a swift Game Over screen that you will see again and again. Now that Cuphead is finally out after a year's delay, I can tell you what it actually is: An old-school shoot-’em-up where you will see the Game Over screen again and again.
If you own a Playstation 4, run and grab a copy of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
Cuphead kicked my ass. It kicked my ass when Microsoft sent me a copy of the game to play last week. It kicked my ass months ago, when I was invited to a preview event where most of the game was available for me to play unfettered and I didn't have to beat every boss to progress. I thought, as I started playing a week ago, that maybe Studio MDHR tweaked the difficulty, making it easier in the time between my preview and release, but now I believe that's just because I had played it before. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. It's still kicking my ass now.
I don't really mind, though, because Cuphead is a complete joy to take in. The boss villain designs are vibrant and varied, nailing that weird, pre-Disney look that straddles the line between charming and sinister, evoking the big-band brassiness of Cab Calloway and Betty Boop with affectionate detail. And it is detailed—almost entirely hand-drawn and full of references to old cartoons. There isn't a second where the game is boring to look at, even when you're looking at the same things over and over again. (And you will.)
This is maybe the saddest part of the game—that it might be too hard for people to see all the great stuff MDHR put into it. Every boss encounter—and the game is mostly boss encounters—comes with a "simple" difficulty in addition to "regular," but that just means the variety of moves a boss will attack you with is reduced. You still have to be coordinated enough to win, and if it's been a while since you've played Contra, well, you're gonna have to practice. Fortunately, though, you can play Cuphead with a friend right next to you, and that's the best way to do it. Let someone else get their ass kicked by cute cartoons with you.