Cuphead Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

2. You Can Completely Lose Your Character In The Chaos

Something of a rarity, with so many projectiles, undulating enemy animations and hyper-colour design aesthetics, it is possible to completely lose track of your position on the screen.

This is especially annoying when it happens during a boss's final stage, ensuring Cuphead commits that carnal sin of all challenging video games: Making you feel like you were unfairly screwed out of success.

It really is a shame, because there's no easy solution.

Boss Grim Matchstick (the dragon) spews fireballs with obscuring smoke trails and Beppi the Clown's final phase sees the top of the screen turn into a carousel with many similar colours to Cuphead and Mugman. Factor in the reality of trying to learn attack patterns, dodge a new set of projectiles, do damage yourself and jump between platforms to stay alive, and Cuphead CAN walk a specific line of challenge, only to occasionally stumble in a truly annoying way.