Cuphead Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

The hardest game of all time?

Cuphead game
Studio MDHR

Very few games whip up the gaming populace quite like Cuphead. Created by a tiny team over at Studio MDHR, it was originally shown way back in 2013 during an indie dev showcase. Naturally, with an art style as original and vibrant as 1930s comic ephemera, all those who saw it only needed mere seconds to stand up and shout "Wait, WHAT WAS THAT?!"

Cut to 2017 and the public are having... a bit of a divisive time with the final product. At time of writing only a fraction of the player base on Xbox One have even made it out the first world. Personally speaking I'm part of the 4% who've fought the devil himself, but those are some crazy low percentages for a heavily marketed game - and something that's going to be fronting the Xbox One X's launch, no less.

Make no mistake: Cuphead is brutally unforgiving in a way that the likes of Dark Souls never came close to. At least in FromSoftware's titles you knew what was killing you and what you could've done to survive - in Cuphead there's every chance you've boxed yourself into a corner of the screen, left only to watch projectiles close in and finish you off.

With such a brick wall of challenge comes a great sense of reward, but what genuinely works and what doesn't in the full game?

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Gaming Editor
Gaming Editor

WhatCulture's Head of Gaming.