Jared’s Top Ten Games of This Horrible, Godforsaken Year

5. Cuphead

I’ve already made a lot of comparisons about Nioh to Dark Souls, so I will not make the obvious “Cuphead is the BLANK of Dark Souls games” comparison here. Difficulty is one thing, repetition on boss fights is another, I could go on and on, but I’m not going to do it. Nope. Will not cave into that line of thinking, everything cannot be fit into a boxed marked ‘Souls Borne’. I’ll find another way to talk about Cuphead being phenomenal.

Cuphead is the Dark Souls of run and gun platformers.

My favorite boss battle

Damnit, I fell for it again! I had to, I’m sorry, but it was going to burst out of me eventually. In any case, yes it’s tough as nails, but I found there was a real groove you can hit with that game learning to dodge and parry, and by the boss everyone has a problem with (the dragon one), and the other boss people have a problem with (the queen honey bee), you end up having the muscle memory down for the end boss, the mother fucking devil. The simple mechanics, slowly being ramped up with new powers, paid off in a way where I felt like I had movement and aiming and avoiding bullet hell down to a science, and that was immensely satisfying.

And then there is the music, and the style, and the most I watch videos on how they created everything from scratch the more I am inclined to say this is the best art direction for a video game I’ve ever seen, by a mile. My words cannot do it justice, the documentaries I’ve seen covering the studio about the ‘30s cartoons that inspired it cannot do it justice, it is just awe-inspiring. Simply the pinnacle, the zenith, the apex, of games as art.