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00:00:01
S2 Ep93: Cuphead
93 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they struggle against all odds to get good!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Intro and Hosts' Banter
00:00:01
Speaker
Well, Cuphead and his pelvic man, they like to roll the dice. By chance they came on Devil's Game, and gosh, they paid the price. Paid the price! And now they're fighting for their lives on a mission fraught with dread.
00:00:28
Speaker
And if they proceed but don't succeed... Well... The devil will take their hands!
00:00:41
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Dandy is my choice of word for this evening. Are you feeling dandy? Are you a dandy? I am not a dandy. So this actually came up in a podcast I was listening to recently. Is it this one? I don't listen to this podcast. Everybody knows that.
00:01:06
Speaker
But basically, a dandy is somebody who has a very well-permed and trimmed style. They're very classy, very dapper. Posh. Yeah. I'm not that if you've ever looked at me. I look like a mildly homeless person. I like the term mildly homeless. You're like, I have a home. My beard is a little more together.
00:01:36
Speaker
But to be fair, like I do have a hole in each shoe. My face is a little bit overgrown, hair's a little bit shaggy. I'm wearing a hoodie and jeans that I've had for a while. Right. I mean, it's your standard get up though. I mean.
00:01:52
Speaker
I don't know. I feel like maybe not, not all guys, but definitely people have interacted with a lot or friends I've had over the years. They've had a lot of acceptance for someone looking like they were Arthur from the PBS show or something, right? Like they literally had the same outfit and wardrobe. I don't get suspicious when, if I see someone and they're using the same hoodie, they're always using.
00:02:15
Speaker
Well, to be fair, like a jacket, you're going to wear a lot more often than like the same t-shirt. Yeah. That's
Cuphead's Art and Mechanics
00:02:21
Speaker
true. Maybe you'd get a little suspicious. How many overcoats do you have? I don't know, 20? I have, I have two. I have the hoodie and then I have the jacket and everything else really isn't.
00:02:34
Speaker
warm. They're all kind of like long sleeve overshirts. Cause I like to do t-shirt, some type of overshirt. Gotcha. Going outside, a jacket or an extra layer. And you have like the hoodies, the less formal of the two. The jacket would probably be your outerwear for. This is my snug comfy wear. Yeah. But it also looks like I sell drugs to people. Right. Which is really inconvenient when you're trying to sell drugs to people. Am I right?
00:03:02
Speaker
So anyways, any way to keep the podcast afloat, um, financial donations, anything like that. Uh, speaking of drugs, uh, whoever decided it was a great idea to make today's game, the way that it was made must've been on drugs. Cause it was a lot of work.
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I like to do. Get really high and then be very productive. We were of course talking about the game Cuphead. Why is it called Cuphead? Your character has a cup for a head. Done. Which is a great twist off of the traditional cup, which is like a cup for your crotch. That's the alternative. And sports.
00:03:47
Speaker
Let's go for a different head. And everything else nearby. Cuphead. Just the whole area. Just a cup. Yeah, so.
00:03:59
Speaker
So for those who have no idea what the hell Cuphead is, shame on you. The first piece of media, like first media you've consumed since crawling out from under a rock basically. So this is the only game today that I know of that follows a very old 1920s, 30s cartoon style. If you think of like very early Disney where all of the animations were hand drawn and all the moves were very janky because
00:04:25
Speaker
That's what they did in those days. Yeah, and there's a bit of the Like cinema tape effect. Yeah
00:04:36
Speaker
But everything is in that style where it's old, very, very old school, but it's
Co-op vs Solo Play in Cuphead
00:04:41
Speaker
a very charming style and it looks gorgeous. And then on top of that, they have their own scores. Like they have soundtrack for every single boss, which is a lot. It's kind of a boss rush game. Like Fury. Yes. We're going to be comparing these two games a lot. The two dimensional game platformer Cuphead and the 3D action game, Fury.
00:05:04
Speaker
But yeah, I think it's really the only game in its space. But as far as rules go, it is a 2D platformer, sidescroller. It's worth mentioning for the art style, it's all hand-drawn. Yes. Every single thing. I watched the YouTube video, because that's how I ingest my media. But there was a certain attack of a boss, and it was like 35 frames on its own. I was like, oh, OK.
00:05:35
Speaker
now it's just for one attack yeah it's it's like you were talking about the old animation style like the the Disney approach whatever boat Willie era yeah just like frames upon frames and they're just moving them back and forth to like simulate animation and things this is all the hands drawn the whole thing so the frame rate
00:05:54
Speaker
I don't actually know what the framerate is in the game, but it's very smooth because they basically cut no corners. So there's a lot of curved edges as a result. But it looks tremendously impressive to see the protagonist jump around, fire their projectiles, bosses, swing out attacks, do transformations. Every part of that just looks
00:06:21
Speaker
And ridiculous. Really, really freaking good. And sometimes creepy. There's never been a point of this game where I felt like it did not handle well or something looked bad. Now, to be fair, I cursed the game immensely. When Jake and I were playing, we played over remote play, even though we both had our own copies, because for whatever reason, I have shit internet.
00:06:49
Speaker
But since we were both using controllers, I was on voice activity. So Jake would occasionally hear me punch the table out of frustration. I can confirm. When we died for like the 25th time on a boss. Yeah. Because we did this whole thing as co-op. I had done some solo a while back and I kind of just stopped playing after a time.
00:07:12
Speaker
Not to say that it was bad. It was just, I got distracted. So I've only played co-op. Co-op just introduces another, it's a, what do you remember his name? Mugman. Mugman, yeah. Super fighting robot. Mugman, whereas if, instead of like an old text-based adventure game, or if you type that out, you would just attempt to mug a man, right? Not that, it's just a guy.
00:07:37
Speaker
City guard notices, but I've only yeah exactly I've only played I've only played co-op you played single-player Yeah, how does the difficulty vary because I know there's mechanics in play
00:07:48
Speaker
So all of the mechanics are still the same. Um, the one benefit is if I fuck up is possible for you to jump, parry my ghost body and then bring me back in at one health where I was not afforded that in a single
Boss Battles and Strategies
00:08:04
Speaker
player. But one of the advantages of single player is if a lot of stuff's going on screen for like a bullet hell where you have to watch out for telegraphs attacks, it's easy for me to lose myself in the music.
00:08:17
Speaker
Right. And the movement. And, uh, whenever, cause they're each color difference. Like I think as player two, I was blue and yellow, red, blue.
00:08:29
Speaker
But when all these things are going on, it's easy to get lost. And then I might bump into something, think I'm controlling your character. Yeah. Whereas if it's just me, I really have no excuse to make that same mistake, hopefully. I made that mistake, but I actually have no excuse because I was always player one. But sometimes I was still like, no, I'm the light blue guy. Yeah.
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, because when we encountered it a little bit, if we both ran out of health, you have three hits. Um, by default, um, before you're dead. So in single player, that means boss fight over retry, which thankfully happens really quick, but in multiplayer, maybe your friend, uh, jumps up and does a Perry. Um, we chained that together a couple of times for some of those fights. So Jake and Aaron good. Uh, full disclaimer. Yeah. That's what I discovered this week. Yeah.
00:09:21
Speaker
So I think it was mainly for the dragon boss. We were having just the time. Yeah. Phase three. It was mainly in phase three. Um, so the way death works is if your grandparents are really old, I was going to say it was going to get deep, but when you die, um, you become a ghost and you kind of float up towards the top of the screen. But how does it work in Cuphead?
00:09:48
Speaker
It's more convenient if you're on, if you die in the bottom of the screen, so it gives your player to a chance to save you. Whereas if you're off the top of the screen, you're kind of fucked. Yeah. I thought so, but Dave saved me off the top. There have been a lot of times though, where if they go off screen, they don't immediately disappear because you can technically jump off the screen a little bit.
00:10:09
Speaker
But typically they're not placing platforms off screen. Yeah. But there were a lot of like clutch parry chains between you and I where I would save you and then I would die immediately afterwards. Yeah. And then you're like, it's okay. I got you. And then you would die.
00:10:25
Speaker
And we made no progress on the boss because we weren't damaging him while we were just saving each other. But one of the advantages of getting a parry, whether it's on your ghost buddy or just something pink as a projectile and like the boss fight, is it will instantly give you a card. Yeah. And a card will allow you to do a special move because normally you have your default attack and then for whatever weapon you have selected, you can have an upgraded version of that attack at the cost of one card. Right.
00:10:52
Speaker
Or you can have five cards, expend all those for a super. Yeah, which usually gives you like some i-frames in the activation and the deactivation. But usually you're popping out a lot of damage at that point. Yeah, like the traditional one, I think the first one we got really like just turns you into a giant bomb. Well, if you're a plane. If you're a plane, it turns you into a giant bomb.
00:11:12
Speaker
In Cuphead, you can be a plane. We'll come back to that. Right, yeah. I identify as a plane. If you're in platforming mode, it's just a Kamehameha laser, essentially out of the cup. To the left or the right? Yeah, as you do. What's your primary mechanics? The boss?
00:11:34
Speaker
We talked a little bit about the boss stage transitions. So you'll get some damage in. Usually the first stage isn't too crazy. But this is very much a type of game where I'm not going to compare every game that we cover to Dark Souls.
00:11:53
Speaker
All right. All right. I'm leaning forward. Where's he going with this? But I will this one. And it's kind of expected that you're going to make some mistakes until you learn move sets. And in this case, it applies for stages. So until you know what sorts of attacks the boss is going to use, there's not a huge chance that I feel like you would figure it out the first time. Right. I will say, to its credit, though, the game does a very good job of telegraphing.
00:12:23
Speaker
So it's not like something just kind of shoots out of nowhere. There's usually like a big wind up in animation. They usually sound effect to go along with it. So if you are paying attention to just what the boss is doing, you could theoretically say, Oh, it's going to be something like this. Right. Like when we were facing the bird that's in a house. Yeah. I forget the name of the boss. That's all right. I'll look it up. So are you looking at me with the whole time?
00:12:46
Speaker
It kind of puts out like a comical glove with three fingers. So you can kind of tell it's going to be like a three pronged attack that kind of spreads out. Yeah. You're talking about Wally Warbles. Oh, yes. Wally. He's a robot.
00:13:06
Speaker
But yeah, just stuff like that, it does a really good job of conveying the information. But again, if you are like me and you miss it on the first 17 attempts, you can pick it up. Yeah. And it feels really good to actually beat a boss. Because a lot of times when you get the knockout, Jake and I both like audibly sigh afterwards, like, oh, Jesus Christ, finally done with that shit.
00:13:31
Speaker
Because I don't know how many times, like, for any of these bosses here, uh, we've probably died 20, 25, 30 times. Yeah. Well, let's go with that. There's a part of the game in area two where it'll tell you how many times you fucked up. Yeah.
00:13:51
Speaker
We stopped going back there. There's a lot It was a lot. We like we basically blaze through The first level there's there's three main levels and then there's areas. Yeah. Yeah areas And then there's a fourth it's kind of like another like magnified boss rush a bunch of mini bosses before I fight the devil But the devil, you know
00:14:16
Speaker
Right then the devil you don't know I think is how that expression goes But the first the first area we didn't have too much trouble with like a couple retries on some of them Nothing crazy. And then the second one was just like brick walls Yeah Obviously like with most games difficulty will increase as you progress. Yeah But usually it's not a chance to learn. Here's a cliff. Yeah
00:14:46
Speaker
But another thing is, could you go back to area one? Yeah. So for any of these bosses that we have pulled up, they're all very unique stylistically. Oh yeah. And their mechanics. So what would be, what would be a comparison you'd make for two of the bosses from the first area? Like how they contrast. Let me squint because I no longer have eyes that work. That's fine. Ribby and croaks.
00:15:13
Speaker
So there's like two fisticuffs frog brothers on a steamboat.
00:15:20
Speaker
And they'll send out projectiles and flies as a part of phase one. In phase two, one acts as a fan. Well, the other one sounds like a bouncing projectiles and then the fan will reverse. So it's kind of a weave between that. It's like a movement control check. It's like, Oh, okay. Now that you figured out how to shoot at bosses, can you manage your movement while this is going on?
00:15:45
Speaker
And then phase three, it turns into like a fucking slot machine, which you have to carry the slot machine to advance. And then it picks one of three possible attack options where these discs get shot out, but each of the discs are different. Certain ones are just on the ground. You have to keep jumping and not getting hit by them.
00:16:04
Speaker
and landing on the top where it's safe. Another one will shoot balls up and you have to kind of time jumping in between. And another one will have lasers that either shoot up or down. You have to be on the opposite side. Yeah, be where the laser is not. It's worth noting this, these are just outcomes on the slot machine. So the boss itself
00:16:23
Speaker
So this is after one of the frogs has eaten the other frog and they turn into the slot machine, right? Yes. Um, there's a lot of body horror in this game where the bosses just transform for reasons. Um, yeah, it plays with a lot of the animation and does some over the top shit. If that's not one of the tags on Steam, like, like a platformer, difficult body horror, then I'll be very disappointed.
00:16:53
Speaker
A lot of the bosses are kind of creepy here. The one right after Ruby and Croke's Hildeberg is probably one of the first major transformations that was just very weird. Yeah, it's kind of like a Betty Boop character. This is, I believe, the first flying level you have.
00:17:16
Speaker
But she does turn into a moon at a point. Yeah. As you do. She has like a couple, so she's just, I think Betty Boop's actually very accurate, kind of sitting on a cloud being sassy. She'll do a couple of transformations into different star constellations. She'll be like, oh, it's Gemini. And then she's like twins or whatever. And then after that phase, then you go full moon, like playing Majora's Mask or some nonsense.
00:17:43
Speaker
And they're just, they're all just super, um, uh, maniacal, malicious looking like foes for you to fight. Um, and yeah, I don't know. It's the, the, the theming and the charm and the stylization of the game. It's just off the charts. You can't really compete the way the bosses are. You can't compare the way the bosses are to something outside of cuphead. It's it's it lives in that space.
00:18:14
Speaker
But comparing this to Gwyn, it's significantly fewer nights and fire attacks. So just looking at the first area, is there any boss that you really like stylistically or mechanically? Yeah, so KG Carnation.
00:18:32
Speaker
is probably my highlight from the first area. He's the final... Cagney. Cagney? That's fair. Cagney Carnation. Final boss from that area.
Understanding Boss Phases
00:18:41
Speaker
And not only is he kind of like doing the cha-cha a little bit with his hands. He's a big sunflower, it looks like. He also kind of has phases where he'll
00:18:55
Speaker
Threaten different parts of the stage so he'll have like vines creep out and he's like, oh these there's three platforms here And you have to be on the one platform. That's not be nothing. Yeah So like it requires more awareness of what's going on in the fight, but he's also not a pain to hit
00:19:13
Speaker
You can basically just fire towards him on that side of the screen constantly. Yeah. And you can expect your damage is going to be pretty consistent, which I appreciated. I really like those bosses like to focus on not getting hit. Yeah. Because that's the most punishing since you only get away with those three hits.
00:19:29
Speaker
We talked about, you mentioned the dragon earlier, and early on in this, because you have some experience in this game and I didn't, there's a shop where you can spend coins that you get from like adventure mode. Oh yes, I did tell you about the shop I remember this time. Right. Jake, there's a shop over there. That's what the money's for, you dumb dumb. You get these coins, you can spend them on upgrades. Replace your primary ability, replace your special, your super.
00:19:55
Speaker
And I was just like, I have no idea what any of these things do. And Dave's like, all right, I'm going shotgun. We're going this. We're just like loading up like it's left for dead or some nonsense. Yeah. So I think.
00:20:08
Speaker
Each one of them has like a different functional use, but at the end it really depends. Like you could get away with the starter gun throughout the entire game, 100%. But certain things like JB's referring to the shotgun, it doesn't travel all the way across the screen. It's kind of just out in front of you, but it has more projectiles. So if you are up in close and personal, you actually will damage the boss or enemies faster. Yeah.
00:20:34
Speaker
So if you feel comfortable being up close to a boss and you know, the mechanics, you just want to poop out damage. It's really nice. Um, whereas there are certain other bosses where I'm afraid to get close and I really need to focus on mechanics. So there is a homing shot and deals a little bit less damage, but I really don't have to aim my home, my shot. Yeah. Um, but you, you said there was going to be some bosses we would need the homing shot for and you were right. Yeah.
00:21:02
Speaker
It's mainly for phase two of the dragon there's like for phase two So this is the one where he sits at the bottom of the screen periodically fires I guess steam up the left side of the screen so you can't go all the way back so
00:21:24
Speaker
There's a dragon. Let you just describe this a little more. And his face shows up on the left side of the screen. And you and the dragon are kind of traveling to the right. You're kind of jumping on clouds. The whole, the whole, all phases of the fight. Yeah. You have to jump on these cloud platforms, but his tongue rolls out to the right side of the screen. And these like little flame balls with like, uh, they're like a band leader is like walking along the tongue.
00:21:52
Speaker
And occasionally, ones will jump up and try and attack you. So you have to dodge them when that happens. But it's kind of a pain. You need to keep an eye on which ones are going to jump and where. So it's a lot easier to just have auto-aim on and just let the damage go out eventually, trickle down, and just not get hit.
00:22:14
Speaker
because just for some spatial awareness the boss is at the bottom left of the screen you need to move roughly to the top right you consistently constantly you have very little time to turn around and shoot at him so auto aim is pretty good for that but there's other times it screws you over like phase three in the next phase
00:22:35
Speaker
So you get comfortable using the auto aim, and then in phase three, he becomes a three-headed dragon. And again, he's on the left side of the screen, and we're traveling to the right. But he will show out these little fireballs. Easy enough to dodge if you're paying attention. But if you shoot them and break them, they kind of shotgun out in cardinal directions. Up, down,
Cuphead's Plane Levels
00:22:56
Speaker
left, right. I have my GPS. Turn up. Turn up for what?
00:23:04
Speaker
Oh, that was so close. Let's just go back and we'll just redo that joke. Turn down. For what? There we go. Maybe there in the end. Anyways, the projectile splits.
00:23:19
Speaker
Projectile splits, so if you are just like shooting up the auto homing shot, it will see that as something that needs to hit. It will break it and now you have extra projectiles to deal with on the screen. And you don't have free space to move around, you kind of still have to jump between these cloud platforms. So you'll either get hit by it or you'll fall off. Or if you're me, both.
00:23:43
Speaker
And more appropriately, your ally has to deal with the projectiles that you're creating. We screwed each other over so much. How many times in these boss fights did we both die at the exact same time? Oh my gosh. It was a lot. It was efficiency. It was efficient restarts. That's all it was. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we'd also mentioned the plane levels. So those are still.
00:24:10
Speaker
I won't say side-scrolling. Yeah, there's kind of always on the screen, but the the screen itself will change. Yeah. Because you are flying around. You have free movement. You're always shooting to the right side of the screen. There's definitely a transform into a small plane where you can maneuver a little bit quicker to help and dodge some of those attacks. But then it kneecaps your range. Yeah. It's just like a shoot them up. One of those flash games. Yeah. You're just a plane. Same thing. It's basically.
00:24:38
Speaker
It is interesting because you can't use any of your normal unlocks on these. Yeah. So like if you went with shotgun or auto shot, that doesn't apply here. You just have plain bullets. Plain old bullets. Plain old boring ass fucking bullets. Although the mini plane can keep shooting and it kind of has like a really short range pea shooter and it's hilarious. It's kind of great. It's adorable. Yeah.
00:25:05
Speaker
But it really, really is necessary to weave through a lot of situations. Hmm. Cause I feel for every single boss fight you have outside of the first area, it's like, Hey, so here's the boss. You're like, okay, cool.
00:25:18
Speaker
Here's some mechanics they have. You're like, okay, I'm on board. They're like, and this. And you're like, all right, my arms are kind of full. And they're like, and there's one last thing. So you can never just kind of shoot idly and dodge one thing. There's usually multiple attacks going on. You have to be mindful of. They remove your laurels right at the beginning. No laurels. No, no resting. Ain't no rest for the laurels.
00:25:44
Speaker
All right area to area to who did you like? Who did you not like? I actually so we spent a lot of time on Wally warbles or warbles the bird in the birdhouse and he's got some really interesting transitions, but I actually really like the the
00:26:05
Speaker
Hmm I'm gonna I'm gonna go with the look at this guy. I'm going back the candy castle Actually, it took us a while to beat this one, but Baroness von Bonbon Which is a great name? It's pretty good has great theming and then like
00:26:24
Speaker
pattern recognition demanding for like all of her phases. Every time it's just like, you will die immediately the first time. So by the time we completed this, I was like, I know how to beat this boss. I might not have been that good at it, but I know how exactly to apply these skills. Yes. But she's actually a two phaser. Yeah. So phase one, she's kind of like,
00:26:51
Speaker
Phase one is stunned. Phase two is... Oh no. Yeah. Huh? Kill, right? No, phase three is kill. Sorry, go ahead. This was supposed to be a Star Trek joke, but I could literally- Oh, you said phasers to stun? Yeah. Get out of here, man. I will. All right, see you guys. Have a good night. I need a new co-host for the podcast. Please apply.
00:27:14
Speaker
Oh,
00:27:39
Speaker
And that sound means it's time for intermission, where we talk about whatever we want to talk about. No rules, just right. You and me, Baldur's Gate 3 all night. That'd be a pretty good time, I think. So immediately prior to this, we were checking out some of the hot new, fresh off the presses, fresh pastries, and other analyses. Are you pressing pastries?
00:28:06
Speaker
Are you squashing my baklava? You're supposed to press pastries, I think. I think. Name a pastry that you press. Don't you press cookies? At least. Like, not, you don't press them flat. Is that a pastry or is that a baked good? I don't know what the difference is. For sometimes, for whatever reason, whenever somebody says pastry, I assume it has some type of phyllo dough and it's more flaky and light. Hmm.
00:28:33
Speaker
Like, uh, there's a skill in a pastry. Hmm. I don't know. I don't get three trailer. Yeah. Uh, some of the gameplay footage. It's pretty good for those who have not, uh, tracked this game at all. How dare you for one. And then once you've recovered from that, um, it is
Intermission: Baldur's Gate 3 Discussion
00:28:54
Speaker
the third game and the Baldur's gate series, but this is the first one made by Larian who is a developer who's made some other games that we haven't covered.
00:29:02
Speaker
We're never going to get to divinity original sin two. Um, but just from looking at it, it looks very similar as far as gameplay engine for actual fights. Yeah. But to be fair, it's a great fucking system and I love it. Yeah. Cause things are laid out. It is turn based, but there's a lot of interaction with terrain and positioning. It's like an isometric tactics game standard. Yeah.
00:29:26
Speaker
But a lot of it follows the D&D rules where you can have focus points and you have a certain number of actions you can do. Each action might cause a different number of skill points as you want to turn.
00:29:38
Speaker
I just like, I like that your opening was immediately wrong. You're just like, follows the D and D rules of focus points. I'm like, this isn't a D and D thing at all. What are you talking about? Larian made their own thing for divinity too. They were just like, what is a better system? And that's what they ran with. So you have a certain number of action points for a character. Yes. And each ability or thing you might do would cause certain number of action points. Yes.
00:30:02
Speaker
Today something is like one, something is two, something is three, but very few characters have ways to gain that back in a turn. I remember Elves in Divinity had Flesh Sacrifice, where they could lower their overall vitality for two turns for a temporary bonus of action points.
00:30:24
Speaker
So I had like an elf rogue, so I would sacrifice some flesh and use all the abilities in the opponent's backside. Yeah. For crits. For crits. You know, a justifiable cause. Yeah, divinity three is actually very different from that in that they're going straight. Baldur's Gate three.
00:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Slip of the, slip of the, slip of the rogue. Um, now Baldur's Gate three, it's, uh, interesting that they're operating within the constraints of fifth edition, which in some ways, I feel like you can make an argument that divinity had some system, uh, choices that actually work better from a video game perspective. It's been a while since we really played video games that were heavy into.
00:31:09
Speaker
I was like, Jake, don't tell them we haven't been playing video games. That's kind of our whole thing. I don't even know what a video game is. I'm just here for the paycheck. So you actually do D&D. You DM and you play. So what systems do you like better about Divinity Original Sin 2 that you hope they kind of take into Baldur's Gate versus something from Fifth Edition? So you mentioned like the action system. And I think that's on its face actually something that
00:31:36
Speaker
maybe having a computer take care of a lot of the math for you works a lot better. So for instance, in fifth edition, you get like one action every turn. And regardless of what you want to do, you have an action, a bonus action, a reaction, and movement. That's it. That's your turn.
00:31:54
Speaker
My reaction is just my eyebrows go up like, what? Yeah, you do your reaction every time, every time you flip. I was too surprised. Surprised is its own state too in D&D. But because of that, there's no scaling for like, oh, casting any spell is an action, right? Whereas in, or like making an attack or doing a multi attack or whatever, that's one action depending on your class.
00:32:22
Speaker
Whereas divinity had more of a pool system. So like really powerful attacks, um, or multiple simultaneous, you know, like a bunch of melee attacks in tandem. You had an economy built out in that action system, but you wouldn't want to track that at the table, right? Like for a pen and paper game, you wouldn't want to be like, Oh, I have 10 points. And then I did this thing. Now I have seven points and I did this and this and this.
00:32:49
Speaker
I mean, people probably do because I'm sure there's a system that literally works like that, but it's much more of a laborious pain in the ass compared to having a computer handle it for you. So I actually think that.
00:33:02
Speaker
They're kind of operating in a constrained system here where yes, it'll be D&D, but that doesn't mean every part of the system will be better for it. Like I have my own gripes with the Roll20 system. So it's, it'll be interesting to see what it ends up being like. Um, the gameplay looked pretty good though.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah. It looks nice. For me, it's probably going to be, cause I didn't really play any of the previous entries, motor's gate one or two, or two chain of memories. Um,
Advanced Cuphead Strategies
00:33:36
Speaker
but I'm hoping that three will be an extension of divinity original, where it's just in that fantasy universe, but it's really solid RPG and in very in-depth story.
00:33:48
Speaker
And based off of like the early gameplay we saw it looks like it will be like it looks very divinity Just with the D&D ruleset. Yeah, I can't imagine they Replace their whole engine and everything. I'm sure they're building off of stuff that they've already worked with Yeah, I know but to be fair didn't know really well that kicks ass. Oh
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah, so the fact that it's a video game will help them deal with a lot of that crunch So whatever system they do I trust Larian will Do the best they can with it and like their track record has been pretty good. So I'm looking forward to this game So you guys should also be looking forward to this game for like RPGs and we'll figure out how many people can fit in a campaign at a time It's probably before so Jake and I will need a
00:34:37
Speaker
two other two other people willing subjects supports yes you won't deal damage please heal me
00:35:05
Speaker
So phase one, she will send out like these sweet minions. So it could be like a jumping cupcake. It can be a waffle that kind of splits out in eight directions. It could be a gumball machine that's just shooting gumballs. It could be a giant candy corn that moves around.
00:35:26
Speaker
Basically a lot of it comes down to just moving out of the way of stuff and shooting down the ads Yeah, there's a cupcake to that one. So that's the first one I mentioned. Oh, I missed that Yeah, I said as I heard candy corn I was just thinking like and who really likes candy corn and the rest flood my mind Okay, I like I like a handful like I would be fine with five or six Yeah, but then I want actual things after that food But also like
00:35:54
Speaker
On top of that, she's sending out these like very small jelly beans along the ground. Oh yeah. She'll be like, oh, I'm going to dodge this guy's jumping attack. Cool. You get beamed. And then you get beamed in the shins and that takes one of your lives and it sucks. It does suck. So it becomes a lot of, uh, managing everything that's going on.
00:36:15
Speaker
But by the time you actually beat it, you figured it out or locked your way into victory. I don't feel like you can lock your way through this one because phase two is like, well, it's not pure luck, obviously. Right. Yeah. But there's some times where I feel like I just, I didn't fuck up long enough to win. Mm-hmm.
00:36:33
Speaker
Hey, gotcha. You were good enough. Yeah, I never felt like yeah crushed it. Yeah. Yeah. Like the phase two of this is after you've beaten her minions, she kind of transforms the castle with the frosting on top and it starts crawling towards you. Oh my god. And she throws her head, which starts bouncing around the screen and it like homes in on you or your ally and
00:36:58
Speaker
Cause problems. I feel like there's another attack that maybe she also throws like a giant rolling peppermint on the ground. Yeah. So like you have a platform that moves back and forth through both phases and you can use that as needed.
00:37:13
Speaker
Um, but yeah, it's really managing where you can move and when there are a lot of situations where I'm like, I'll be over here and everything closes in. I mean, like that was a mistake. I'm panicking. One of the tools though, to get out of these six situations is your dash.
00:37:33
Speaker
Which you have by default. It means smoke bomb. I know, yeah. You can upgrade your dash to be smoke bomb. So instead of just moving a straight line, you kind of blink over. Yeah. So that allows you to essentially get through a lot of enemies and projectiles, which we use to great avail. Yeah. I would not be able to play this game without it. I'm fully convinced at this point, I could not have a different dash that didn't give me iframes.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's just super needed. I would sometimes just panic hit and be like, yup. Yup. There's, I'd find myself in situations where I'm actually already on the side of the screen and I had zero movement dash just for some iframes.
Platforming Challenges and Progression
00:38:16
Speaker
A lot of like a projectile go through or something. I thought if you dashed, you always move forward.
00:38:21
Speaker
You do, but if you're already there on the edge of the screen, then you can use it. And yeah, some of the times that the game actually started to get really hard, it's because we were like playing an extended session or something and I would forget about Dash. Or I'd like forget to jump or I could, you know, well, I didn't forget to jump.
00:38:42
Speaker
Or I would never admit to forgetting to jump. Let's go. Jake knows how to jump. I've seen him do it. How dare you say otherwise. But yeah, you constantly have to be aware of the different ways you can kind of approach these problems. You can go a small plane, you can do a dash. Like maybe you stop shooting for a little while, so the projectile stops splitting.
00:39:03
Speaker
Things like that. The game has a couple points where they will punish you for just auto attacking constantly. One of those is one of the adventures, right? The one with the trampoline and the balloons. Yeah. So in between some of the bosses, you can do some stages where it's, again, just a side scroller left to right. You can collect coins throughout. And those coins are your currency, which you can then spend at the shop. And one of the later ones, it's like a carnival level.
00:39:32
Speaker
There's like a trampoline that moves along the ground. There's these balloons that come on a screen. And Jake and I were like, shoot the balloons, run, jump, everything. Every time you shoot the balloons and they pop, it sends out like this shotgun of projectiles in like several directions. They're full of beads for some reason. Everything's full of bullets at this point.
00:39:53
Speaker
We'd get punished by it and take two or three extra hits. And then we would die. And then we'd die shortly afterwards. Yeah. We were like, what if we didn't shoot those? That wasn't a quick realization. That was after a period of like 15 minutes. Yeah, it was, it took a shameful, it was a shameful display. Shameful display. I am not good at video games. Yeah. I just beat my head against the brick wall until my blood eventually starts to erode the, uh, caulk in between.
00:40:23
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. That's a phrase. We eventually kind of figured it out though. We struggled with the bosses a lot, but the adventures were in their own way. They're really difficult. You would think like maybe they're the green hill zone between the difficult levels or something like that. You're like, oh, it's just a blaze through this. No problem.
00:40:47
Speaker
But overconfidence at any point in the game is very punishing. You're always just two, three steps from death and it looked like 15 steps from not having resets because your friend finally dies, you know? Yeah. There was many bosses where I died so many times and they've just like revived, revived, revived.
00:41:09
Speaker
So yeah, that didn't happen, but there were a couple of times where one of us would like die flat out. The other person would be like, don't worry, I got this. And finish out the boss. Yeah. There was actually one later on where you just, you did not take any hits. I died like three times. After like the third time, you're like, I can't save you. I'm like, that's fair. And then you finish the boss by yourself.
00:41:30
Speaker
It was that was humbling. It was a good time for me And then I looked at the ratings of the hardest bosses and this boss was all the way at the very bottom It was the easiest boss in the game, but you know what? I'll take it. Credible credit to do that. I was still impressed
00:41:47
Speaker
I was about me who died that many times. I try not to read too much. See what was probably going on is you were, you were playing at such a high level. You were expecting difficulty. You were adapted to it. So when like, it was actually that simple, your reflexes was just like, what do I, it's like when you get slowdowns in DDR and you fuck up and you're like, how's it gonna be challenging? What's going on? I can't keep goofing up on these.
00:42:13
Speaker
It's like when Neo tries to do anything in The Matrix, but he's learned all of his superpowers. And he's just like knocking over stuff at the grocery at the super strength and going super fast. I would just imagine him playing Jenga. He just vibrates the tower of light.
00:42:31
Speaker
Yeah, let's peek to area 3 sure as a disclaimer this late in the game We have not actually cleared all content of this game at the time of this recording We did make a decent dent Enough to make us informed comments and decisions or enough to pretend so at the very least
00:42:50
Speaker
Yes, we've beaten the game. Disclaimer, we're the best. So I gotta say my favorite boss to date that I've played. Who is your favorite boss to date? It has to be Calamaria, hands down.
00:43:07
Speaker
She is this mermaid lady who has like these ads that she summons are all ocean based. Maybe she'll shoot a fish that's like electric and homes it on you. Maybe she'll summon puffer fish from the bottom of the screen that is float up. Maybe she'll have like a seahorse that will actually push you into other stuff because shooting like a geyser water at you. Yeah, most things just straight up kill you, but this one just moves you out of position.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah, which is actually a recurring theme in this boss fight. There's a couple moves that screw with your movement. Yeah in phase two She gets gorgon powers and can literally turn you to stone You can't do anything to dodge it and you have to like button mash out of it And then dodge projectiles of the electric eels that are there. Yeah, which you can shoot down and kill
00:43:58
Speaker
They turn into little- But they do not damage her. They can turn into cuts of meat too, when they drop off the screen. Like it's like Breath of the Wild style. Yeah, when you shoot them, they die in like these perfectly cut sections of meat. Yeah. But again, that just goes like the really cool animations they have for stuff.
00:44:15
Speaker
And a lot of these things are inspired by older cartoons or animations. Like the boat boss, Popeye. Oh yeah. He looks like a Popeye villain. He is the Popeye villain, pretty much. He is the Popeye villain, yeah. I don't remember that guy's name though. Mr. Popeye Bad. Mr. Pops. Close enough. Don't look it up. Get Popeye villain. All right, we're looking it up.
00:44:43
Speaker
But there's a better boot preference. I'm sure there is a Mickey mouse thing. I'm sure I know later there is like a Tom and Jerry type boss, which we've not encountered yet. Really? Is it Tom or is it Jerry? Uh, blue toe. It's not blue. That's not a picture of Pluto though. That is definitely a picture of Popeye. It's Pluto. It's Pluto. He's like 10% head and 95% hot gas.
00:45:09
Speaker
That's a spongebob. There's just some odd proportions. Yeah. But he's a hundred percent that and he's on this. He's on a ship. This is what this was an interesting fight. I keep everything's interesting. I know. Yeah. But again, each thing is very unique. There are no two bosses. I'm like, oh, it's kind of like that other boss. It's fucking not. Yeah.
00:45:28
Speaker
This is like area control and it's awareness and it's usually the bosses go through phases where It completely it completely changes up the way you have to play You have to deal with other hazards. You have to deal with other things
00:45:44
Speaker
this one has consistent hazards so there's like a barrel at the top of the screen on a crane that's moving back and forth and when it gets above one of the players it'll try to drop on them and that's like consistent through almost the entire fight so while you start having to deal with other mechanics
00:46:04
Speaker
Maybe like a shark attacking from the side of the screen. There's always this looming threat. The looming literal looming threat of a barrel. Intentional word choice. It's a barrel of threat is what it is. What's cool though about it? And this again goes back to some of the tells. After it comes back from an attack, its eyes change from like angry and malicious to a very cheeky, like innocent, just looking left to right. Like, Oh, I'm not going to, I didn't do anything.
00:46:32
Speaker
Yeah. So while it's doing that and pretending to be innocent, it actually won't drop again. So you do have a bit of a refractory period where you don't have to worry about it, but it lasts for like three seconds. Yeah. And then it's like, all right, I'm back trying to fuck those guys up.
00:46:47
Speaker
after the refraction. The other kind of obstacle they threw in here, and it screwed me over the first couple times we played, was the ship itself has a cannon. It'll start firing at you. And then that's just on pattern as well. So now you're avoiding the barrel and there's cannonballs moving across the bottom of the screen. And it just, like you were mentioning earlier, it just keeps adding to it. You're like, oh, you can handle this? What about this? And what about this?
00:47:17
Speaker
It's really interesting when you see like multiple animations going on you're like alright timing I gotta be and yeah here And then he's shooting a squid at you and just like what are you what are you even doing?
00:47:29
Speaker
Yeah, it becomes a lot really quick. It's an interesting fight though. I don't think we actually struggled with this one too much. I have very little in the way of gripes about the gameplay mechanics, but if there's one thing I kind of wish they would have tweaked maybe a little bit more.
00:47:51
Speaker
it is just balancing out the bosses so like put the easier ones between the harder ones just a little bit more maybe just mechanics a little bit more for that and just do that intentionally um because it seemed like there was a couple times which like it took us a hundred attempts to beat this boss and we beat the boss and then we go to the next boss and it's like i'm here though and you're like okay another hundred attempts
Cuphead vs Other Platformers
00:48:22
Speaker
I mean, certain ones, yeah. It did feel like we were really hitting our heads against the wall, so to speak. And it could just be that we're bad. Like that's the other, I know the speed run for this game's like four seconds. I don't know. It's probably really short. But I mean, like certain bosses are just easier mechanically. Yeah. Like we were talking about the one that Jake perfected. That boss was like the last one we did. It's pretty close to it. That was like the other night. And that was in area three. Yeah.
00:48:54
Speaker
So it does depend. Sally stage play, if you're curious. Certain ones are going to be more easy for you, depending on how you read the animations or how you play. Yeah. Cause each one is a different orchestrated fight.
00:49:08
Speaker
There's a couple ones that were like, they clearly were like biased a little bit because they only let Dave beat them. I was always dead. And there was definitely a few fights where it was just like, I die very early. And then it turns into like watching Dave.
00:49:27
Speaker
through a let's play of the rest of the boss fight. What's great is like when that happens, when Jake dies, I go from playing like a crazy asshole to like, it looks like I know what I'm doing. Cause it's just me on screen. I'm like, don't fuck this up for Jake. You gotta do it. Oh man.
00:49:45
Speaker
It looks like we actually missed one of these. I don't remember doing. Yeah, there's some different ones in the area we haven't gotten to yet. What's nice though, is that the bosses are not necessarily gated. When you're in an area, you can usually access multiple bosses at a time. So if you're really stuck on a certain boss, you can say, we'll come back to that. I'll try somebody else instead. You usually have the options of like two to three at a time.
00:50:13
Speaker
But you do have to get past each boss eventually to keep progressing. It is nice. You can kind of take a reprieve, do some adventure level, try a different boss if you are really stuck. But I find in these types of games, if I'm really stuck, then like the termination applies exactly to this boss. I want to beat this boss, right? Like I don't want to waste the time spent acclimating myself to this fight. When we were doing the dragon,
00:50:40
Speaker
Which is I actually I really do love the fight but also I fucking hate that boss We just went through again and we did not stop until it was beaten Yeah, and there's certain times where I saw an autopilot playing like shit. There are other times I was on autopilot I would get up in the boss's face with the shock and I'm like
00:50:59
Speaker
Die! And I would, every mechanic, perfect for phase one, perfect for phase two. Phase three would just kill myself for no reason. It's definitely a game where keeping your cool is probably, it is the most important skill. Cause as far as I've seen, none of the bosses are actually DPS races. They don't have a phase where it's like, if you don't beat me before X, it's over. It's just staying alive while applying.
00:51:28
Speaker
any amount of damage and you'll get through it. Yes, 100% true. So if you can be a little more focused and dodge attacks, you will last longer in the fight and deal more damage because of it and probably be fine. Yeah. But it is really easy for at least myself to panic in those situations and then get tricked into taking a hit, a second hit, a third hit, now I'm dead. Yeah, that's just like high school.
00:51:56
Speaker
Are you getting hit long? Then get tricked into taking a hit, a second hit, a third hit, an octet. Don't do drugs, kid. Three hits and you die. You're right. Three hits and you're out. One, two, three. Death. Yeah, don't buy drugs from an owl. Probably not. Kids, you want a Tootsie Pop?
00:52:18
Speaker
Anyways, I was homeschooled so I'm just making all this up. How does this compare to other kind of demanding, difficult platformers that you've played? Because again, as I've said before, I am not acclimated to the platformer space and you are more so an expert in this area.
00:52:38
Speaker
one do not make me talk about a hollow night too early before we have an actual episode on it but two okay you can't talk about hollow night talk about any other difficult platformer that comes to mind so i did play hollow night recently um i technically haven't beaten the true ending yet um but i could do that probably like five attempts if i hunker down to do so how will brag
00:53:03
Speaker
Super solid game, very tight gameplay. All platformers really need to have very responsive mechanics. Yeah. When you go and jump and stop moving, you're going to fall straight down. Yeah. That's pretty much a key of all mechanics is not having that weird momentum. Nothing kills a platformer for me faster than like, uh, hit boxes I don't expect or non-responsive controls.
The Rewarding Difficulty of Cuphead
00:53:25
Speaker
Yeah, because the whole thing is it comes down to your reactions and you can control where you are and what you're doing. Yeah. So you can have more aggressive mechanics because you can get around those if you have the skill to do so. Right. And you know if you make a mistake, it's your fault. That's absolutely essential. Yeah.
00:53:41
Speaker
But also the boss is trying to kill me, so a little bit of a defense here. So much on me. But while Hollow Knight is obviously a difficult game, again, I got to the end of the game, whereas Cuphead, I am actively struggling with. Right. Although you put more time into the massive game that is Hollow Knight.
00:54:06
Speaker
That is true, but even in one of the later areas to get to the true ending, you have to do a bunch of very tight platforming.
00:54:15
Speaker
I did it. And I'm not like amazing at it by any means. It was just a little bit of practice at it and I was able to beat it. Whereas this is much more punishing if you do fuck up. Whereas you have ways to mitigate that in something like colonite. Gotcha. So it has more, well you just said it in mitigation. You have more things you can put between you and pure skill.
00:54:40
Speaker
Well, I have like ways to heal. I have ways to do other things. I have more mobility options. I'm trying to think of another platform in general that I play.
00:54:53
Speaker
Mega man, that's a difficult platformer, right? It is a platformer. Um, it's kind of old school, super Nintendo difficulty. Yeah. Doesn't actually, I was going to say, it doesn't really compare with this. It's not like you have a projectile main attack that you're spamming constantly through the entire game. Oh, wait, lemons. Turns out we were playing mega man the whole time or mega man was playing us.
00:55:21
Speaker
As always. It's a good solid mechanic, but another thing with Mega Man is...
00:55:29
Speaker
For how the stages are laid out, when you're in a boss fight, you're in a square arena. And one of Mega Man X's big things is you have the option to dash and move around and also dash off walls. So you can actually wall jump and stay up if somebody's doing a ground level attack. There's more strict platforming, I guess. In Cuphead, the platforms are kind of a function of the boss fights. But Mega Man has actual scrolling left to right platforms much more often.
00:55:59
Speaker
Yeah, but that's for like levels, but like in boss fights, you're always in that square. Oh, right. Yeah, it doesn't really move.
00:56:07
Speaker
But yet you are given a dash, you're also given like the wall options, which there was a fight in Mega Man X4 where you fight Colonel, and they give you no walls. And I did not realize how dependent I was on walls until I got shit on by that boss many times. Because I just kind of just like jump away from the problem, like I'll come back down when you're done with your tirade.
00:56:33
Speaker
I will say one thing that is really nice about Cuphead are the very precise hit boxes. Cause there are times PSO make you look like a bad-ass if you duck and dodge an attack. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And you keep shooting while you're doing it. So he's just sitting there.
00:56:50
Speaker
It's full finger guns all the way. Yeah. There are a lot of times where like I had died and Jake was dodging an attack. Like a, a glob of mustard came out. The game could do whatever the fuck it wants. There's some weird stuff. And he just, I was about to say something like Jake, watch out and he just ducks and was fine. I'm like, this man's a God. And then I immediately died and I'll like, I wasn't gonna tell that part of the story. And then I lived forever.
00:57:22
Speaker
Yeah, I actually So I think that if I'm the type of person that can appreciate cuphead and I do if it's not obvious at this point I had my reservations going into it because I already again, you know, not hot on platformers filthy casual not that good at difficult games and
00:57:44
Speaker
This is both a platformer and a difficult game where difficulty is like one of the most publicized things about it. It's like Cuphead is hard.
00:57:54
Speaker
Um, and it's very true. It is a game where incremental self-improvement and learning of mechanics and levels is literally the content. That's the reason you're playing the game. If that doesn't appeal to you, you probably won't enjoy the game because that's what it is. Um, but I found that it is really rewarding to make those little incremental improvements.
00:58:20
Speaker
Start at the basement tier of skill, which is where I was and sometimes still am, and then slowly work my way up a couple floors until I could like clear one of these bosses. And it really makes victory, the knockout, much more satisfying than if it was like a standard difficulty platformer where you're just playing for progression.
00:58:44
Speaker
It makes me really appreciate people who do boss rushes for a game like this, where they're just like, here we go. I was talking to a coworker recently about this game, and he mentioned people do speedruns of this, where it's a no-hit speedrun for bosses. And if they get hit, so like in Adventures, no-hit pacifist is what he was describing.
00:59:08
Speaker
So you only fight bosses and you don't kill any of the enemies in the levels Huh the adventures. Yeah for a hundred percent And you have to take hits in the levels but for the bosses Then you have then you fight them and if you hit at all they restarts the speedrun and that's literally just a category of speedrun for this game and I appreciate that I recognize that's not where I'm at personally, but
00:59:36
Speaker
Okay. But it's a space where that kind of competition can really thrive. I do appreciate the occasional brutal perfectionism.
00:59:47
Speaker
Because there were times where we would start a boss fight, take an early hit, and we'd look at each other, well, actually, physically. Yes. But we'd just be like, were we restarting that? We're like, yeah. Don't you like a quick retry? Because we took a hit in phase one, which we probably shouldn't be taking hits because that's probably the easiest phase. Yeah. And we just weren't in the right head space yet to do it cleanly.
01:00:09
Speaker
I found that the best boss fights that we had are the ones where we do not talk at all. Yeah, we go We're just like not talking to each other. It's just mechanics that for which we're like, all right, we got it Yeah, I remember one time it was again. I think the
01:00:26
Speaker
Wally was the dragon dragon. I think it was dragon. Maybe it was a different one, but uh, we were moving in sync Like for all of our movements every dodge our characters are just overlapping entirely in phase two of dragonflight Yeah, that was entirely like the exact same thing and I was just I smiled I was like it's happening this even in phase one. I remember when we did that
01:00:50
Speaker
Like it was a minimal movement to like dodge the attack while like still attacking and being up in the boss's face Or just basically playing the game like I live real life minimum movement Yeah
01:01:08
Speaker
Yep. So anyways,
Conclusion and Call to Action
01:01:10
Speaker
it's a pretty solid game, uh, occasionally goes on sale. It is on steam. If you have a couch and you have, um, a co-op individual, then fully supported. Also, as we played through remote play, um, work through some technical issues a little bit early, but then it was responsive enough that we're playing a game as demanding as cup head. And Dave was still schooling me on bosses when he was not the host. So pretty impressive from your technical.
01:01:38
Speaker
To be fair, I'm a fucking G. For the room. For everybody listening. Hi, grandma. How are you doing? I'd like to submit into evidence and it's just like a post-it notice. This is like I'm a boss. My grandma loves me very much.
01:01:59
Speaker
Yeah. Like I said to Jake, even though we're not going to be still playing this for the recording of this episode, I still want to make more progression in this and at some point beat it and call up. And there's no higher praise for a game than playing it when you don't have to for the next episode of soapstone.
01:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, look at all the other fucking episodes. Those games suck. Uh, yeah. So play the game, buy the game, listen to our podcast. And if you would like to contribute to future episodes in the form of perhaps an idea, you could send it in at soapstone podcast at gmail.com. Or you could join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. I think that was pretty smooth.
01:02:51
Speaker
That was pretty good. Yeah. Okay. What was it? It was, um, until next time. No, as always, we'll see you in the next one. You got it. I got it. Round of applause. Thank you guys.
01:03:47
Speaker
Oh!