Podcasts, Not Reflexes, Are Helping Me Beat 'Cuphead'

I started up Cuphead last night, and, just as I had anticipated, I was swearing loudly at the screen within minutes. It's a beautiful, tough-as-nails 2D boss rush game with even tougher (I think, anyway) side-scrolling stages that can rival the most bananas shmups in terms of sheer volume of things trying to kill you on the screen. It is also fantastic, though I'm not sure it always rides the right side of the line between fun and frustration.

See, I get into something of a death spiral with very difficult games. I'll start with a cool head and good intentions, do reasonably well for awhile, and then, for whatever reason, start to screw up. "It's ok, stay loose." I tell myself, as if I've just taken a few shots in the boxing ring. Then I'll inevitably screw up a little bit again. I know, logically, that this is where I need to detach, and take a breath, put my head down and work. But no, the death spiral has begun.

"This sucks." I'll say to myself. "I could be doing something useful," a sniveling voice calls out in my head, "like learn Spanish. You need to learn Spanish. Why the fuck are you not learning Spanish right now?" That voice, while not entirely wrong, is such an asshole, and keeps me from enjoying a great deal of difficult games.

But, occasionally, I can get through them. I beat Bloodborne. Hell, I beat Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, another 2D game that plasters the screen (at times) with way too many obstacles and demands perfect timing. I can do this.

Oftentimes, it means listening to something else to literally drown out the sniveling voice. Podcasts. Chill music. GDC talks. Medical lectures, so I can convince the voice I'm learning something useful, and therefore, it can go fuck off for a bit. Last night, I actually had a Cuphead stream going in the background—Joseph Anderson, one of my favorite YouTube critics, was offering some light analysis of the game as he plowed through it. As cornball as it sounds, that provided the necessary motivation, and I got through that devilish first "run and gun" level that got VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi in such hot water earlier in the fall.

Weirdly enough, I found the first boss—or, one of the first bosses, The Root Pack—much easier than the side-scroller. I didn't find it easy, mind you, but I was able to make appreciable progress on each try, and playing on regular, I got the W without tossing a controller into orbit.

That progress was measured by Cuphead's smartest feature—when you die, you are able to see a representation of how far you got, and how close you were to the proverbial finish line. It feels very, very good to see your little avatar inch closer and closer to the end, and it feels even better when you do, finally, get that knockout wallop that signals a victory.

That's the other side of the good vs. bad frustration equation, of course. The harder you work for it, the sweeter the reward when you succeed.

At least, that's what everyone tells me. I think that's true, to a point! But after awhile, if you are so frustrated you aren't having fun anymore, victory feels more like a mild relief than an actual endorphin rush. Like you took a half dose of tylenol for your migraine, and the pain is now sitting at a 5 instead of an 8. You could be learning Spanish.

I think Cuphead rides this line, but I'm absolutely going to stick with it longer, because it does have significant hooks in me. It doesn't hurt that it is astoundingly good-looking, its Depression-era cartoon aesthetic both creepy and positively delicious at the same time.

And it does feel good to play, especially when I'm actually making progress. That boss battle that I finally beat was great—I failed a bunch, but I knew what I was doing wrong, and was able to make corrections and progress. That feeling—of learning, of getting it, of earning that W—is intoxicating, and I hope to find much more of that as I continue in its weird, beautiful world.

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