Cuphead - 1930's cartoon side-scroller

This is out on Friday. Barring mediocre reviews, this is a Day 1 purchase for me I think. It should be a fun one to have as a second game for when I don’t feel like partaking in Destiny.

Off topic: Forza 7 also comes out this week. Their demo really turned me off though. It hogs way too many resources on my Xbox One. When the demo is running, the Xbox One struggles to even load the dashboard for god’s sake.

This is the kind of thing I was afraid of, with original XB1s only technically able to run some titles that are primarily focused on XBX performance. Too much of that and it can hurt the brand by giving the impression that relying on promises of forward compatibility is not viable.

I can’t really explain why, but I feel no draw, no pull from this game. Watching the videos I think they look interesting but they inspire an interest in watching some old Looney Toons more than an interest in playing. I’m hoping for some good impressions in the thread though.

I used to feel the same until I watched that “Dean embarrasses himself” video. What really charmed me was that even when I’m embarrassing myself while playing this, it still looks and feels like an old timey cartoon.

I am open to changing my mind. Need to get a better idea of how frustrating the experience really is, like on a scale from Dark Souls to Ninja Gaiden.

Digital Foundry has been checking Forza 7 on the regular One and confirms it runs pretty much at a flawless 1080p 60fps. Not sure how that game confirms your fears.

But what about the standard Xbox One version? Well, the good news here is that despite some graphical reductions in a few areas, the game still looks great, with crisp image quality and solid performance. Resolution comes in at native 1080p, while performance is locked at the desired 60fps. Whether bunched up with other cars at the starting grid, or driving through heavy rain, the game never loses its silky smooth 60Hz refresh. The experience remains consistently fluid and responsive throughout, and what’s impressive here is that in many areas the visuals are reasonably comparable to PC and Xbox One X.

It’s just a concern at this point, as noted by the quoted text.

I have noticed that Turn 10 seems to get access to system resources more than other studios. Other studios have to follow Microsoft’s guidelines on what resources they can use. I think their internal studios have been allowed to bend the rules.

For example, Forza 5 used to run even with Snap mode, but the item you were viewing in Snap mode always ran like shit. Compare that to 3rd party games, like Destiny, where snap mode apps ran perfectly smoothly.

Now Snap mode is gone. But you can still play Destiny 2, then switch to Live TV, watch some Vietnam War. Pause it. Go back to Destiny 2, and the game runs fine from where you were (as long you weren’t gone for too long and didn’t get disconnected from their server). You can go back to TV, unpause it, watch some more. And switch back and forth.

But not so much with the Forza 7 demo. When you go to the desktop, it can’t handle running it in the background. The desktop also takes forever to load. And then if you’re recording liveTV in the background, that gets nixed as well, because the Forza 7 demo clearly is taking more resources than 3rd party games again.

A friend told me to check out the OST of this game and it I am really into it. Will be purchasing on release

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLrQGgiZcgA

Sounds incredible. I’d love to buy this, but looks like can’t without the game (except on vinyl).

Can we get back to talking about Forza 7?

I keed, I keed.

This was an interesting video from GDC:

They’ve really tried to keep everything rooted in the 1930s, including a live recorded jazz band soundtrack.

It’s out!

Awesome. In spite of lacking a good way to play at the moment, I’m going to buy it b/c I want to support their artwork.

Playing this co-op and it’s bloody hard. A typical exchange between me and my girlfriend while playing:

“Shit.”
“I can’t believe I just ran into that.”
“Bollocks.”
“God, it’s so pretty–ah crap.”
“Who put that mushroom there?”
“Fuck.”
“Argh, I hate those acorns.”
“Parry me! Don’t shoot me!”
“Gah, retry.”
“Shall we try Simple?”

Cuphead bingo!

All day Friday and Saturday, I kept getting an error on my Xbox when I tried to load the Microsoft Store. I was hoping it would be fixed. Or that they would provide a direct link to the game on the Xbox Dashboard somewhere.

Last night before I went to bed, I finally got tired of waiting. If Microsoft wasn’t going to promote their game on their dashboard, I was still going to buy it anyway. I restarted the Xbox, and went to the search bar and found it, and started the download.

Still a pretty shitty way to treat their own game though. At least they’re promoting it on the Steam front page. Maybe that’s where they expect to get most of their sales.

I wish this were out on the PS4 or the Switch. I bought it on Steam, but have to run a bunch of cables, move crap around, and reboot my computer into Bootcamp in order to play. Oh well, I wanted to support the devs. Initial impressions:

  • The jackass who got stuck on the tutorial… I tried a dash. Nope. I tried a jump. Nope. I tried a dash-jump. Nope. I then read the actual text there (along the lines of “you can use dash on the ground or in the air”) and did it immediately. Press jump then press dash in the air. Total time spent was < 20 seconds.

  • The art is phenomenal. I hope the game gets nominated for an Academy Award for best animated short or something. It’s truly a work of love and labor.

  • The game is extremely difficult. As a Spelunky lover, it’s perfect. :) I look forward to more playtime.

I’m really loving it so far. The intro and tutorial and shop, and the Run and Gun level that we saw in the Dean video above is what I’ve done so far. It is indeed very hard, but so far, the controls seem really good. Unlike in Spelunky where I could never felt like I could get the character to do exactly what I wanted to do, here I feel like I have very good control.

The art is just so good. Even the loading screen hour glass in enchanting to me.

Any word if this will come out on Switch? It’s my favorite platform for uh… platformers.

Unlikely. MS funded a lot of the development and the dev team have said it is a Windows and Xbone exclusive but that future Cuphead releases would be multi platform. Too bad, because MS could make a lot more money going multiplatform with it than hoping it is a console seller. That said, maybe they will relent in the Spring when sales have slowed.

I’m curious, if this was a PS4 exclusive funded by Sony, would people really claim that Sony would make a lot more money going multiplatform?

On one hand, Microsoft gets a ton of shit for not having enough exclusives, but on the other hand, when they finally have one, they get shit for it being exclusive. Go figure.