Cuphead

Beneath its cute cartoon demeanor, Cuphead combines traditional platformers and bullet hell shooters into an exceedingly difficult but addictive game. In terms of aesthetics, there's no other game like this on the market. The creators have lovingly crafted a world that draws from the first golden age of western animation. Between its period-appropriate black and white animation and its original jazz and big band soundtrack, it evokes the old Silly Symphony and Betty Boop cartoons to an astoundingly precise degree. There are few if any games that have managed to look so precisely like an actual cartoon.

But most players won't have a lot of time to soak in the surroundings. This game is exceedingly difficult, and taking your eyes off the immediate action for a single moment is a recipe for death. That doesn't mean that it's impossible. While newer players unused to the unrelenting difficulty of older games might have a tough time getting acclimated, the difficulty never seems cheap. Deaths can almost always be credited to a mistake on the part of the player, and the controls feel smooth as butter, a necessity when you're playing a game that requires this level of immaculate precision to beat.

While the game is padded out with a number of lovely platforming sequences, the real heart of the game is in the boss battles, and they're both lovely and frustrating. Each of the 17 or so bosses is meticulously crafted, both in terms of loving animation and patterns. Cuphead draws from the games of the 16 bit era, where success largely comes down to recognizing patterns and then acting flawlessly to dodge those attacks and exploit weaknesses as they arise. The result is something of a puzzle game where a few deaths is practically a necessity and the path to success is tethered to your developing muscle memory. The designs are vibrant and varied, and over the course of the game you'll fight against dragons, living sunflowers, and the devil himself. There's also a good sense of pacing in these fights. While any particular challenge will rarely last more than two minutes, most bosses are broken up into phases. This allows you to learn their basic patterns in a less stressful scenario that only ramps up as they start to move faster and incorporate more moves into their repertoire. As for the platform sequences, they're lovely to look at and give you a chance to sit back, smell the roses, and soak up the sumptuous visuals in a way you can't during the boss battles, but they can't come close to matching the high octane thrills you'll find during the boss sequences. Cuphead can be played alone or with a local friend in two person multiplayer.