#Cuphead free download xbox one professional#
Your colonists are not professional settlers – they’re crash-landed survivors from a passenger liner destroyed in orbit. The challenges of surviving in a disease-infested, choking jungle are very different from those in a parched desert wasteland or a frozen tundra with a two-month growing season. Different areas have different animals, plants, diseases, temperatures, rainfall, mineral resources, and terrain.
You choose whether to land your crash pods in a cold northern tundra, a parched desert flat, a temperate forest, or a steaming equatorial jungle. The game generates a whole planet from pole to equator. Randy Random does crazy stuff, Cassandra Classic goes for rising tension, and Phoebe Chillax likes to relax. There are several storytellers to choose from. Every thunderstorm, pirate raid, and travelling salesman is a card dealt into your story by the AI Storyteller. It works by controlling the “random” events that the world throws at you. It's the very best that the Xbox One has to offer this year and a victory for the program.īe sure to keep up with the rest of The Shacknews Awards as we celebrate the Year of the Games: 2017.It’s designed to co-author tragic, twisted, and triumphant stories about imprisoned pirates, desperate colonists, starvation and survival. And once they go down, the sense of triumph that courses through the veins is the very best of gaming.Ĭuphead is a 2D masterpiece, both a nostalgic throwback and a modern classic. It's the belief that these titans can be toppled. But the gradual push towards perfection is the ultimate incentive. No matter how frustrating Cuphead can get, the stylish art, whimsical characters, and toe-tapping soundtrack are enough reason to keep trying. While Cuphead's art is the essence of classic cartoons, its gameplay foundation is the very essence of old-school gaming. It's a matter of reflexes, memorizing enemy patterns, and persistence. But because the boss patterns are so consistent, it allows for continued improvement. Yes, more often than not, players will die again and again. But what helps make Cuphead so great is that the difficulty is both crushing and entirely fair.
It will chew you up and spit you out, all while offering a different quip from every boss, for every one of their phases.
Of course, all of that precedes the fact that Cuphead is brutally difficult.
And the game's characters are all unforgettable, looking like they could fit in any number of classic shorts from Disney, MGM, or Universal. Everything from the front-end menus to the credits all the way to the system notifications are rendered in that old-school, grainy film aesthetic. It's a gorgeous 1930s cartoon come to life. From a visual standpoint, there isn't much to say about Cuphead's art style that hasn't already been said. Studio MDHR's debut effort took years to get off the ground, but the time and effort proved worthwhile. That game was Cuphead, Shacknews Best Xbox One Game of 2017. But there was one big-time indie game that looked to fill that void. There weren't a lot of first-party blockbusters or major exclusives. While Microsoft finished the year on a strong note in terms of hardware, with the release of the Xbox One X, 2017 hasn't been the best year for the company in terms of great games.