"See, the rub is that Cuphead is retro-style, but not in the usual sense, i.e., pixels the size of Plymouth; its deliberately fashioning itself after retro animation, in the style of Max Fleischer or very early Disney, and pulls that off with quite remarkable success! The film grain, the scratchy audio, the big brass band soundtrack, the fluid, exaggerated animation where characters all move like warmed-up gummy worms caught in the spokes of a bike; it all feels so bloody authentic! And most importantly, what a lot of people forget about early cartoons — here, we very unsubtly waggle our eyebrows at Epic Mickeys forgotten grave-site — is that they could be really fucking dark. See, back then, it wasnt generally understood that kids needed to have their delicate sensibilities protected, as odds were pretty good they were all going to die in a European trench war before they turned eighteen, anyway. So thematically, cartoons were lighter on wholesome lessons about friendship and heavier on skeletons and racism. So theres something overtly sinister about Cuphead, which might be from subtly wrong things like the drinking straw in our characters head — I mean, the teacup-head thing Id buy, but who the fuck drinks from a teacup with a straw? Thats just pushing it. But I think its the overall scratchy look and feel that makes me think the little girl from The Ring could push out of the screen at any moment and start making comical trombone noises."
Zero Punctuation is a series of video game reviews created by English comedy writer and video game journalist Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. From its inception in 2007, episodes were published weekly by internet magazine The Escapist. Episodes typically range from five to six minutes in length. Videos provide caustic humour, rapid-fire delivery, visual gags and critical insight into recently released vide
"Its like the series feels like its lost so much identity from cutting out the leather-clad titty monsters that its grabbing scrips and scraps from anything that it thinks people seem to like these days, trying to find a new niche before it throws up its hands, gives up, explodes all over the bedspread, and you spend the last few moments fighting a giant city-destroying naked woman clutching a broadsword. Well, good try, Team Ninja, you almost held out!"
Zero Punctuation"[About his hostage units on Escort Mission disappearing after a timer ran out] "We lost contact!" went the character... BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. (the words "WHAT. ARBITRARY. SILLINESS." appear in synchrony with his swearing). All possible threats were dead! We didnt lose contact - I was looking at them - They were RIGHT. FUCKING. THERE! They were so close we could communicate by waggling our eyebrows at each other! What the fuck happened when the stupid arbitrary time limit ran out!? Did their Battle Royale collars explode!? Did they lose honor and disembowel themselves? WHAT?! And just to put the cherry on it, you know who they were? Absolutely bloody no one! Generic faceless pricks of the sort Id vat-grown about fifty of that day alone! But we didnt make it in time, so they were going to make me do the whole fucking mission again! As the exasperated Chinese zookeeper said to the last male panda in the world, FUCK! THAT!"
Zero Punctuation"The environments do a good job of building atmosphere with eldritch light illuminating the mist that coils around the trees, flickering shadows making an innocent mulberry bush momentarily look like a round-shouldered murderer with an axe and a massive erection. Its just that the game is fully aware that it does dark spooky forests best but little else, so every half hour it has to contrive a new reason for Alan to be lost in a spooky forest at night. Its like a crime drama about a detective who can only concentrate when hes around pastry, so every week the crime has to conveniently take place in a bakery or within walking distance of a pie shop."
Zero Punctuation"Theres nothing fun about the game! No light relief, just one piece of nauseating unpleasantness after another, like a roadside café breakfast special by Jeffrey Dahmer. I know Io Interactive are better than this. Hitman: Blood Money was a baldy-headed barrel of fun. Since then, though, Io were bought out by Square Enix so Im gonna blame them. Fuck off, Square Enix! Kane & Lynch 2 sucks so many dicks it now breathes spunk instead of air!"
Zero Punctuation"For the uninitiated, Sam Stone is a nineties action-hero graduate from the Duke Nukem correspondence course with some kind of unclear role in the military, and who started showing up to work one day in a customized t-shirt and jeans. And no one wanted to complain in case he blew cigar smoke in their face, or shagged their mums."
Zero Punctuation"3D Mario Land Super is a Mario game in which you jump on things in covetous pursuit of stars and coins, like you didnt already know that. How does it differentiate itself? Well, the standard policy with a new Mario game seems to be to write down every feature from every previous Mario game on Post-It Notes, stick them all to a wall, and throw a fucking dart. And in the case of Super Mario 3D Mario Super, it landed on the raccoon tails from Mario 3, a dart throw everyone was so fucking pleased with that they felt they had to base the whole game around it, handing out raccoon tails to half the enemies and stationary objects too. Although considering the original Japanese Mario 3 was more faithful in its depiction of the folkloric tanuki, Im hoping theres a version of this game knocking around somewhere where every enemy has a big, hairy scrotum dangling underneath in which case its the Thwomps I feel sorry for."
Zero Punctuation