Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course Review – Tasty Sips From A Worthy Grail

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Studio MDHR
Developer: Studio MDHR
Rating: Everyone 10+

Cuphead’s long-awaited and aptly named The Delicious Last Course serves up a wonderful final dish that acts more like a satisfying dessert than a full second helping. Though not long, it offers an enjoyable batch of devilish boss battles and a welcomed addition in the now playable Ms. Chalice.

Ms. Chalice sports a unique moveset such as a double-jump, a dodge roll that can safely bypass hazards, and even one extra health point. She’s a blast to use, and I loved taking advantage of her added maneuverability. Does she make Cuphead an easier experience? Somewhat, but she doesn’t turn the game into a cakewalk. Rather, she gives players more options to work with, which in a way makes her a more advanced character because of how I had to alter my playstyle to account for her new tricks. 

I like that she subtly encourages aggression by having a dash parry instead of the jumping version, meaning I had to hurtle towards danger to repel offense skillfully. Her ultimate attack, a vertical energy column, requires getting up close and personal with foes, rewarding boldness with big hits. I also enjoyed taking Ms. Chalice through the base game and tackling familiar bosses with her unique traits. She provides newcomers a great alternative from the get-go while giving veterans a new way to topple familiar baddies. Ms. Chalice also makes the base game’s polarizing run-and-gun stages more tolerable. 

It doesn’t matter how many jumps or hit points you have if you don’t know how to use them. The Delicious Last Course presents a platter of delightful yet demanding boss battles that, in most cases, pushed my skills to the brink. I highly recommend returning players warm up by replaying a boss or two in the base game before jumping into this expansion. Since you can access the DLC early, first-timers should at least complete the first island before tackling the new content. 

From evading tennis balls and laser fire atop an airplane in a topsy-turvy dogfight to fending off sentient ice pops while fighting a snow wizard, these entertaining new foes relish in throwing everything everywhere all at once. I’d say they rank with the battles from Cuphead’s final third in terms of difficulty, as the challenge comes in parsing multiple projectiles and weaving between them while unleashing hell yourself. Design-wise, these adversaries match the whimsy of the original rogues gallery, and it’s just as fun (and stress-inducing) watching, for example, a gangster spider take on multiple new forms. 

Only one boss has a final twist that felt more cheap than fun since it remaps the controls with little time to adjust. Skill matters most, but trial and error remains an occasionally frustrating element of the experience. Taking damage from a new attack I couldn’t have expected, like having a bad guy drop on my head without any indication on where it could arrive, is still annoying. But each opponent feels conquerable, no matter if you’re Ms. Chalice or Cuphead/Mugman.

Surprisingly, the revamped parry challenges became my favorite encounters of The Delicious Last Course. An evolution of the base game’s mausoleum mini-games, which were decent but one-note, this new take pits players against five unique bosses that can only be defeated by utilizing the parry move in increasingly creative ways. I loved flexing my platforming prowess and timing by carefully bouncing on the weak point of a horse knight or repelling severed heads back at an executioner. Most importantly, these levels forced me to think about how to attack. Any enemy in Cuphead can be dropped by holding down the fire button but figuring out different methods of using a defensive maneuver offensively became an exciting combat puzzle. Since The Delicious Last Course ditches platforming levels, these arena battles offer an awesome break from the primary confrontations. I’d love to see more of them. 

Our heroes can outfit themselves with new powers, such as a lightning-flavored version of the spread shot or tornados that fire upwards, ideal for hitting airborne targets. My hands-down favorite became the Crackshot, powerful projectiles that break into smaller bullets that nail the nearest target. They fit well with the existing arsenal.

I’d be remiss not to mention the soundtrack. Cuphead has one of the best scores in modern gaming, and The Delicious Last Course carries that banner with some finger-wagging new tunes. The new main menu theme manages to top the original intro song by a mile.

The Delicious Last Course sends our jolly beverage containers off on a high note. It offers an entertaining final exam of your skills while also freshening up the original adventure by giving players a cool new character to enjoy. It’s more Cuphead at the end of the day, but I had a great time revisiting Studio MDHR’s wonderful animated universe, testing my mettle against its villains, and feeling fist-pumping triumph all over again. 

How To Access The DLC: To play The Delicious Last Course, you’ll need to have completed at least one mausoleum stage. You’ll find a new character outside of each isle's mausoleum who takes players to the DLC’s new area. Those playing Cuphead for the first time or with a new save who want to play the new content immediately will need to beat two bosses in Isle 1 (“Botanic Panic” and “Clip Joint Calamity”) to reach the first Mausoleum and, in turn, The Delicious Last Couse.

Score: 8.75

About Game Informer's review system

Purchase

Read More

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Review - Harrowing Hunts

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: Switch, PC
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom

Monster Hunter Rise was one of my favorite games from 2021. I played dozens of hours on Switch and, in preparation for this review, gladly worked through the required Hub quests to make sure I was ready to dive straight into Sunbreak. Capcom’s new expansion is a great time for existing hunters with fun new monsters to fight and added flexibility to its combat systems, but the slow rollout of meaningful new content causes the experience to drag until the later stages of the main campaign.

Sunbreak takes hunters across a grand body of water, away from Rise’s Japanese-centric Kamura Village and into the European-inspired Kingdom region. There, a powerful trio of monsters called The Three Lords terrorizes the land, while other creatures from this area appear in far-off regions like Kamura, creating cause for hunters to take quests in the previously available Rise locations. Elgado Outpost, the new base of operations, is small and uninteresting, leaving little to do other than the necessary loop of crafting gear and preparing for the upcoming hunt. It merely serves the bare minimum of providing convenient vendors and quest givers, and while that’s all it really needs to be, I wish Capcom put as much care put into the environment as it did in Kamura Village.

The expansion shines in the proper monster hunts. Sunbreak introduces a handful of great monsters to complement the original roster from Rise but doles them out at a painfully slow clip. The big three creatures at the center of Elgado’s woes are Garangolm, Lunagaron, and the vampire-inspired flagship monster Malzeno. They serve as gatekeepers to stepping up through the levels of Master Rank questing, and each one offers a unique challenge in combat and awesome new gear to craft. However, to even challenge the first of these, I had to battle through a selection of monsters I’ve already bested many times since Rise’s release.

The expansion kicks off the new Master Rank difficulty with a new creature to the game, Damiyo Hermitaur, a returning hermit crab monster from an earlier entry in the series. Following that, the game then reverts to slightly harder renditions of the same hunts that are available in Low and High-Rank quests. The creatures have new moves and characteristics that add complexity and complications to well-known fights. Still, these missions are well-worn territory for experienced Monster Hunter players. I expected the existing roster to be utilized but starting off with a majority of slightly adapted old encounters is a boring way to begin what’s supposed to be an exciting expansion. With that being said, after hours of progression, more monsters arrive, and each one is a desperate and needed shot of variety to the slate of available hunts. Taking on The Three Lords, returning favorites Astalos and Seregios, and subspecies variants like Magma Almudron are fun and rewarding battles to master.

Monster Hunter’s environments are just as important as the targets themselves. Jungle, a stage from the second Monster Hunter generation, makes its return to Sunbreak. For many, it will be a fantastic piece of nostalgia, but after a few hunts, it starts to feel small and uncomplicated compared to other locations in Rise. Another new, more critical arena addition called The Citadel features all kinds of little enclaves and paths that make the region seem dense with traversal and tracking options. It’s also full of various biomes like a dreary resin swamp that slows monsters and hunters alike, a cave gleaming with the sheen of a coating of ice, and a crumbling castle that makes battles with Elder Dragons and other massive monsters feel all the more epic. New endemic life like Marionette Spiders can trip up monsters, and insects that affect Wyvern Riding are scattered throughout all of the maps, introducing fun new strategies to deal with monsters on a hunt.

Bumping up the difficulty to Master Rank will naturally make things harder on players, but each iteration of Monster Hunter also brings needed quality of life changes. Switch Skill Swap offers a way to change up your weapon-specific attacks on the fly in combat. You can equip five moves to two loadouts, and by pressing a series of buttons, switch between the two sets of maneuvers whenever you feel the need. I’d keep my most reliable hammer skills applied to my main set of Switch Skills, and when I need a specific Silkbind attack to advance on a monster quickly, I can swap them out to utilize my extra kit of moves. I love the flexibility Switch Skill Swap provides and the agency it offers players to mold a preferred playstyle into the typically rigid weapon archetypes.

 

More quest variety is available through the new single-player-only Follower Quests that let me take the various characters from around Elgado Outpost and Kamura Village out on hunts. Guest hunters like Lady Fiorayne and Admiral Galleus have specific weapon specialties and can join hunters on these quests. I was hoping these missions would add a new narrative twist to Monster Hunter, but outside of having an NPC fighting alongside me, occasionally quipping throughout, Follower Quests play out like any other average hunt. However, they help in learning how to take on new monsters and often act as a training mission rewarding monster materials to craft gear for harder solo tasks.

I’ve had a great time with Sunbreak overall. The lack of new monsters plagues the early hours, but there’s plenty to love if you keep at it. The added flexibility of the Switch Skill Swap system is a freeing and fun expansion to combat for hardcore hunters and the new creatures in the Master Rank quests – when you get to them – breathe life into the experience. For someone already invested in Monster Hunter, there’s plenty to love in Sunbreak. Just don’t expect to see a lot of new content in the opening hours.

Score: 7.75

About Game Informer's review system

Purchase

Read More

Sonic Origins Review - A Potent Pack Of Nostalgia

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega
Rating: Everyone

While fans often debate the merits of modern Sonic the Hedgehog video games, the consensus is that the ‘90s were the franchise’s most consistently great years. Sonic Origins gathers the four games most attributed to that notion, delivering a stellar group of classic titles at its core. But through several modernizations and updates, Sonic Origins makes a strong case for being the best official way to experience Sonic’s heyday in 2022.

Playing through the four games of this collection – Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD – remains astoundingly fun. Sure, some frustrating design elements of Sonic 1 and CD haven’t aged as gracefully as the other two games, but these are all bona fide classics in the 2D platforming genre. Speeding through Chemical Plant Zone is just as fun today as it was on Genesis, and I couldn’t have stopped the smile that spread across my face if I tried when the opening scene of Sonic 3 played.

Sonic Origins provides easy access to all four of these beloved titles with new, gorgeously animated, bookended cutscenes. You can play them in Classic Mode, with the original aspect ratio and limited lives system preserved, or you can play the preferred Anniversary Mode. Here, the aspect ratio natively fits widescreen monitors, Sonic can access the drop-dash move from Sonic Mania, and the limited lives system is removed. Instead of earning extra lives through play in Anniversary Mode, you earn coins, which can be traded in the museum for cool digital collectibles like old illustrations, videos, music, and even snippets from the Sonic 30th Anniversary Symphony performance. These items are likely available online, but they’re nice celebratory bonuses in the in-game museum.

 

However, my favorite thing to do with my coins was using them as extra tries in the tricky special stages. No matter the game, few moments in these early Sonic titles are more frustrating than failing a special stage and knowing you need to find another entry point to try again. The coin system in Anniversary Mode alleviates that frustration without taking away the tension since you still must execute a near-perfect run to claim the prize.

For those wanting new experiences, Mission Mode lets you tackle remixed experiences within stages from each of the four titles. Completing objectives like defeating a certain number of enemies or collecting a set number of rings earns you additional coins and placement on the leaderboard. While the missions start simple, they increase in difficulty as you unlock more of them, providing plenty of surprises and fun twists for long-standing fans. Also, once you complete a game for the first time, you unlock Mirror Mode, where you can play the stages from right to left. Finally, each game has a Boss Rush Mode, where you can battle the biggest baddies consecutively. Mirror Mode and Boss Rush are entertaining diversions, but I don’t see myself playing through entire games backwards or attempting the boss gauntlets more than a couple times.

While the games are faithfully represented and still largely fun to play, a few audio issues tarnish the experience. In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, a few zones use different music than the Genesis release, seemingly due to licensing issues of the original tracks. Zones like Ice Cap and Launch Base just don’t feel the same without their iconic tracks pushing the action forward. The different music removes much of the nostalgia of these stages, and the replacement songs are substantially weaker than the original tracks. Still, if the alternative was Sonic 3’s exclusion from the bundle, I’d rather lose those songs than arguably the best game in the saga.

But the most egregious audio issue comes in Sonic 2. In that game, if Tails falls behind (which happens frequently), instead of respawning and flying back to you, he constantly jumps, triggering the sound on repeat until you either enter a special stage, complete the level, or one of you dies. This issue overshadows the excellent soundtrack of that game and made me often put it on mute to make playing through it tolerable.

While the music changes and audio mishaps are disappointing, the Sonic Origins package is terrific overall. Having the best versions of the classic Sonic saga in one bundle is supremely satisfying, and Anniversary Mode’s enhancements make the experience of playing through them more enjoyable than ever before. Even in a gaming landscape where most of these games are already available to download on every platform, Sonic Origins is a worthwhile package.

Score: 8.5

About Game Informer's review system

Purchase

Read More