Cuphead

Cuphead is a run-and-gun platformer renowned above all for its unique visual style, which faithfully imitates the hand-drawn, rubber-hose animation of American cartoons from the 1930s, complete with period film-reel imperfections and a jazz score recorded by a live orchestra. Playing as Cuphead or his brother Mugman, the player tries to pay off a gambling debt to the devil by defeating a gallery of bizarre bosses scattered across a storybook island map, where giant frogs, carrots, and rowdy circus characters await.

The core of the game consists almost entirely of boss fights, each with several distinct phases and unique attack patterns that the player must learn through observation and repetition before being able to survive them without losing all three lives. Shooting in every direction, dodging, the parry mechanic on pink objects, and a quick dash all demand precision and flawless timing, and the game is deliberately designed to be very demanding, which has made it a favorite title among fans of old-school arcade difficulty. Besides the boss fights, the game also includes several classic platforming levels with their own enemies and jumps between platforms, as well as a two-player co-op mode in which both players face the same boss and must coordinate their attacks and movement.

On PlayStation 5, where the game arrived several years after its original release on other platforms, Cuphead runs perfectly smoothly, and its hand-painted graphics look just as stunning as they did at its 2017 debut. The game had already been praised as a technical and artistic gem from the moment it came out, and its later arrival on PlayStation let a new generation of players experience a title that has since become an icon of independent game development and even inspired a full animated Netflix series that brought its art style to an even wider audience beyond gamers.

Why play it: For nostalgics and newcomers alike who want to experience hand-painted graphics and an uncompromising difficulty in a title that has since become an icon of independent development and the basis for a Netflix series.