Let me start out by saying that Cuphead is a fantastic game! The controls are tight and responsive. As others have said, the control is so good that when you die it really feels like your own fault, instead of a cheap glitch in the game or sloppy coding. On the subject of control, I started playing the game with M+KB but migrated to an Xbox 360 controller (or a clone of one anyway), and enjoy playing the game much more. Playing 2P can be a curse or a blessing. The ability to be revived by a teammate is great but can be distracting for the teammate. The resilience of the enemies increases when two people are playing, but immediately scales back down if a downed teammate could not be revived. This is just plain thoughtful programming, and a nice touch! Another plus for co-op play is that it doesn't matter who collects the coins in R+G missions or in the world map, you both get the same amount of coins added to your collection. Even if one day you decide to play solo, and end up collecting 'x' amount of coins. The next time player 2 joins the game they receive the same amount of coins that you'd collected without them. I really enjoy the semi-random nature of the boss battles. I say semi-random because while there are certain scripted events that always happen in the same order, some elements of the battles (bullet spread, type of enemy encountered, etc) are random and thus cannot be memorized. This adds to both the challenge and fun factor. Animations, music (even if jazz isn't your cupa), variety, replay value, etc... are all top notch! Honestly I found myself laughing more often than not when I was defeated. Unlike some games, defeat gives you a sense that you need to reflect on what you did wrong and try again, instead of trying to find a way around a "cheap" enemy or overly challenging terrain element. Give it a try. I'm almost positive that at some point you'll need to take the quartet's advice due to the addictive nature of this game.
