God of War spawned countless 'beefy dude hacking things up' clones. That's why popular things are called 'trendsetters': ecause they start trends. Sure, the new game might be banking on love and recognition of something already popular and established, but this is incredibly common within literally every artform in existence. What exactly makes this one worthy of so much hatred? Drawing upon and even reskinning previous games isn't exactly new within the video game world. The developers never pretended that it wasn't directly inspired by Cuphead. At the same time, it's very strange that anybody is so angry about it. To be clear, if anyone doesn't want to play Enchanted Portals because it's so obviously based on Cuphead, that's totally within their rights. But Cuphead does not hold a monopoly on this style or concept, all of which are also derivative of other artistic things that came before it. The real genius of Cuphead was combining these elements in such a neat, well-designed package. It didn't invent run-and-gun gameplay or boss-centric shoot-em-ups, either, which can be respectively attributed to '80s arcade franchises like Contra and Mega Man for NES. Moreover, Cuphead didn't invent rubber hose animation, which was popularized by classic Disney cartoons of the 1930s. It doesn't steal the source code, it doesn't steal the world or the characters, and until the game comes out, nobody even knows if or how it builds upon the general mechanics. That doesn't make it plagiarism, or anything even close. But.so what? The game is a clear homage to Cuphead.

Judging from the trailer, Enchanted Portals is stylistically derivative of Cuphead in just about every way. In fact, the creators have confirmed this fact on their official Facebook page: 'We are avids fans of Cuphead and were inspired by it to create something similar, but we're trying to give it a different spin and making it our own thing.'Įnchanted Portals borrows a lot from Cuphead, including the rubber hose animation style (defined by jointless, 'rubber hose' limbs), run-and-gun, boss-centric gameplay model, and even the jaunty jazz music. For reference, here's the Enchanted Portals trailer:Įnchanted Portals Kickstarter Trailer And here's the trailer for Cuphead:Ĭuphead E3 2015 Trailer for Xbox One So right up front, Enchanted Portals does, indeed, appear to be overwhelmingly inspired by Cuphead.

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