For my money, Cuphead has unrivaled art direction and animation in the gaming space, but how does it actually play? Is it fun or frustrating? Well, it depends which side you're talking about.
After trying Studio MDHR's run-and-gun title at E3, I'm with Steven: the boss fights -- the main appeal of Cuphead -- are lovely to look at and figure out on the fly. That's reassuring.
I tried one of the shoot-'em-up fights, "A Threatenin' Zeppelin," and lost track of how many attempts it took me to mostly get the patterns down and scrape by with an eventual win. But I loved it.
Between the pointy-nosed boss's projectile laughter (literal on-screen HA HAs), intermittent helper enemies flying in to pop off shots, a gargantuan tornado that tended toward my character's airplane, and homing star attacks, there was a lotta stuff coming my way. Still, I never got mad (and I say that as someone who is definitely capable of getting upset at tough games). I was too caught up with incrementally improving my reflexes and muscle memory. No matter how many times I crashed and burned, I always seemed to be on the cusp of breaking through. That's a great place to be.
The other level I played, a forested side-scrolling sequence, didn't go quite so well. If you saw that recent platformer gameplay video, you probably know the score by now -- it's a whole bunch of critters dropping in from all directions. They're incessant! I felt pressured to keep moving and shoot down only the ones directly blocking my path forward. Every second I spent killing stragglers was another second closer to getting hit and ultimately dying. Co-op helps mitigate this, sure, but there's also the level design itself. It felt rudimentary. Compared to the rest of Cuphead, that's a letdown.
I still very much anticipate the full game, and if you like the idea of a gorgeous-looking boss-rush game, you should too. I just fear it's going to be a bit uneven.
Japanese ceramic artist Haruya Abe shares short clips of a ceramic carving technique where top layers of porcelain are gently scraped away using a scalpel-like instrument. Not only does it create beautiful results, the process is just satisfying to watch. Given the same tools, I’d scrape these pieces into oblivion. You can see more photos and videos of Haruya’s studio work here. (via @StreetArtGlobe)
Movie-themed YouTube channel Now You See It (previously) takes a look at how the "dead parent" theme is used in movies, in different types of dialogue.
What makes dialogue work? Let's explore the power of dialogue in film and take a look at the offensively named "Dead Parent Test."
Whether you’re a frequent Costco shopper or not, you’ve likely heard by now of the new Costco Anywhere Visa® Card by Citi from our partner Citi. For years, Costco only accepted American Express credit cards, including their American Express Costco TrueEarnings card. This new...
Hyperkin toyed with gamers last year when it teased a peripheral that would play real Game Boy cartridges on your phone, but it wasn't just kidding around -- it's making good on its word. The company is now taking pre-orders for a Smart Boy Developme...
Want to feel the sea breeze on your face? Then attach a boat sun shade to your grill! Scientifically proven to make any backyard wind saltier and fresher! Someone bust out the chap stick!
Coursera, one of the best sources of MOOCs
(Massive Online Open Courses), is shutting down their old platform on June 30, and removing dozens of courses in the process. Here are two ways you can save all the course materials before they’re gone for good.
The Department of Defense's Hack the Pentagon program was apparently so successful, the agency has decided to extend and develop new initiatives for it. Similar to Facebook's, Twitter's and Google's bug bounty projects, Hack the Pentagon paid white h...
Scientists in Japan have successfully bred a set of genetically modified marmosets with Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and motor neurone (Lou Gehrig's) disease, The New Scientist reports today. The development could lead to major breakthrou...
If you wanted to be a tattoo artist but lost your drawing arm, what would you do? JC Sheitan Tenet has an answer: get a prosthetic arm that's better than flesh and bone. He teamed up with artist Gonzal on a steampunk-inspired limb that integrates a...
I had this girl in my class and she was considered to be like really dumb. She’d ask a ton of doubts and questions in class, which everybody would consider to be “stupid"and “silly” and even the teachers would often taunt her but she’d never stop asking. But the thing was that she’d almost always top the class examinations and everyone was like???? They all thought she was cheating and stuff and obviously even the teachers were very biased because she wasn’t so ‘smart’ in class, and she was regularly accused of cheating. But nobody could prove that she was actually cheating but the whole class and teachers totally believed that she did. I’m pretty socially awkward so I never really talked to her, but she was leaving school this year and I was genuinely curious about how she was so good during exams and how she didn’t let everyone’s remarks affect her. She always used to sit and hang out with only one girl, and she told me that that friend of hers was severely socially anxious and she’d lag in studies because she couldn’t bring herself to ask doubts in class or ask for help from others. So they had this system where during lectures her friend would write down any question she had, and she would ask them for her. And I was just so touched??? Idk but it really changed the way I looked at people?? This girl endured taunts and jeers and borderline bullying for being “stupid” when she was actually really smart and could easily have refused to ask such doubts for her friend but she did?? And brushed off everything others would throw at her for her friend?? I was just, idk it just really changed me in some way.
The physical limitations of existing materials are one of main problems when it comes to flexible electronics, be it wearables, medical or sports tech. If a flexible material breaks, it either stays broken, or if it has some self-healing properties i...
Storage in your laptop or smartphone is a compromise between volume, access speed and physical size. But, the industry's competition to shrink them while boosting their specifications is fierce. A few months after shipping a 16TB solid-state drive, S...
You would think that police would require a warrant to get your phone's location info, right? Not according to the US' Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. It just ruled that asking a company for cellphone location data you've offered to a third-party...
If you receive an email from Netflix or Facebook asking you to change your password because it matches a credential from an older security breach, you may want to heed its advice. Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs says some big companies, including th...
On What’s The Point, we often talk to people who are trying to gather data and build cohesive information in a new field. This week’s show is about that, but it’s also unlike any conversation I’ve had so far. Dr. Justin Schmidt, an entomologist, is obsessed with trying to codify the pain associated with various stinging insects. And the only way Schmidt has found to gather his data is by stinging himself, over and over, with more than 80 insects so far. His new book, “The Sting of the Wild,” chronicles that process.
The Schmidt Pain Index, as its informally known, runs from 1-4. The common honey bee serves as its anchor point, a solid 2. At the top end of the scale lie the bullet ant and the tarantula hawk (which is neither a tarantula nor a hawk; it’s a wasp).
Schmidt isn’t just measuring raw pain levels as he feels it, but also incorporating more subjective information into his data set. The honey bee sting is, as he writes, like “a flaming match head lands on your arm and is quenched first with lye and then sulfuric acid,” while a harvester ant produces “waves of deep, throbbing visceral pain.”
With all the stinging, Schmidt hopes not just to build a body of knowledge within entomology but also help us come closer to understanding what pain is and how to treat it.
Stream or download the full episode above, or subscribe using your favorite podcast app. Below, transcripts of a few highlights from the conversation, and a video showing Justin Schmidt at work.
What is pain?
Justin Schmidt: I view pain as the body’s indication that damage has occurred, is occurring or is about to occur. In other words, it’s really a warning. Pain in itself is not damage. You could say, to a certain extent, it’s a signal that is suitable for being “cheated,” which is what stinging insects do. They make this intense pain with their sting, which is cheating.
The amount of pain that you get in, say, a honey bee sting, is like putting your hand on a glowing red burner of a stove. But that does serious damage, and a honey bee doesn’t do any damage at all. You get a little swelling … maybe some itching, but you’re none the worse. You don’t have skin falling off or scars or real damage.
So it’s kind of cheating. It’s making you think that something really serious is happening to you. And yet it hasn’t. They’ve really won the psychological warfare game over us.
Our language for pain falls short
Jody Avirgan: We’ve been discussing how hard it is to discuss pain. I wonder if you feel there are implications there for the fact that there’s a growing crisis of addiction to pain medicine in this country. Does the fact that we don’t have reliable language play a part in that?
Schmidt: Exactly. That’s a real problem. We don’t have reliable language. Think of colors. We have hundreds of different names for different hues and tints. But there are just a very few words we use to describe pain. And it has to do with how we measure and how we quantify different kinds of pain and intensity and flavors of pain, so to speak. We don’t have good terms for either one of those.
I try to use “piercing” vs. “burning” and combine that with the 1-4 [scale] to give you intensity. But it’s really rather primitive, in retrospect. And it’s kind of a disappointment. I think [that] causes the medical profession a lot of trouble, because if you can’t precisely define something, it’s awfully hard to treat it.
If you’re a fan of What’s The Point, subscribe on iTunes, and please leave a rating/review — that helps spread the word to other listeners. And be sure to check out our sports show Hot Takedown as well. Have something to say about this episode, or have an idea for a future show? Get in touch by email, on Twitter, or in the comments.
by Beth Skwarecki on Vitals, shared by Kate Dries to Jezebel
If your gynecologist has turned down your request for an IUD in the past, it might be time for another try—or another doctor. Older rules said that women who had never given birth shouldn’t get IUDs. That changed years ago, and docs are slowly getting the memo.
Hyperkin toyed with gamers last year when it teased a peripheral that would play real Game Boy cartridges on your phone, but it wasn't just kidding around -- it's making good on its word. The company is now taking pre-orders for a Smart Boy Developme...
The Department of Defense's Hack the Pentagon program was apparently so successful, the agency has decided to extend and develop new initiatives for it. Similar to Facebook's, Twitter's and Google's bug bounty projects, Hack the Pentagon paid white h...
Scientists in Japan have successfully bred a set of genetically modified marmosets with Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and motor neurone (Lou Gehrig's) disease, The New Scientist reports today. The development could lead to major breakthrou...
If you wanted to be a tattoo artist but lost your drawing arm, what would you do? JC Sheitan Tenet has an answer: get a prosthetic arm that's better than flesh and bone. He teamed up with artist Gonzal on a steampunk-inspired limb that integrates a...
The physical limitations of existing materials are one of main problems when it comes to flexible electronics, be it wearables, medical or sports tech. If a flexible material breaks, it either stays broken, or if it has some self-healing properties i...
Storage in your laptop or smartphone is a compromise between volume, access speed and physical size. But, the industry's competition to shrink them while boosting their specifications is fierce. A few months after shipping a 16TB solid-state drive, S...
You would think that police would require a warrant to get your phone's location info, right? Not according to the US' Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. It just ruled that asking a company for cellphone location data you've offered to a third-party...
If you receive an email from Netflix or Facebook asking you to change your password because it matches a credential from an older security breach, you may want to heed its advice. Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs says some big companies, including th...
