Cuphead Gamescom Demo: Dean’s Shameful 26 Minutes Of Gameplay

Updated description from GamesBeat PC gaming editor Jeff Grubb: GamesBeat lead writer and reporter Dean Takahashi doesn’t really play platformers or sidescrolling action games. He’s bad at them. But since he was the only member of our staff in Germany during the time of Gamescom, he agreed to try it out for us. What would happen next would change all of our lives forever because no one knew Dean could be *this* bad. When Dean came back from Germany and explained that his Cuphead gameplay was terrible, we weren’t going to be the only ones to suffer through seeing it. So we decided to put it online so everyone else could pull their hair out and scream “DAMMIT DEAN!“ along with the GamesBeat staff. We posted this video as an embed in a story titled “Cuphead Gamescom hands-on: My 26 minutes of shame with an old-time cartoon game.“ At that time, the video was just titled “Cuphead gameplay: It’s not easy.“ Unfortunately, the video in isolation on YouTube lacked the full context. It didn’t explain that we were posting this as a joke. A shitlord on Twitter also linked to this video and claimed these are the same people doing reviews. People came to the conclusion that this video was somehow part of a review, and the clip and this description did not provide the proper context to correct those assumptions. That is our fault. None of this excuses the racism, sexism (why is your go-to insult for a bad gamer always a woman?), death threats, calls for suicide, or really even the anger that drove people to demand anything of Dean or us. If this video frustrated you, we get that. That was the point, but it’s worth a laugh and not much else. A group of people want to use this clip -- the only one of the handful he recorded at Gamescom that suggests he lacks competency -- and a Mass Effect review from a decade ago that he had to retract to justify their claims that he should not have his job and needs to be fired. In the process, you have to be intentionally ignorant of the rest of his career. But let’s ignore the books he’s written about the Xbox and Xbox 360 and the scoops he’s had about Blizzard canceling Titan or the reach of the RROD scandal. Let’s just focus on Gamescom. In addition to Gamescom, he recorded this Assassin’s Creed Origins gameplay that is completely competent. And as of the time of this writing, it hasn’t even been bombarded with dislikes: If you’re just asking him to display competency in games, there it is. There are more videos of him doing the same in a variety of games. So to make this about Dean lacking the skill to competently do his job is simply dishonest. If you want to hold us accountable for something real, try this: we published the article with the claim that StudioMDHR made Super Meat Boy before making Cuphead. That was careless and inexcusable. We have to do better. But if you make this about some sort of culture war or gatekeeping, you’re buying into a narrative of people who are trying to manipulate you. If you want more on that, I invite you to read Dean’s column about this experience: If you read through all of this, thank you. I’m sorry that we failed to provide the context to enable you to enjoy this video in the way that we intended. I’m sorry we missed the factual error. If that’s not good enough for you, and you want to swear off ever consuming our content, that is your right. If something makes you mad, don’t ever let anyone make you feel like you have to keep it in your life. If you do come back, well ... I’m going to try to get Dean to play through all of Cuphead in a video series that we should probably call Game Crimes. We’ll see if we can make that happen.