One of the new bosses in the Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course is the Howling Aces. You fight with them in Doggone Dogfight. They are the Pineapple Mint’s keepers. In this guide, we will cover how to beat The Howling Ace in Cuphead DLC.
The Howling Aces are a Saluki with a gigantic Dog Chinook chopper and two enormous paws, four pups with jetpacks, and a bulldog on an airplane.
Howling Aces Boss is one of the many bosses that is easy-to-see yet difficult-to-play game will make you face. For help on bosses such as Chef Saltbaker, Esther Winchester, Mortimer Freeze, and more head on over to our Guides section. That said, now lets jump into the guide.
How to beat The Howling Ace
Intro
The Saluki salutes and that is the indicator that the boss fight is about to begin. Flight of the Chinook itself is to the right. The Bulldog appears in the backdrop and attempts to startle the player by flying up from behind in a fighter plane. When McGrowl returns to the top of the screen, the fight starts.
Phase 1
Canteen Hughes controls the plane from where the player is standing; to move left or right, the player must stand on the corresponding wing. Only McGrowl himself can be hit; his plane is immune to attacks. This puts the players in a position where they have to carefully manage Canteen’s plane and strategically shoot accurate shots.
McGrowl jumps off the plane and does one of 2 attacks:
- McGrowl puts on a jetpack and carries a cat like a rocket launcher with one arm. Three yarn balls that can be dodged or dashed over are fired as he squeezes the cat in his arm.
- McGrowl uses his hat as a parachute and flies downwards. He does three flexes, each one firing the bone tattoo on his arm, before flying back up through an updraft. The bones fly towards the direction of the player, they stop to wait on the opposite side, and then travel backward again.
Three tennis balls can be thrown up by the pups inside the four hatches on the jet itself, and they can land on the player.
Once the Boss has received a certain amount of damage, The Dog Chinook appears in the backdrop on the left and begins launching fire hydrant missiles at random areas. Basic projectiles that follow the player and can be destroyed are the fire hydrants.
Once McGrowl’s health is completely finished he disappears into the distance and the fighter explodes. The four puppies inside the aircraft take off on jetpacks.
Phase 2
The four pups appear around Canteen’s plane as it slowly rises up and slowly starts rotating in either direction.
Randomly barking letters that spin around and spell “BOWWOW” at the player is the Kibble Squad. Even when avoided, the letters continue to flow in the same direction toward the player’s previous position. The surviving puppies begin to bark at the player more quickly when each dog is defeated.
When a dog is knocked unconscious, their jetpack starts to smoke and explode, and they wave their arms around in a frantic manner while flying away in the background. As soon as the final opponent is vanquished, the Chinook advances.
Phase 3
The Dog Chinook passes by in the backdrop as Canteen’s jet returns to earth before coming to a rest in the center, behind it. The Chinook then extends its paws to the sides of the screen.
Random laser beams emerge from the Chinook’s paw pads, sending a diagonal laser down at the aircraft. A jump is necessary to avoid one sequence in which a pair of rays at the bottom blast a pink laser over the area the player is standing at. This laser can be blocked with a quick jump followed by a parry. Three times in a random order, one to two lases can be fired simultaneously. The health of the bosses can be reduced by shooting the lasers.
Following the laser display, the Dog Chinook turns its body counterclockwise and flips the entire screen onto its side. Captain Bluebell is visible on the Chinook’s tongue at the controls as it opens its mouth. You can directly hit him at this moment. Although there is no space between its sets of fangs, keen eyes may detect that the Chinook’s square teeth change from being teeth to fangs when switching to this sequence.
With their eyes closed, Captain Bluebell swiftly begins operating the controls. The Chinook’s eyes start to spew out red and yellow dog bowls. Once they reach a particular point in their fall, both bowls begin to fly in the direction of the player. Red bowls are thrown across at the player’s standing position. Players can dodge them by jumping. Yellow Bowls cross the field at a slightly greater altitude. Players must duck beneath them because jumping over them might not be possible.
Captain Bluebell will stop tapping buttons after she has dusted her hands. The Chinook closes its jaws once more and flips the screen in the opposite direction, returning to the laser sequence but with the screen now facing the wrong way. Then, on the subsequent laser sequence, the transition from the bowl sequence is spun clockwise once more before being reversed.
Once you’ve defeated Chinook, The knockout animation plays where you can see Chinook loses a few teeth after being knocked out by the laser sequence, revealing the separation of its top and bottom teeth. Its tongue protrudes, its head puffs up steam, and the propeller and bow on it crack and creak as it spins. Captain Bluebell screams and wrings her hat as she emerges from the top right paw pad.
That is all for this guide on how to beat The Howling Ace. For more Cuphead guides be sure to follow Retrology.
