If you’ve never even heard of the 1970s manga ‘Cobra’ and the anime movie – ‘Space Adventure Cobra’ – and TV show that spawned from it, then don’t worry; me either. What I came to learn is that Cobra is absolutely brilliant, it’s self-indulgent, silly sci-fi at its finest. An over-the-top tale in which a Han Solo-like hero called Cobra, an intergalactic adventurer no less, travels the galaxy battling the villainous Pirate Guide – whose numbers include the superbly named Crystal Bowie. Well, Space Adventure Cobra: The Awakening is the video game of that story, a 2D side-scrolling Metroid-lite shoot ‘em up that does a lot of things well, and just as many things badly.
What Space Adventure Cobra: The Awakening absolutely nails is the look and feel of an 80’s matinee cartoon. Footage from the original anime is interspersed with the gameplay, giving a satisfying, cohesive feel to proceedings, as well as a strong narrative flow. The game is smartly structured around a TV episode format, welcomingly aping the TV show that inspired it. Other than the original footage, the rest of the story is told via talking heads and text boxes, with dialogue kept pleasantly short, keeping the focus firmly on the gameplay.
The animation for Cobra himself is fantastic; he moves like a character from GI-Joe or Thundercats. Our red spandex-clad hero is all about dynamic comic book poses, demonstrating plenty of effortless style as he slides and dashes across each stage, blasting away with his Pychogun. Enemy types don’t fair nearly as well, however. Most are bland, colour palette swapped and near indistinguishable henchman, whilst bosses fall too often into small metallic drone tedium. The game singularly fails to give you anything interesting to shoot at, but thankfully the shooting itself is rather fun.
Along with all the regular run and gun, which has a distinctive Samus feel, Cobra is able to use his pychogun to entertaining and unique effect. After charging a meter, you can launch a special laser attack that briefly freezes time, whilst you steer the energy beam in a manner rather reminiscent of playing Snake on your old brick Nokia. Steer your laser strategically and you can nimbly dodge obstacles and take out numerous enemies in one hugely satisfying blast, Cobra congratulating himself – and you – as he does so.
This gameplay mechanic leads to some great moments and is one of the key elements in the handful of switch-based puzzles that will briefly befuddle you. Sadly though, the controls are inconsistent, all too often my laser snake took it upon itself to auto-steer – usually when up against bosses that require pinpoint targeting of weak points to destroy – taking me by surprise and thus missing my targets entirely. It’s a frustrating blip in what is an otherwise deeply enjoyable addition.
Sadly, the level design doesn’t live up to the standard of the combat. Bland and empty, running along corridors with some very predictable platforming interspersed, charging through these environments soon gets boring. There’s a light Metroidvania element to proceedings, encouraging you to return to previous levels with newfound abilities to unlock and discover secret areas, but when exploring is this tedious, there’s really little incentive to do so.
More problematically, the controls for Cobra don’t behave whilst he leaps and clambers, all too often missing a handhold that he clearly should have reached and so plunging to his doom. Worse is when the game sticks an enemy on top of a platform that you’re clasping onto. Try and climb up and things get confused, the game not knowing what you want to do, resulting in a stationary Cobra getting shot a lot as you frantically waggle your thumbstick and tap buttons furiously. Perhaps in recognition of these issues, the check point system is very generous, putting you right back into the action with full health and no lives to worry about. Which does undermine the challenge somewhat, that is at least until you run into one of the very unpleasant difficulty spikes.
Overall, Space Adventure Cobra is a smooth and accessible experience, putting up just the right amount of resistance to provide a slight challenge, but not much more than that. But then, rather too often, you run into a ridiculously tough mini-boss who will make you cry with despair. These rotters are veritable bullet sponges, and, unlike the main bosses, have no discernible weak points for you to take advantage of and boost your damage.
Each of these irritating foes usually fights you on a locked screen and spews a nasty bullet hell at you, something the game hasn’t bothered in teaching you how to avoid in the proceeding stages, resulting in a lot of frustration as Cobra dies and dies again until you eventually get lucky and can finally proceed. Because of the easy level of challenge elsewhere, these difficulty spikes really stick out, jabbing you right in the unmentionables.
