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Space Adventure Cobra: The Awakening is effectively the videogame version of Space Adventure Cobra, a 1982 Anime, which I hadn’t heard of until this game’s release, but on the plus side, it does look superb with the ’80s-style character animation, and the cool music.
There’ll be better men and women than me who are playing this and kicking the bottoms of every baddie onscreen in this side-scrolling 2D platformer, but oh, it’s frustrating when there are sections you just can’t get a handle on, like early on with the grapple hooks which swing you forward – supposedly out of danger – but then I have to swing myself towards a panel I can hold on to… as long as I don’t go splat into the boiling lava, below. I was doing the right thing, but for most of the time, it just wasn’t working!
Simlarly, in another scene, when you’re up against several baddies all shooting at you while rockets rain down on you, although it’s cool to ride it out while standing on your car, it’s a royal pain when in the midst of jumping about in a bit to avoid their projectiles, you… just off your car and into the ether below (i.e. death!)
Now, I know that old-school shooters aren’t meant to be easy, but it’s when I’m being absolutely battered to death by the enemy that it just doesn’t become as much fun as it should be, especially when I get sent back to a much earlier part of the segment that I feel I should be. And death ensues, once more…
Even outside of the shoot-em-up battles, there’s a ton of leaping around platforms, beating up baddies or shooting them, sliding under low structures, and so on, with a lot of repetition of the levels as you progress.
I know a lot of people will get a great deal out of this, but for me, as Cobra withers… “I don’t feel so good…”.
Thanks to our friends at Microids for the review code for this game.
Space Adventure Cobra: The Awakening is out now on Steam, and the respective online stores for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.
Important info:
- Developer: Magic Pockets
- Publisher: Microids
- Players: single-player
PC specs:
CPU: AMD RYZEN 9 7950X3D
Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E CARBON WIFI AMD X670 S AM5 DDR5 PCIe 5.0 4x M.2 2.5GbE AMD EXPO™ ATX
RAM: 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair DDR5 Vengeance RGB PC5-44800 (5600Mhz)
Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX NITRO+ 24GB GDDR6 Ray-Tracing RDNA3 6144 Streams
1st Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2 (2280) PCIe 4.0 (x4) NVMe SSD TLC V-NAND 7450MB/s Read 6900MB/s
2nd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
3rd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
4th Storage Drive: Seagate IronWolf Pro 14TB NAS 3.5″ SATA HDD/Hard Drive
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.