Space Adventure Cobra: The Awakening Review (PS5)

Originally inspired by Buichi Terasawa’s intergalactic action manga from the late 1970s, Space Cobra (or Space Adventure Cobra) was a 1982 anime series involving an adventurer named Cobra who found himself at the centre of all kinds of intergalactic battles.

While relatively niche these days, the effort’s distinctive sense of style captures the media of the period, and thus is considered nostalgic today. The original release is nearing its 50th (!!!) anniversary, after all.

Space Adventure Cobra: The Awakening from Microids takes the first 12-ish episodes from the anime and transforms them into a side-scrolling romp across the galaxy, as you take down unhinged cosmic crime lords and battle with all kinds of alien ne’er-do-wells.

The gameplay is simplistic but has a very nice flow to it: the titular Cobra – a blonde-haired individual augmented with the psychogun, an uber-powerful laser surgically attached to his right arm – is nimble and responsive. He can slide and dash through enemy firepower, and also has access to a revolver, grappling hook, and exploding cigars.

You’ll often find yourself in scenarios where you’ll need to combine all of your abilities, blasting through walls by charging up your arm cannon, taking down shields with your revolver, and dashing across dangerous chasms.

This level design can sometimes feel a bit trial-and-error, but the checkpoints are generous and the loading times are fast, reducing frustration.

After the opening level’s abilitease, you’ll slowly rebuild Cobra’s arsenal across the rest of the campaign, so there’s a good sense of progression. You’ll also discover collectibles which can be used to boost your effectiveness in battle, including your overall speed, health, and the power of your psychogun.

The psychogun can be used to bend and angle shots, and is used in both combat and puzzles. For example, if a switch is in a difficult to reach area, you may choose to arc one of your bullets up and around the environment, toggling it with little trouble. As the game progresses, these challenges will require more dexterity.

But while there’s a good rhythm to the gameplay, it doesn’t always feel as tight as it should. You can plant your feet with the L1 button, but in most cases you’ll need to be moving while you aim. As both mechanics are mapped to the left analogue stick, it can feel imprecise – especially in one level where you’re riding atop a car and can easily tumble off.

Your reward for making it through the levels, however, is an awesome cutscene pulled directly from the original TV show. These have been dubbed in English and French, although personally we opted to play in Japanese as that felt more appropriate to us. None of the languages have particularly outstanding voiceover, but that fits with the theme.

As you progress, you’ll also unlock Cobra’s ship which can be altered using unlockable treasures, although this is quite a basic and pointless feature overall. There are also some secret levels which put you in control of supporting characters like your android assistant Lady and the tattooed bombshell bounty hunter Jane Royal.

There’s incentive to replay levels in order to improve your par times and find any secrets – some of which can’t actually be reached until you unlock the appropriate pieces of gear. But while some may enjoy discovering all of the collectibles, we suspect most will be content simply seeing the campaign through to its conclusion, which won’t take more than 10 or so hours.

Our biggest criticism is that, while the game runs smoothly and looks fine, it doesn’t really capture the vibes of the cartoon. It’s very difficult to replicate that brash 80s art style, but The Awakening’s a little too clean and soulless to really do it justice. At least the music, a fist-pumping blend of horns and piano chords, makes for an earworm soundtrack.