Cobalt Review

"Robotic Warfare"

Campaign

Cobalt is one of those titles that have been in development for a long time and that clearly shows in the best ways. This is not only in terms of details within the environments, but also with how the characters move and the scale of the game itself. Cobalt is split into two key portions with the first being a solid story which will be discussed in this portion of the review and a really large arcade (multiplayer) aspect that will be gone over below. The game is composed of these two portions though they're largely different in play style and both provide their own expansive portions. The story is about this robot that cruises along the cosmos in his ship and then one day the AI which runs vessel comes across a distress beacon so you explore this. Everything begins on this desolate snow planet and unfolds from there. It would seem that the robots here have become hostile and are even boarding up some mushroom people so you investigate the situation. What's immediately apparent when playing on this first portion is that each chapter of the campaign features a long and very choice driven environment. While minimal you have chat options with creatures you meet along your travels and also choice in how you tackle a given area. Some will be more linear than others though most of the time you can move through the level how you please and even teleport back to the ship at checkpoints if you'd like. The world actually has some great depth to it with places to buy/upgrade things; secrets to discover, vaults to hack and minor puzzles that occasionally show up. I was even more pleasantly surprised at the great variation between the chapters as you travel off to other plants and the environments greatly vary in look along with the habitants of them. Another great thing about the campaign is that it can be done in coop if you'd like by just throwing in another controller.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer aspect of Cobalt is truly a whole other beast packing in strong local and multiplayer components. That's right, the game can be played locally with bots or online with other people with a full matchmaking service for competitive and casual play. Both modes feature up to eight players across a wide range of battlegrounds for ultimate robot carnage. In that regard there's some division between these modes with Arcade being the local experience. For online you get three modes to play with whereas the Arcade area has five modes which I'll go over after describing the online multiplayer ones first. The first online mode is Deathmatch where you attempt to destroy the other team, obviously. The second mode is Team-Strike where it takes the Deathmatch mode and turns into a round based game where you only get a single life per round while trying to eliminate the enemies. The final mode is Plug Slam where you're attempting to grab the plug and get it into the other team's goal by any means to score. These all work out together well and form great variety for the multiplayer. The Arcade mode which is local takes those three modes and adds an additional two to the list. The first mode is really more expansive than the others being a Challenge area for score driven areas such as speed, combat ability and puzzle solving which are then scored on a leaderboard. The second area is survival mode where you take on waves of enemies while upgrading your equipment to last longer. There's great variety present in all these modes and it really creates an almost entirely separate area of the game that you can play with great enjoyment.

Gameplay

Cobalt is a 2D platformer game which at first glance looks like most of the others in the genre, but with some much more detailed graphics. Upon closer viewing the game really does feature some amazing depth in terms of quality and just what you can do within the game. The character itself has various stages of damage where bits of him fall off and this is even more true with enemies as they burst apart across the screen. There's also many abilities to the robot such as rolling, hopping up the sides of walls to get places or taking advantage of bullet time which is slow motion and awesome. There are also just a ton of weapons, equipment and upgrades available to make yourself an ultimate weapon. This all runs really well together and carries over across all the modes. The environments look great and made it clear where platforming areas were despite making the natural aspects blend perfectly together and that was a great aspect. It was also mostly clear on where you were headed in levels though I did have some times where I was puzzled with what it exactly wanted me to do. For a final note on gameplay I loved the when ammo ran out as you could throw grenades or just straight up punch everybody to pieces that you came across.

The Conclusion

Cobalt is a great game, it's got a strong story mode to it and a really fun multiplayer area. These both work really well together to create a very in-depth package filled with gameplay. I definitely suggest checking this game out as you can clearly see the care and dedication that went into this title to make it so well rounded. There are crazy amounts of action whether that be in single player taking on hordes of enemies across your journeys or online as robot bits fly about from the many lasers covering the screen. It's also great that Cobalt can be played cooperatively and that the game features bots for local along with an actual online mode. There's great value in this game and it was an exciting title to play.

Cobalt Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by Oxeye Game Studio

Rating Overall: 9.6