Review Shooter

Cotton Reboot – Review | Cutsie Hell

As far as genres go, few are as underappreciated, or as niche, as the Shmup. I have spent more time overlooking the genre than I would care to admit. Cotton Reboot takes this dirge of mainstream recognition and takes it to the next level. Cotton, despite being a long-running series of games, and this reboot is a celebration of said series, has rarely graced the West. So what have we been missing out on all this time?

Cotton Reboot - Story

COTTON REBOOT-O!

We’ve been missing out on one hell of a game, that’s what. Cotton Reboot stars the eponymous Cotton in a wonderfully whimsical willow-induced wander through several thematically distinct locales, all bookended by classic anime cutscenes. Willows are, from what I could gather, sweets that combine into a giant, decadent, dentist trip in the making. 

As far as stories go, Cotton Reboot is just the right amount of cutsie and jam-packed with humor. Once you’ve experienced it, you can even turn it off completely via the menu – which is a nice touch.

Don’t let Cotton’s adorably delivered quest for diabetes trick you into thinking this isn’t a classic Shmup through and through. Each level is loaded with hordes upon hordes of enemies ranging from ax-lobbing gnomes, to floating eyeballs, to sexy lava demons. Each enemy has a unique form of attack, and when there are dozens of the buggers on screen at once, it certainly becomes quite the challenge to avoid imminent death. Needless to say, Cotton Reboot can get quite bullet-helly, especially if you are a newcomer to the genre. Thankfully the game also comes with a suite of difficulty options to mess around with, as well as infinite continues as standard.

Enemies might be numerous, and Cotton might have quite the glass jaw, but she is far from helpless. You have access to a rapid-firing attack that grows in power as you kill enemies and collect gems. It may start as a narrow string of pellets, but it quickly evolves into a pulsating wave of death capable of decimating whatever foolish enemy stands in your way. Your partner, Silk, will also help out by lobbing bombs towards the ground, letting you tackle enemies in front of you, as well as below, with ease. These can also be powered up leading to even more destruction.

Ride The Lightning

The final ability in Cotton’s arsenal is her spells. Spells come in a variety of elemental flavors and allow Cotton to nuke the screen with falling debris, unleash a torrent of lightning, or summon a fire dragon to blitz everything in sight. Each spell can also be charged, resulting in a secondary effect, adding plenty of depth to the system. Charging spells rarely does damage, and instead, provides things like barriers or the ability to transmogrify enemies into gems, and gems into a score-boosting black variant. Magic is obtained by picking up colored gems, and gems change color depending on how many shots you pump into them before collection. A fair amount is going on under the hood of Cotton, which is nice to see. 

Now, Cotton Reboot comes with several game modes. What I have just described is the classic X68000 mode. This mode is a tonne of fun and comes with the most customization when it comes to difficulty. However, if you ask me, the brand-new Arrange Mode is where Cotton Reboot truly shines. Graphics are drastically improved, enemy placements are rejigged and there are a bunch of new mechanics that make the game an absolute roller coaster to play.

Shooting gems in Arrange Mode not only changes their color and magical properties but also disperses shots fired into them, resulting in a much more powerful basic attack that covers a wider area. Killing enemies in this manner charges up your fever meter and once it is maxed, things get wild. Hit the fever button and for a few seconds, the screen erupts with gems and multiplier notifications, sometimes filling the entire screen with numbers and gubbins. At max level, every kill will be worth 1000x more than usual, which naturally results in humongous scores by the end of the game…providing you don’t die of course.

Cotton Reboot - Enemies All Over

Caravan of Love

Outside of Arrange Mode, you have Time Attack, or Caravan Mode for those in the know, which comes in two flavors: 2-minute and 5-minute. This mode gets a bespoke stage and is ideal for quick pick-up and play sessions. All the mechanics from Arrange Mode are present and accounted for, making this one of my most played modes during my time with Cotton Reboot. I was constantly jumping on for a few minutes during my day and getting flooded with neuron-pleasing endorphins. 

Cotton Reboot is a rather short game, which is standard for the genre. It comes in at a whopping 20-minutes on both Arrange and X68000 modes. Where the meat comes in is with the leaderboards which are implemented perfectly. There is a unique board for every mode, and every difficulty allowing you to compete, compare and improve in whatever manner tickles your fancy. Full runs are so short that jumping in time and time again to rack up higher scores became addictive. Just one more run kicks in, and it kicks in hard.

The game performs almost perfectly on Switch and I don’t recall any specific instance where the dinky handheld failed to keep up with the insanity on screen. The game also looks gorgeous, with large, detailed, and charm-filled sprites filling the game’s roster, and varied backgrounds setting the scene. This is all supported by a fantastic soundtrack that manages to be both bubbly and slapping depending on the stage. On a personal note, I absolutely loved the voice acting, which is all in Japanese but had me shouting out the names of every spell in time with Cotton.

Cotton Reboot - Eyeballs

Verdict

Cotton Reboot is a fantastic Shmup that is perfect for anyone new to the genre. It also has more than enough customization to make this a kickass title for genre veterans. A mixture of interesting mechanics, beautiful sprite work, tight controls, and bombastic, screen-filling chaos makes this game an absolute corker. It would have been nice to see an extra mode or two to add a bit of girth to the package, but there is plenty of high octane madness to go around in its current state. 

COTTON REBOOT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4

If you would like to see more Shooters, you may be interested in our review of Mushihimesama.

Many thanks go to ININ Games for a Nintendo Switch review code for this title.

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