Cobalt is an action game of running, jumping, rolling, shooting, throwing, dancing, hacking, rolling, flying, sliding, climbing, looting, deflecting, racing, pinata-ing, passing, scoring... and even more rolling!
— Official description of Cobalt
Cobalt is a Platform Shooter by Oxeye Game Studio, developed in collaboration with Mojang and music by Anosou Music. You play Cobalt, a kind of cyborg called a Metalface, running and rolling around a map shooting things. It was released for PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on February 2nd, 2016.
Has at least five playable game types:
- Challenge: Time-Attack style maps where you roll, jump and shoot your way through obstacle courses.
- Deathmatch: Sorted into teams, you and an assortment of other players and bots try to rake in the most kills.
- Capture The Plug: Two teams square off trying to get the plug back to your own plug.
- Survival: You and another player fight off escalating waves robots and local wildlife.
- Bounty: Similar to Deathmatch, but the goal is to gather as much Shop Fodder as possible and convert it to Volts. First to reach the goal wins!
- Defense
- Cooperative
- Adventure
Cobalt provides examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo: Matter weapons shoot some kind of superheated matter pellets for massive damage. Oddly enough, this is explicitly different from the ammo used by Plasma weapons.
- Ambidextrous Sprite:
- Artificial Stupidity: During Capture The Plug mode, your bots will sometimes have the Plug and stand next to your station without entering it, thereby losing you a point when they get shot. They will also wander about the map doing nothing while you get swarmed by the enemy bots who work together to take you down. Bots in Bounty mode have trouble actually cashing in on their Shop Fodder.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Most weapons are safe and easy to use, and even the most expensive ones have some use. But the Blaster Gun can also kill you when you fire it with its large splash radius.
- BFG: Rocket launchers, railguns, Plasma Cannons, and many more.
- Blinded by the Light: In a game with flash grenades, this had to come about. It adds a bloomy-blurry white blob in the area it went off and prevents your auto-aim from working at all.
- Brain in a Jar: Metalfaces are this. In certain gamemodes, they are dropped on death and can be revived as allies.
- Bullet Time: On by default, as most projectiles and attacks move far too fast for any conceivable reaction.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Shrooms are small creatures with shells that punch you and live in tiny houses. Spike Birds are rotund creatures with invulnerable beaky faces and can explode a hail of spikes from their backside.
- Cherry Tapping: Punching to death anything but Shrooms or Birds can be this. Especially true against Hamsters and Predators.
- Corrupt Corporation: The organization that gives you your shiny new body is implied to be this. At least they don't discriminate.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Bots with more advanced AI, mostly Metalfaces, tend to make liberal use of Bullet Time, a feature normally only usable by players. In addition, they can react to things players would never be able to react to, even with Bullet Time.
- Couch Gag: Scrolling on the bottom of the main menu are quotes and blurbs making fun of many things, from Skyrim to Minecraft to workplace lawsuits.
- Cyberpunk: A more lighthearted take. The entire premise of the game is that you are a cyborg exploring alien planets on behalf of a Corrupt Corporation. Said Corporation gave you your shiny new body with a warranty, which is voided by just about everything you are required to do in the game. Better yet, see the page for yourself (archived link, the text was removed from the site)
. - Deflector Shields: Shield belts. If they take enough damage, they will collapse and activate an emergency function, then have to be recharged with a battery.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The quote mentions rolling several times. There might be a reason for this.
- Double Jump: After running for a second, you build up a charge in your feet that speeds you up a small amount. You can then use this to make a second jump in the air. Can even be turned into a triple jump if you know how to time your roll-punches. If you know how to use the Phaser right, this can be turned into a leap that rivals proper use of the Jet Shoes.
- Elaborate Equals Effective: Most gun upgrades are visible once applied.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The interaction of rolling and shield belts plays like this with different weapons. Each of these also interacts differently with bots and animals.
- Energy Weapons:
- Flawed Prototype: The Matter and Rail Prototypes are quite a bit cheaper than the other weapons in their families, but are also less powerful and don't have very many upgrades.
- Friendly Fire Proof: Projectiles won't collide with teammates unless they have been deflected by an enemy. However, explosions affect everything in their blast radius, teammate or not.
- Game Mod: A few being developed by the community, mostly using the Assets Editor in the Developer's Console, such as ones that upgrade Metalface, allowing him faster movement speed, more powerful attacks and flying, to name a few.
- The Goomba: Shrooms and Birds.
- Hacking Minigame: You hack terminals by moving a spark to the goal in a Frictionless Ice-style puzzle.
- Heavily Armored Mook: Guards in later waves can come equipped with an extra layer of armor. It usually doesn't help.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: Played with. You can hold unlimited ammo of every type and and as many throwables as you can buy, but only three guns. It doesn't matter if it is three handguns or three rocket launchers, you can only carry three.
- Jet Shoes: The easiest legitimate way to upgrade your character's movement.
- Invulnerable Knuckles: Justified, as you're using Sloth-GripTM Hands, but you're punching rockets of all things.
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Averted with Slugger (conventional bullet) weapons, which are usually weaker than other weapons. Played straight with the Rail weapons, which can pierce through rolling.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Metalfaces have the option of a full memory wipe of their past life when they gain their shiny new body.
- Level Editor: Largely incomplete, but the community is already making their own levels and distributing them.
- Made of Iron: Predators and Hamsters both take obscene amounts of damage to take down. The Predator can be taken down easily by the Plasma Striker, but that weapon kills most enemies in one hit anyway.
- The player, if they purchase the fully-upgraded "Defender" parts, can take multiple hits from the strongest weapons in the game.
- Magnet Hands: Your Sloth-GripTM Hands allow you to reload a missile launcher with one arm while holding onto a wall.
- Exaggerated by the bird enemies, which can fire and reload any weapon that you can while still being able to fly. And given the number of BFGs in this game...
- Magnetic Weapons: Rail weapons, which can pierce deflective rolling to a degree.
- Mirror Boss: Survival Metalfaces have all the same moves as you do, and by the time they show up, should have the same equipment as well.
- Money Spider: Everything drops random junk when it dies that has to be converted into Volts, the in-game currency.
- Necessary Combat Roll: Rolling provides temporary protection from many attacks, long jumps and many other nifty moves. Mastering rolling is key to mastering the game.
- Nerf: Most notably (and most lamented) is the Bomb's demotion to Thermal Bomb. Originally, it was capable of taking out anything at least half way across the map. Now you'd be lucky if it actually kills the things right next to it.
-
Nintendo Hard: Fast-paced gameplay and a steep learning curve mean that early on you'll be seeing the Game Over screen more often than your character. - One Hit Poly Kill: Matter and Rail weapons are capable of killing one enemy and passing on to the next.
- Overheating: Plasma weapons heat up after several shots, heavily reducing their rate of fire.
- Plasma Cannon: Plasma weapons, which completely ignore rolling but overheat and generally have shorter ranges.
- Rocket Jump: It is possible, but very dangerous, to use explosives to move around the map. The only way to really pull one off is to use the Shield Belt due to the fragility of Metalfaces. More common is using the Phaser's unique properties to move very fast and very far.
- Shout-Out: Many scrolling on the bottom of the main screen as title splashes. The one to Minecraft says 'Gravel is awesome because arrows!'
- Shows Damage: The only indication of your (or the enemies) health is the amount of body parts remaining. Missing an eye, arm, and mouth means you are inches away from death, though this doesn't affect gameplay in any way.
- Sickly Green Glow: Anything affected by radiation.
- Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Played straight, but some early weapons retain their effectiveness because of some features and upgrades their super powered bigger brothers may lack.
- Speaking Simlish: Radio talk shows and news broadcasts.
- Video Game Tutorial: There is one included right on the main menu. It has all the basics, but also an Advanced area where they teach you the intricacies of rolling and how to punch incoming rockets.
- You Do NOT Want To Know: Some of the weather forecasts in the marque in the main menu.Today's Forecast: Stay Indoors
Today's Forecast: Board Your Windows
Today's Forecast: Panic - When Trees Attack: They haven't been introduced to the game officially yet, but the Trunkan resemble walking tree trunks with leaves or nests on their heads.
...and more rolling!
