There’s no doubt that the quirky Cotton series has tended to be a mix of oddball characters and simply choosing its own path in terms of gameplay. I’d say to this point the few more classically-inspired side-scrolling shooters in the series I’ve played have been interesting and distinctive, but also admittedly a bit inconsistent. Now, with Rainbow Cotton, we’ve moved into a new more 3D style of play, roughly reminiscent of games like Space Harrier, but in this case I don’t know that even its colorful and unusual style is enough to keep it from simply being odd, and even perhaps a bit dull.

To the game’s credit, I don’t think the goal was simply to copy what others in the 3D shooting space had done. There’s absolutely something to be said for taking chances and doing things your own way, but ideally you’d only do that when you’re positive what you’re going to put out there instead is either an improvement or at least comparable. That’s where it feels like the game struggles. I think my biggest point of confusion, or perhaps frustration, was usually what I was really supposed to be doing. Rather than consistently having waves of enemies that you can tell with some technique you could knock out, the style here is more haphazard. Most of the time you’re being inundated with loads of enemies on screen, which I suppose could be considered challenging in some way, but for me it just read as there being a general lack of a cohesive plan for success. 

Another area I wasn’t terribly pleased with, is that your method of grabbing crystals that you’d release by focusing fire on little golden pot guys felt flawed. The crystals are a holdover from the side-scrolling games, so they’re clearly important, but with just about anything you’d try to grab in the 3D space you’re flying through, I found their depth and distance from the screen a challenge to judge. The fact that your on-rails path through some areas could have turns in them didn’t help much either. I do think that when you’d encounter bosses the game improved a bit, mainly because with your having a clear focus the game simply would make more traditional sense.

This is one of those titles where you can appreciate what goals were apparently in mind for the people making the game, but it’s hard to ignore that they really struggled to make it all work. The pretty haphazard nature of play, the pretty unintuitive way the game works on a general level, and what feels like a lack of clear direction in the core design are all concerns. Sure, people who enjoy the off-beat style of the Cotton series may be able to overlook the issues and have some fun, but this just feels like an attempt that didn’t pan out.