If you are the modern day, average gamer, chances are you are in your 20s or 30s and have fond memories of various 1980s cultural phenomena that are making a major reappearance on the media radar in the last couple of years, especially in the form of Hollywood blockbuster movies. Regardless of your personal feelings of the rebooting of such franchises as G.I. Joe, there is no denying the inherent kickass potential of a multinational terrorist fighting military organization equipped with the absolute best cutting edge military and espionage technology. Throw in some beautiful women, crazy masked bad guys and a couple of ninjas with axes to grind with one another and it seems impossible that we end up with anything less than the greatest game ever created! Unfortunately EA and Hasbro missed out on a golden opportunity to create something incredible and instead decided to grace us with yet another bland and uninspired tie-in game. While G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra can be fun in an old-school, hold down the ‘fire’ button and try to dodge the baddy’s bullets kind of way, the real disappointment comes in the missed potential. This is a game that will certainly appeal to kids who have just recently learned to love the Joes but those of us who grew up with them will be mostly bored with it.

Gameplay

The events of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra the video game take place after the film of the same name and start off with Duke and Scarlett heading to the Arctic to free Heavy Duty, Ripcord and Snake Eyes from a M.A.R.S. detention centre. Over the course of the game the Joes chase after M.A.R.S. and learn more about an organization called Cobra that seems to be more than just the muscle behind M.A.R.S.. The Rise of Cobra is a one or two player, arcade style shooter. If only one player is playing they still choose two Joes before the mission begins and the player may switch between characters at will. The partner A.I. is fairly useful if only because the enemy will ignore them and train the majority of their fire on you. You only start with Duke and Scarlett but you can find and unlock other Joes and eventually Cobra characters to take into battle with you by finding their contacts and unlocking them by spending Battle Points. There are 12 unlockable Joes and 4 unlockable Cobra. There are three classes, Commandos that are skilled at hand-to-hand combat but with weak ranged attacks, Heavies whose firepower is ideal for taking down turrets and other heavies but who are slow, and Combat Soldiers who are the a nice mixture of range and speed.


Each level is generally linear with an isometric camera the player has no control over. The camera will become far more fearsome an opponent that any of the grunts Cobra can throw at you. Fortunately there are no environmental hazards but you will find yourself firing blind much of the time. The left stick controls your current Joe and the right is supposed to control the direction of fire and sometimes it does, mostly you will just hope that during a heated firefight with a sub-boss your Joe will stop firing at the bonus points boxes scattered throughout the levels and shoot the damn bad guy. Other than shoot you can press another button to fire your special attack that charges up when shooting bad guys, Duke chucks a grenade, Agent Helix puts up an energy shield (that looks suspiciously like Master Chief’s) and Heavy Duty...umm...shoots his mini-gun really, really hard. You can store up to 3 of the special attacks and some, like Heavy Duty’s attack are very, very useful against turrets, vehicles and enemy heavies. Lastly when it has been charged up you can activate your Joe’s Accelerator Suits granting you invulnerability and making you deal out massive damage. Rise of the Cobra also features a number of vehicles for you to drive but they all drive identically, from a machine gunning jeep all the way up to a massive tank. The vehicle controls are absolutely awful and will take a while to get used to. If you’ve lost your partner the vehicles also become nearly useless for combat as the second player/A.I. partner would man the main, aimable, weapon.


The game has three difficulty levels, Casual, Advanced and Hardcore. The differences in the difficulty levels is the point bonus given at the end of each completed mission (meaning more Battle Points to unlock more Joes) and player respawn. In Casual, players respawn immediately when health is depleted. In Advanced, a player (or co-op team) can lose a Joe and that Joe will be respawned at the next check point, lose both Joes and the mission must be restarted from the beginning. In Hardcore, each Joe only has a single life per mission. While Casual is a little too easy, even Advanced is frustrating as hell since losing to a mission boss mean starting the mission from scratch but it does make for a decent, if old-school, challenge for the seasoned player. Expect the unfortunate aiming and terrible camera to make life difficult though.

Graphics and Audio

One of the main problems with movie tie-in games is that they are typically rushed affairs developed for all available consoles. In this case The Rise of Cobra suffers the traditional lack of effort to optimize for the current gen consoles. Put simply, the graphics are bad, the characters do not look at all like their movie counterparts, the animation is bland and repetitive (look at the rescue sequences or Destro talking for some of the worst offences) and the textures are muddy and boring. Fortunately there is no issue with texture pop-in or draw distances, which is (I guess) a benefit to lack of camera control.


The audio is appropriate in a bad/cheesy kind of way, it seems the audio department decided to at least go with the flow and make it sound like a kid’s game with really over the top sound effects, music and character voices. With the exception of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, no one else from the movie has lend their voice talent to the game. Kudos to Joseph Robert Thompson for sounding just like Dennis Quaid but boo to him for phoning in the part.

Value

Loads of unlockable characters, various challenging difficulty levels, bonus levels, two player offline co-op and some clever achievements/trophies mean that there is quite a lot to come back for. Unfortunately, many will find themselves unwilling to go back for a second helping after finishing the game, which can easily be done in 10 hours or so. Frustrating control and bland gameplay may keep many from playing to completion. The best part of the entire game are the unlockable PSAs that aired during the original 80s cartoon, but you can also see them on You Tube.

Conclusion

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is a typical movie tie-in game and will likely appeal to kids or the kid within. If you are after a few hour of mindless distraction, there are far worse ways of spending it then on this game but the missed opportunity inherent in this G.I. Joe game is truly unfortunate. This is especially true when one considers the potential for huge multiplayer Joe vs. Cobra battles and all the gaming possibilities passed over for characters like Snake Eyes or Heavy Duty. All in all, if you are a huge G.I. Joe fan, or at least a big fan of the movie, The Rise of Cobra is worth a rental and if you have kids who are big fans they will probably really enjoy it but if neither of these apply to you, this game doesn’t have much to offer.