As seen in the movie promos, the Joes can also use the Delta-6 Accelerator Suits allowing them to become invulnerable, move a lot faster and do a lot more damage for a brief period of time. I have to admit that these moments are actually fun, not just because you can cut through enemies rapidly but also because of the familiar bombastic G.I. Joe theme that plays once the power is activated. It’s hilariously cheesy, but rather cool. These moments are generally few and far between, but do provide occasional spurts of fun.
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The game features three difficulty levels – Casual, Advanced and Hardcore. Assuming Casual is easy and Advanced is the Normal difficulty, the game feels quite unbalanced. The aforementioned problems with the gameplay sometimes make the game feel ridiculously difficult and you’ll find yourself getting killed often, not because you played badly but because you got hit by three rockets in the face coming from off-screen enemies you couldn’t see. When you die on normal difficulty, the game will set you back to the last checkpoint, forcing you to replay a significant chunk of the game. There are only 1-3 checkpoints in the 20-minute missions. Playing through the same battles again and again wouldn’t have been much of a problem if they were actually fun to play. The casual difficulty setting alleviates some of this frustration by giving you limited instant respawns at the cost of a few points if you fall in battle. Still, the difficulty spike between the casual and normal difficulty is too high and I wouldn’t even want to imagine the game on the hardcore setting unless I truly want to punish myself.
Much like the animated show, the game takes the Joes to areas in the Arctic, deserts and jungles. You’ll get mission objectives and updates from a specialist Joe in each area, like Snow Job in the Arctic or Dusty in the desert, which is a nice touch. The story is suitably cheesy, involving ridiculous weapons of mass destruction, secret enemy facilities and whatnot. Normally, thus would have been a negative, but here its right up there with the cartoon. The dialog is campy and the Joes do not pass up an opportunity to shout “YO JOE!”. Add to that the music and the overall setting and the game does get the whole G.I. Joe feel right, perhaps even more than the live-action movie does. There are also classic PSA videos to unlock and collectible file cards to find which might make you relive the excitement of collecting a new action figure and cutting out those file cards on the back. Still, none of the extras can compensate for the nagging gameplay issues.
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The visuals are nothing to write home about. Everything looks low resolution. The characters look just about okay but the environments are uninspired cookie cutter video game levels. They could easily have been made by some random “video game level generator” software (if such a thing existed). The levels have invisible walls and paths are automatically blocked off to prevent you from backtracking unless the game wants you to. Enemy AI is laughable. Watching enemies running around in circles like a dog trying to catch its tail or getting stuck in the environment is quite common. There are plenty of glitches with the audio as well. Sometimes your guns will inexplicably make no sound while you’re firing and I remember at least two occasions where the enemy soldiers sounded like females when they were clearly male. The music, on the other hand, is passably decent and the Accelerator Suit theme will surely put a smile on your face if you grew up watching the cartoon.
The game allows you to play co-operatively with another player over the internet or locally. Local play doesn’t employ a split-screen (which could be a possible reason for the fixed camera angles). However, due to this players cannot wander too far off from each other. The game feels somehow less frustrating in co-op and at times even fun provided you can find another die-hard G.I. Joe fan or someone actually willing to play this with you.
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Perhaps the worst part about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is that it could have been a good game. Designing it like an old school arcade game was actually a great idea and it’s easy to see that hiding under the bugs and broken gameplay is a potentially good game. There are certain sections and boss fights that are actually fun to play. If only the game wasn’t rushed out to coincide with the movie release and its issues ironed out with proper play testing, it could have been a decent action game driven by nostalgia. However, it’s a shame that the end product is an uninspired barely playable game that no sane gamer should spend their hard earned money on. Even getting the game for the sake of reliving childhood memories is a bad idea.
Conclusion:
Kid 1: “Hey the new G.I. Joe game is in stores! Let’s go get it; should be fun to play as G.I. Joes!”
Kid 2: “Yeah let’s go break our piggy banks and get it!”
Tyler: “Hold it right there kids! Do you know that the game is another bad movie-tie-in with broken gameplay, bad camera angles, mediocre graphics and sound? It’s not a good idea to buy the game even if you are a die-hard G.I. Joe fan.”
Kid 1: “Oh that sucks, but thanks Tyler! Now we know!”
Tyler: “…and knowing is half the battle!”
(+) Can be mildly entertaining in co-op mode
(+) Some decent nods to old-school games and the G.I. Joe franchise
(-) Fixed camera angles severely hamper gameplay
(-) Difficulty levels are unbalanced. Sometimes it’s too easy, other times too hard
(-) Vehicle handling is pathetic, making them entirely useless
(-) Bland visuals and plenty of audio-visual glitches
(-) Not much replay value once completed (if you do manage to force yourself through it)
Title: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Developer/Publisher: Double Helix/EA
Genre: Action
Rating: 16+
Platforms: PS3 (Rs 2,499), Xbox 360 (Rs 2,499), PS2 (Rs 999), PSP (Rs 1,599), Wii (Rs 1,999), DS (Rs 1,499)
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