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Rather than going for a semi-realistic military themed action game, the developers decided to make G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra more like old-school shoot-em-ups like Contra, complete with large on-screen score counters, unlimited ammunition for guns and hordes of enemies both big and small. You get a bunch of unlockable G.I. Joes, out of which you can pick any two and take on a number of missions. It’s somewhat like 2006’s Marvel Ultimate Alliance, only that game was actually good. The concept of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is interesting in theory but falls flat when it comes to overall execution.
The game boasts a sizeable number of playable G.I. Joes, many of whom have to be unlocked by hunting for collectibles or completing optional missions and spending “Battle Points” earned by completing missions with good scores. Each Joe falls into a particular combat class. Duke and Ripcord, for example, are Combat Soldiers, who wield assault rifles, while Snake Eyes and Scarlett are Commandos, who are more agile and are better at hand-to-hand combat than others. There’s also a Heavy Weapons class featuring big guys with big guns like Heavy Duty and Backblast. Each character also has a special ability, which is unique to them and can be triggered once you have done enough damage using standard attacks. Gung-Ho will launch a special grenade which carpet bombs a small area while Snake Eyes unleashes a devastating area of effect attack with his signature katana at close quarters. The game does a decent job of making each character feel different in a certain way. However, not all characters are useful and some are just thrown in to increase the number of playable characters. There’s no reason why anyone would want to pick the almost useless Agent Helix over Heavy Duty for example.
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Majority of the gameplay involves taking your Joes through various extremely linear levels while shooting down waves of enemies with the occasional boss fight thrown in. The game employs a third person viewpoint and within five minutes of play the biggest problem of the game becomes apparent – the camera. Unlike most third person shooters, you have absolutely no control over the camera. The camera angles shift often based on what the game thinks is an optimal view of the battlefield, which as you may have guessed, most of the time it isn’t. Enemies regularly position themselves in areas where you cannot see them and your only option is to just blind-fire in all directions hoping that you’ll hit something. Adding to the horrible camera angles is the frustrating targeting system. You cannot aim freely in the game and targets will automatically be selected based on some weird logic where useless items such as score bonuses get precedence over a humongous enemy turret spewing deadly lasers and volleys of rockets at you. There is an option to manually switch targets using the right analog stick but it’s extremely fiddly as well since usually there are a dozen enemies and power-ups littering the screen.
If that wasn’t enough to complicate matters, the game also throws in a cover system which is more or less ruined by the fact that you cannot control the camera. Most games that employ a third person cover system have a standard behind-the-back camera, so that when your character takes cover behind an object, it is between the character and the enemy. However, in this game it is very easy for your character to accidentally take cover on the opposite side of an object placing him or her directly in the line of fire. Also, most of the objects you can take cover behind are destructible and will disintegrate after taking a few rounds of enemy fire. It’s actually better not use the cover system at all and to simply keep moving or dodging instead. There are a few instances where taking cover becomes important but for the most part running and gunning gets the job done.
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If the on foot controls weren’t bad enough, at various points in the game, you’ll have an option to use vehicles. Simply put, it’s almost impossible to use them. I’m generally not a big fan of steering in-game vehicles using only analog sticks but here the annoyance is compounded further by the fixed camera problem. Most of the time you cannot see where you are going until the game decides that the camera angle should be switched – and that usually happens after you’ve run into a wall. It’s best to just leave the vehicles alone. At times the game also throws in a satellite strike mini-game, where you need to obliterate waves of enemy forces by raining down heavy ordnance from the skies. In practice, it just boils down to moving the analog stick and pressing a button to fry enemies. Meh.
Next page: IVG Verdict
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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