G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Xbox 360) Review

Posted by Chris Lansdell on 09.26.2009

YO JOE! Can a decent movie, some Saturday morning nostalgia and the ability to play as Snake Eyes make for a good game? Only one way to find out!

GI Joe : The Rise of Cobra
Publisher: EA
Developer: Double Helix Games
Genre: Shoot 'em up
Players: 1-2
Rated: T for Teen

I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. Having attempted to relive my childhood Saturday mornings with my Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (what is with all these Title: Subtitle games and movies???) review, I was eager to sign up for GI Joe when it came out. I mean, the movie was better than Transformers 2, so the game should be, right? Silly Lansdell. You forgot the Movie Game Law of Inverse Quality – The better the movie, the worse the game.

Gameplay

The basic premise of the game is that you pick two-person teams of Joes to tackle each mission. You start with only Duke and Scarlett but others quickly get unlocked. Given the cover of the game, it should be no surprise to you that Snake Eyes, Ripcord and Heavy Duty are among them. If you're playing single-player, the AI controls your team-mate. Each character has their trademark weapon(s), with the right trigger firing the primary and B firing the secondary, which is normally more powerful. There are three classes of Joe: Commando, combat soldier and heavy weapons. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and the range of weapons is fairly impressive. Duke and Ripcord are both combat soldiers, but Duke's primary is a constant-fire machine gun while Ripcord's fires in three-shot bursts. However, Duke's secondary is a fairly pedestrian grenade which does average damage, while Ripcord's is a drone turret that, frankly, rules the school. If you've chosen the wrong team, or need to change up for a particular section, some levels boast a teleporter which will allow you to swap out one Joe at a time.

Now, I'm no pro gamer. When I pick up a new game, I almost always start on medium difficulty and pray for help from the controls. And to be fair, the controls here are not bad. At all. I mean, you can't jump and you can't aim, and the target-switching from the right analog stick is sluggish and temperamental...oh, and the fixed camera does NOT switch smoothly (or at all, in some scenarios), leaving you running into the camera or unable to see where the path branches. There's no free roaming either, which when combined with the camera leaves you feeling like you're playing Contra.



While the enemy AI is actually quite smart, the AI for your team-mate is not up for any awards. They quite often will not take cover, concentrate fire on enemies or even shoot at them at all. They stand right in the line of fire but it doesn't matter because the AI character never dies. In the event that they decide to shoot, I have seen them shooting into cover or at nothing at all while I'm getting pounded by BATs and HISS tanks. The COBRA guys, on the other hand, will stand back and fire from behind cover, pin you down with automatic turrets while the foot troops move to different angles, and blow up cover while you're running towards it. There is a decent variety of enemies which all have an optimal method of killing them, but really it comes down to 1 of 3: hit and roll, shoot to bits, melee.

It's a fairly large game, but that's kind of negated by the boring environments and the repetitive nature of the gameplay. I played this game with my son (because despite the rating, there's not even any blood in the game) and he asked me if he could tape the right trigger down. Now there's a little more to it than that, but he wasn't far off. The first stage takes place in the Arctic, the second in the deserts of Egypt...and there is no difference in outfit for the Joes, or in their ability to progress through the levels. Graphical variety just isn't enough these days.

The focus on scoring points to earn battle rewards to unlock Joes feels weird. It's made worse by the addition of point bonuses in concrete boxes that register as targets on the battlefield. So you're tucked away behind a precious piece of indestructible cover, shooting away at an auto turret while tons of bad guys are trying to flambé you. You blow up the turret, it drops a point box, and now you're targeting it and the right stick won't switch. ANNOYING!

I could go on, you know. Invisible walls, no target prioritzing, activating star power the Accelerator Suit when the screen is empty because you were trying to open a door, inexplicably-placed Support spots which call in airstrikes that never miss and kill everything, vehicles that are near-impossible to control...but to be honest, I feel bad ragging on a game based on my favourite cartoon series ever. Well, after Centurions. And MASK.



Graphics

If you've ever read one of my reviews, you'll know that I rarely find fault with graphics. In this day and age, with all the power that consoles have, nothing should be ugly. GI Joe somehow manages to be as close to it as you can get. The gameplay may feel like Contra from time to time, but the graphics are a step up...they look like Super Contra. While I appreciate the nod to the cartoon series with the weapon fire being in laser form, the characters themselves are fairly plain. The Accelerator Suits all look identical and are completely lacking in detail. Although the vehicles look true to their toy and cartoon origins, they are about the only positive to the graphical side of things. Collision detection is one of those buzz-terms that I never really understood fully...until I played GI Joe. Too often the game thinks you're walking into something when you're not, or vice versa. When you rescue a Joe, the cut scene you get of your newly-liberated comrade could have been lifted straight out of the fans from NBA Live 95 in the SNES. They're fuzzy, the animation on the Joe is repeated throughout the clip...it's just lazy. And really, that describes the whole graphical effort.

Sound

And the misses just keep on coming. For a game that utilises the voice talent from the movie, it sounds HORRIBLE. You could be forgiven for thinking that they had lifted the dialogue from a second-grade concert about penguins. The enemy grunts seem to have 2 or 3 phrases to work through, and they say them A LOT. The weapon sound effects are cheesy, but they are close enough to the cartoon's sounds that they don't feel out of place. The rest of the effects do, however. The soundtrack isn't terrible but it's nothing to write home about, despite the reworked GI Joe theme that plays when you activate the Accelerator Suit.



Lasting Appeal

The lack of online modes make this game unlikely to stay on your shelf. With the exception of unlocking all the characters (which includes some Cobra ones, no spoilers on who), there's really nothing to bring you back to this game or to make you want to play through a second time. Most of the achievements can be earned on Casual, which discourages another group from replaying.

Even for people who enjoy completing games on all difficulty modes, you'll be sorely pressed to keep going. The middle mode is HARD, as a killed Joe says dead until the next checkpoint. Fighting through the waves of bad guys meant for two is not much fun when you're one. The hard mode is...damn. Dead colleagues stay dead for the whole level, so you'd better hope you don't get caught in a bad camera trap or you're in for a short trip. With that sort of frustration potentially around every corner at no fault of your own, it won't be long before this one is sitting below RockStar Games Presents: Table Tennis on your shelf.

Fun Factor

Is this game fun? Well, honestly, it can be. Playing co-op for half an hour of straight blasting IS fun, especially if you start duelling scores or actually working together (shocking concept, I know). Unfortunately, that's where the fun stops. On the higher difficulty levels, the game is so hard as to stop being enjoyable at all. That's a cardinal sin in a game where your premise is shallow to begin with. In the event that you do lose both of your Joes, you don't go back to the last checkpoint as you'd expect. Ohhh no, you go back to the start of the level. Where's the fun in that. Even playing as cult favourite Snake Eyes isn't as fun as you'd hope. Despite some fun ideas and a nostalgia trip, there are just too many frustrations to make the actual experience an entertaining one.

The 411

You know those immature teen boys who fantasize about being a gynaecologist? The ones that tend to forget that not every patient is a supermodel? Well, reviewing games is a lot like that. For every awesome game, there are two or three stinkers. GI Joe falls squarely into the latter category. Frustrating “features”, complete lack of control, bland environments, repetitive gameplay, lousy graphics, substandard voice acting...the gang's all here. I really wanted to like this game; after all, the last GI Joe game I played (on NES) was kind of fun. Come to think of it, some of the graphics were better in that. GI Joe tries to be Contra for the new era, but ends up falling short in almost every way.

Graphics	4.5	Blurry cut scenes, non-descript characters and a general half-done feeling more than counteract the postivies of nicely drawn vehicles and nostaglic weapon fire.
Gameplay	4.5	The camera is the big flaw, but the been-there, done-that run-and-gun, the ridiculously stupid friendly AI and the losy targeting system don't help matters.
Sound	5.5	Like I said: Meh.
Lasting Appeal	6.0	If you've got a high threshold for frustrastion, you'll come back. But it has to be REALLY high.
Fun Factor	6.2	Not bad in short spurts with a friend, too frsutrating otherwise.
Overall	5.1   [ Not So Good ]

Screenshots
All 6 G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra Game Screenshots