Gameplay Impressions
What do we like?Not a lot it has to be said, but for the sake of balance we’ve managed to rustle up a couple of positive points. G.I. Joe offers plenty of replay value, particularly if you're the kind of gamer who isn't satisfied until you've collected every item in the game. There are tons of items to collect and unlock and the battle points systems actively encourages you to try harder and replay levels by luring you in with the incentive of unlockable characters if you score highly.
There's an arcade pace to the action, so you don't really need to think about anything apart from pointing and shooting at the baddies. In that respect, the game’s simplicity may appeal to younger gamers who might enjoy the mindless action in short bursts.
The soundtrack is probably the biggest highlight as it drives the gameplay along nicely and fits in perfectly with the arcade-style gameplay, impressively rising in intensity during the more chaotic shoot-outs.
Co-op mode is a nice addition and playing with a friend certainly increases the fun factor. It’s certainly easier to find secret items with two pairs of eyes, as well as getting through some of the harder sections. It’s also a bonus that you can drop in and out of co-op play seamlessly.
What don't we like?
We’d be doing the videogames industry a great injustice if, in any way, you were to leave this review with the impression that we enjoyed ourselves at any point while playing G.I. Joe. We didn’t. In fact, we were quite miserable. We can't even say that we had any nostalgia-fuelled memories playing it, because we were too busy playing with He-Man figures and watching the A-Team in the 80s, while kids in American were enjoying Joe's cartoon exploits. We’d barely even heard of the action hero.
We have, however, tried to bear in mind that G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra is probably aimed at a teen audience (16+ rating.) Still, it's hard to see how anyone will enjoy battling against its many flaws. With combat at the core of the gameplay and a simple point and shoot mechanic to boot, it's amazing that even the basics are flawed. Hit detection, for instance, is totally erratic. You can swipe at an enemy when up close and miss him completely, or find solid objects throughout the game that you can shoot straight through.
The targeting system is also particularly weak. There isn’t the option to freely aim at an opponent, instead you automatically lock onto an enemy when you press the trigger and can then switch targets by tapping the analogue stick. It’s so jerky though that you’ll generally miss the target you were aiming at.
Problems continue with the fixed camera position which doesn't give you the freedom to look around. It fails miserably to keep up with the action, so you’ll often run head-on into gun-fire because you couldn’t see the enemy coming in front of you.
We’ve established that some of the core basics are flawed, but it doesn’t end there. The agony of suffering with these issues is prolonged by the lack of a check-point system. The levels generally last around 15 minutes, but if you play the game on anything other than default difficulty you’ll have to start at the beginning of each level each time you die. It’s irrelevant whether you’re right near to the end of the level, or at the beginning.
There are a number of other things that we could rant about, including awful vehicle handling, below-par graphics and intrusive loading screens that interrupt the flow of the game, but hopefully you’ll have gotten the gist of it by now.
Final Thoughts
It’s hard to believe that the offending developer, Double Helix Games, who cites on their website that their combined development experience totals 20+ years, have got the basics so wrong. We’d hazard a guess that strict time-constraints must have led to the developer to rush the game out totally unfinished and unpolished. Nevertheless, there's no excuse for this shabby mess of a game. G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra is the worst fully-priced console game that we've played this year; and we've played a lot of crap.
Final Score: 3.5/10
