The Rise of Cobra welcomes you with the old G.I. Joe catchphrase “now you know and knowing is half the battle” which was coined when an animated G.I. Joe was used for a public service campaign to educate American kids on various dangers of doing stupid stuff; like climbing into dumped refrigerators, crossing the road without looking or buying movie tie-in games without reading a review first...
You take control of the elite G.I. Joe team and fight the evil forces of free market democracy… Errr… I mean COBRA. Missions are dished out by the tyrannical General Hawk (Dennis Quaid in the movie) and you can choose from a roster of different “Joes” and 3 difficulty settings. When I heard that the game based on the flash-looking FX movie would have co-op and vehicles I was a happy Joe, expecting some sort of explosive Gears Of War/Army of Two action with high production values and flashy effects. Now I’ve played the game I am not. I am, in fact, a sad Joe. Apart from the HD resolution, a lot of particle effects and the occasional hi res texture this game could be a first generation PlayStation game, and plays like a 3-D Commando or Contra. The game’s fixed camera immediately makes it feel archaic to play, and you’ll soon be rediscovering all the reasons why we couldn’t wait for games to go 3-D as you get shot by and have to shoot enemies that are off screen. The level designers were even mean enough to use the fixed camera to hide some pickups and collectables from your view, ensuring that you miss things and have to replay levels if you want to complete everything. And replay levels you will, because the game has another antiquated feature in that, whilst missions are split into 3 or 4 checkpoints, if both your 2 Joes die you have to restart the whole mission, and the checkpoints don’t save either, so completing a mission is the only way to make sure your progress is saved. So annoying are some of the levels that I fear for joypads everywhere; the developer’s misconception that today’s gamers will tolerate unfair deaths right at the end of a mission time and time again (that mean you have to replay a level right from the start) is naïve at best, and stupid at worst when you consider the quality of the gameplay and graphics on show here, which are below average, Joe. And you can ignore these highly misleading screen shots, the game never looks that good, and you're rarely as close to the action as they suggest.
The game plays as a virtual co-op, unfortunately with your AI partner being more “Joey” than “Joe”. He’ll stand with his back to the action, ignore enemies that are standing right next to him, and generally piss you off. The whole game is clearly designed to be played by two players and yet even if signed in the second player doesn’t get any achievements, more evidence that the game designers are trying to make people play their game through more times than is healthy for them. You can swap to play as your AI buddy Joe at any time, so this second Joe not only becomes an extra life should yours die but when your Joe is down to its last fragment of life you can change to the other one (which can never die when being controlled by the AI), and frequent swapping is the best way to make progress in the game.
If the team AI is dumb, then at least it’s not alone as sometimes you’ll come across enemies that get stuck on walls and moonwalk until you put them out of their misery. The levels all seem to be the same; wander along a linear path shooting everything until you reach an installation, at which point you shoot everything. The movement and aiming is on the left stick, which immediately feels odd to people used to Gears if War et al, you can hold the L-trigger to strafe and ‘X’ is melee attack if you get close to an enemy. There is a cover mode (tap ‘A’) but don’t go thinking this is any sort of tactical cover shooter as the enemies’ weapons are frequently so powerful that they can blow away concrete barriers, so taking cover is only used to regain health. The age-old techniques of circle-strafing or rolling left and right are much more effective ways of avoiding incoming fire. By shooting stuff you charge up your Joes’ various secondary power attacks, which can be unleashed with a press of ‘B’. The coolest thing about this generation of Joes (and the one thing you’ll probably recognise from the movie) is the Accelerator suit, (which speeds up your Joes’ movement, makes their weapons more powerful and them virtually invincible) that can be used (briefly) after being charged up by - guess what - shooting stuff. The problem is that, that as cool as this Accelerator gear looks, because the camera is fixed and quite distant there’s no real feeling of speed or power, and your Joes basically look like futuristic Keystone Cops for 30 seconds or so. Oh dear. You might even get a surprisingly un-enjoyable weaponised vehicle to drive around in (they handle like a radio controlled car from the fixed camera position) but tend to act in a rather glitchy way. And although the occasional satellite strike is more fun, it doesn't last for long long and it’s soon back to the never ending shoot-athon that is The Rise of Cobra. At the end of most levels you’ll get an unimaginative boss battle where you have to shoot a ridiculously tough COBRA baddie and its minions 4 milllion times and then it’s “mission complete.” Yay.
The G.I. Joes at your disposal include characters with names like Duke, Heavy Duty, Ripcord, Gung Ho, Snake Eyes, Bronson Pinchot, Baldrick, Arthur Daley, Dave the Barman, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Shana Scarlett O’Hara and Hootie Brownn McBoob (in truth, I may have some of those up as fearing for my sanity I simply couldn’t be arsed to play the game to its conclusion and unlock ‘em all.) The characters come from three classes; Combat Soldier, Heavy and Commando. Combat soldiers have medium weapons and can hack door locks, Heavys carry large weapons and can blow locked doors down, and Commandos have light weapons but can sneak through vents to unlock doors and get to goodies inside. Unfortunately all the “goodies” tend to be concept art or tokens that unlock more (remarkably similar) unlockable missions.
There’s definitely some explosive fun to be had when playing The Rise of Cobra with a friend, but the fact that it can’t be played on Xbox Live means that you’ll have to trick a real, live friend (or relative) into playing it with you – and this won’t be easy if they see the game in action first. As a whole the movie tie-in still seems to be a difficult thing to do justice to, but the Harry Potter, Riddick and even the Wanted and Transformers games at least show it’s possible. Even presuming this is aimed at the younger end of the market and allowing for its slightly lower than normal retail price, Rise of the Cobra is a sloppy Joe, and won’t impress anyone. The fact that one of our Gamecell guys - who’d seen the movie the previous night - didn’t recognise this as a G.I. Joe game until I used the Accelerator suit says it all; it doesn’t really feel like it’s really connected to the movie. But hey, Now you know this game isn’t very good, and knowing is half the battle.
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