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IGN Review of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Look, you may take the position that any sort of update to G.I. Joe would be -- as I've heard some exclaim – "raping my childhood." We still have a few days to go before we know for sure whether GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is a disaster as predicted; this review comes a little less than a week before the premiere of the movie. Whatever your stance on movie is or will be, let it be said that the videogame, while certainly not an instant classic, is actually a pretty solid Nintendo DS action game. It's not one of the prettiest handheld games out there – it's actually really, really ugly -- but for an experience where you get to blow stuff up, you could definitely do worse.
Backbone Entertainment was responsible for the Nintendo DS edition of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and for its rendition of the upcoming flick the team pulled an engine from a DS game that has yet to be released: Gauntlet DS. Yes, G.I. Joe on the DS features Duke, Snake-Eyes, Heavy Duty and Shipwreck in place of Warrior, Valkyre, Elf, and Magician. Sort of.
The game takes place in a top-down perspective with players assuming the role of one of six characters from the GI Joe team –die in a level and you can switch out the character to complete the mission. It's a pretty straightforward design: blast your way through the onslaught of enemies, hitting checkpoints along the way marked on the map on the bottom screen. Each of the characters has their own abilities, speed, and weapons – Snake-Eyes has an up-close melee, for example, instead of Duke's long-distance grenade or Heavy Duty's mine plant special attack. On occasion you'll leap into a vehicle or get in the seat of a turret, but for the majority of the game you're on your feet from start to finish. And just like Gauntlet, enemies will continuously spawn out of generators that need to be destroyed before you can move on.
The game's a fun, simplistic romp – all you're really doing is blowing stuff up, but it's all done in a satisfyingly energetic screen-shaking sort of way. The designers try to throw a bit of strategy in there by giving your characters the ability to take cover behind objects, but this mechanic is so wonky and unpredictable that you'll more often just finding yourself avoiding cover and charging in all gung-ho into action. The accelerator suits you'll see in the movie are in the DS game as power-ups that turn your character into an invincible superman, but these power-ups are surprisingly sparse – I only found three throughout the entirety of the game.
G.I. Joe features a character upgrade feature where killed enemies count as experience points – cross a threshold and you'll advance to the next level as well as unlock a new uniform (which is really just a palate-swap ). The problem with this feature is that once you've hit the maximum level with a character, any enemies killed aren't credited, so you're encouraged to get killed just so you can swap in a character that hasn't had as much time in the fight just so you can get credit for the kills. And there are spots within the game that can be exploited to upgrade your characters – enemies will continue to spawn endlessly, so you can just sit there killing bad guys until each of the six characters in your roster are bulked out to maximum.
As simplistic and fun as the game is, you just can't ignore how ugly G.I. Joe is on the DS. In-game visuals are all right, but they're a throwback to the rigid top-down 2D/3D hybrid engine of the classic Grand Theft Auto series -- it almost feels a bit like Urban Yeti on the Game Boy Advance. Where the ugliness really comes to light is in between the levels – the developers put together some of the sloppiest interstitial cutscenes ever, scanning movie production photos in at incredibly low resolution and low color detail, making the game look like it came out of the late 80s when everyone was trying their own digitized fighter.
The single player campaign isn't tremendously long, and those looking to take control of the Cobra side of the fight might find themselves disappointed – the only Cobra mission happens after you beat the game. However, there's an extensive multiplayer portion of the game where up to four players can compete in a variety of deathmatch-style challenges. Unfortunately it requires a copy of the game for each system in the network and it's only for local play; no online. We only received one copy of the game from EA, so we did not get a chance to test out multiplayer for review.
©2009-08-04, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Backbone Entertainment was responsible for the Nintendo DS edition of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and for its rendition of the upcoming flick the team pulled an engine from a DS game that has yet to be released: Gauntlet DS. Yes, G.I. Joe on the DS features Duke, Snake-Eyes, Heavy Duty and Shipwreck in place of Warrior, Valkyre, Elf, and Magician. Sort of.
The game takes place in a top-down perspective with players assuming the role of one of six characters from the GI Joe team –die in a level and you can switch out the character to complete the mission. It's a pretty straightforward design: blast your way through the onslaught of enemies, hitting checkpoints along the way marked on the map on the bottom screen. Each of the characters has their own abilities, speed, and weapons – Snake-Eyes has an up-close melee, for example, instead of Duke's long-distance grenade or Heavy Duty's mine plant special attack. On occasion you'll leap into a vehicle or get in the seat of a turret, but for the majority of the game you're on your feet from start to finish. And just like Gauntlet, enemies will continuously spawn out of generators that need to be destroyed before you can move on.
The game's a fun, simplistic romp – all you're really doing is blowing stuff up, but it's all done in a satisfyingly energetic screen-shaking sort of way. The designers try to throw a bit of strategy in there by giving your characters the ability to take cover behind objects, but this mechanic is so wonky and unpredictable that you'll more often just finding yourself avoiding cover and charging in all gung-ho into action. The accelerator suits you'll see in the movie are in the DS game as power-ups that turn your character into an invincible superman, but these power-ups are surprisingly sparse – I only found three throughout the entirety of the game.
G.I. Joe features a character upgrade feature where killed enemies count as experience points – cross a threshold and you'll advance to the next level as well as unlock a new uniform (which is really just a palate-swap ). The problem with this feature is that once you've hit the maximum level with a character, any enemies killed aren't credited, so you're encouraged to get killed just so you can swap in a character that hasn't had as much time in the fight just so you can get credit for the kills. And there are spots within the game that can be exploited to upgrade your characters – enemies will continue to spawn endlessly, so you can just sit there killing bad guys until each of the six characters in your roster are bulked out to maximum.
As simplistic and fun as the game is, you just can't ignore how ugly G.I. Joe is on the DS. In-game visuals are all right, but they're a throwback to the rigid top-down 2D/3D hybrid engine of the classic Grand Theft Auto series -- it almost feels a bit like Urban Yeti on the Game Boy Advance. Where the ugliness really comes to light is in between the levels – the developers put together some of the sloppiest interstitial cutscenes ever, scanning movie production photos in at incredibly low resolution and low color detail, making the game look like it came out of the late 80s when everyone was trying their own digitized fighter.
The single player campaign isn't tremendously long, and those looking to take control of the Cobra side of the fight might find themselves disappointed – the only Cobra mission happens after you beat the game. However, there's an extensive multiplayer portion of the game where up to four players can compete in a variety of deathmatch-style challenges. Unfortunately it requires a copy of the game for each system in the network and it's only for local play; no online. We only received one copy of the game from EA, so we did not get a chance to test out multiplayer for review.
©2009-08-04, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved