G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra Review

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is one of the latest big budget Hollywood films and Double Helix Games were tasked with creating a game to coincide with the film's release. However, video games that are associated with film licences don't necessarily have a history of being stand-out titles and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is the latest to have a crack at the whip, in terms of bucking this trend.

The story follows a fairly basic premise. There is a company called MARS that are acting unusually, and the GIs are sent in to investigate their activities. However, the narrative is exceedingly bland and the plot twists are very transparent. It almost seems patronising, especially when Stalker, the character in charge of briefing the player, asks other NPCs to repeat their statements in a more dumbed down form. Another interesting moment came when Stalker said that people shouldn't jump to conclusions about who is behind the strange occurrences, despite the fact the enemies had been shouting their allegiance the entire time.

Unfortunately, the story can get a bit confusing due to some poor game design. It's possible to completely skip chunks of the story by selecting missions in the wrong order - something the game eventually tries to correct. However, by this point, the player already knows most of the information, so having to go back and listen to the narrative talk about things they think might be happening is very uninteresting. If the game allows players to skip missions, it shouldn't then make them mandatory later on, they should just be mandatory to begin with.

The actual core gameplay isn't so bad. It's essentially built on a cooperative mechanic, so even when playing alone there is an AI character for assistance. Players can fire, dodge and use a special attack and that's effectively the extent of interaction the game offers. The majority of the characters all have different firearms though, so it has a fair amount of variety, and there are three different classes, which very slightly affects the style of gameplay. However, it can cause problems as not all enemies can be killed by every class. Some characters cannot attack flying enemies, and while there are opportunities to change characters mid-level, having to restart a level to choose a more suitable character is quite annoying.

There is also a cover system, which is both ineffective and extremely effective. It's effective because in certain situations it's very overpowered; players regenerate health quicker when in cover, and long-range enemies essentially can't do anything. However, it's ineffective because cover is not always initiated when wanted and once in cover, it's surprisingly hard to get out of it. Enemies can also melee players through cover, which can be frustrating. Sometimes it can be much easier to ignore cover completely, because of the problems associated with it.