G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (video game)

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G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (video game)
Genre(s): Action
Shoot 'em up
Third-Person Shooter
Platform(s): Mobile
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DS
PlayStation 2
PlayStation 3
PlayStation Portable
Xbox 360
Release Date: WW: July 31, 2009 (Windows Mobile)
NA/AU: August 4, 2009
EU: August 7, 2009
WW: August 28, 2009 (BlackBerry)
Developer(s): Double Helix Games
Backbone Entertainment (DS)
EA Mobile (Mobile)
Publisher(s): Electronic Arts
Country: United States
Series: G.I. Joe
Predecessor: G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra: Basic Training
Successor: G.I. Joe: Battleground (by release date; mobile game)
G.I. Joe: Operation Blackout (by release date; console game)

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is a video game adaption of the 2009 film of the same name. Developed by Double Helix Games and published by Electronic Arts for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, and mobile devices. The game is based on the film of the same name, which in turn is based on Hasbro's G.I. Joe toy franchise.

Why It Can't Rise

NOTE: Double Helix Games versions only.

  1. The characters and environments look really boring.
  2. Mid-level checkpoints update your score but don't save your game, forcing you start the level all over from scratch if both characters die as you're limited to a single life, which is extremely frustrating.
  3. Abysmal voice acting, as only Joseph Gordon-Levitt reprises his role from the film (see RQ#1).
  4. You have no control over the camera where it swoops all around all on its own to give you what is apparently intended to be a proper view of the proceedings, leading to you getting harmed by offscreen enemies or running towards the camera, unable to see where you're going.
  5. When the camera view suddenly flips while you are moving, the controls often won't adjust properly, so your character may go running off in some direction other than the one you intended unlike many other games with fixed or semi-fixed cameras which have managed these camera shifts properly such as Devil May Cry.
  6. The game has one too many glitches.
  7. The vehicles controls are too slippery as the direction you want the vehicle to go always changes, due to the awful camera where you always push the stick forward to move the vehicle forward, but your view of the action may be from the side, from slightly above, or even from in front, along with the fact that the camera will move about as you drive, forcing you to constantly rethink which direction you need to push the stick in to make the tank move in the direction you want it to go.
  8. Poor cover system in the game that would only make sense if you always viewed your camera from behind but you don't, so you'll be tumbling or taking cover when you want to do the opposite along with taking cover on the wrong side of the object due to the aforementioned poor camera.
  9. The targeting system is horrible since it's automatic. You can switch targets using the right analog stick, but if you take cover and select any enemy other than the default target, the game will automatically switch your target back to the default if you don't fire for a few seconds.
  10. The game doesn't distinguish among foes that can hurt you, buildings that cannot, and the score-enhancing cubes, leading to you being surrounded by Cobra grunts but firing at some offscreen power-up because the game can't prioritize a dude with a gun over a harmless cube hovering in the air.
  11. When an enemy falls, the targeting might not lock on to nearby foes because they are behind you--which happens often, given the horrible camera.
  12. If you play on the medium or hard difficulty level, you may almost always die once or twice due to the aforementioned awful camera or the awful targeting.
  13. Atrocious vehicle sequences.
  14. If you play with CPU allies, they're invincible but deal very little damage no matter what. They also don't really take cover in competent ways or try to avoid fire which doesn't matter since they can't die anyway, thus they're mostly present to soak up bullets.
  15. In co-op mode, the camera could get hung up if both playable characters wander too far apart rather than going into a split screen.
    • No online multiplayer, even games at the time, such as The Conduit, Saints Row 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield: Bad Company, Resistance 2, and Gears of War 2 had online multiplayer, despite the fact that the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are capable of online multiplayer.
  16. Clunky boss battles.
  17. Unbalanced characters.
  18. Bad controls.
  19. Poorly compressed music.
  20. Poor textures with ugly cutscenes, fuzzy resolution and stilted animation.
  21. Bad dialogue.
  22. Extremely long loading times with an average duration of around thirty seconds - although some of them seem to drag on for a whole minute.
  23. The sound effects range from mediocre to outright terrible. The tinny din of the weapons is enough to make you reach for something spongy to shove in your ears. In addition, other sound effects sound completely wrong. A great example of that is when you break open crates, the flying debris sounds more like the whirring of a computer in a bad 1960s science fiction film than ricocheting rubbish.
  24. The storyline is suitably ridiculous and dreadful.
    • No story that follows the movie, with a little-to-no relation to the movie, instead the game takes place after the first film, even though, the game takes place after Operation HISS, but there is no excuse is to why the story doesn’t follow the movie's plot.
      • Speaking of the story, the game serves as a sequel to Operation HISS, which consists of both the four-parts limited series by IDW Publishing and the computer-animated web series of the same name which serves as a prequel to the game.
      • It's like the developers were making a completely different game with a completely different plot that the storyline is different from the movie and they added characters that never appear in the movie, such as Agent Helix, a character created just for the game.
    • Poor grasp of the source material. Many of the characters from the movie are absent. For example;
      • Cover Girl, Lt. Stone, Zartan, and the President did not appear in the game.
    • To add salt to the wound, Agent Helix, Kamakura, Backblast, Gung Ho, Flash, Beachhead, Shipwreck, Tunnel Rat, Breaker, Wild Bill, Dialtone, Recondo, Lift Ticket, Stalker, Dusty, Snowjob, Dataframe, Firefly (unrelated to the character of the same name in G.I. Joe: Retaliation), Iron Grenadiers, and Night Creepers are the characters that did not appear in the movie.
  25. Repetitive gameplay that gets boring after a while.
  26. Clunky and tedious action..

Redeeming Qualities

  1. At least Joseph Gordon Levitt did reprise his role from the movie as Cobra Commander, and he still gives a solid performance as the main villain, despite how cringeworthy it is.
  2. The music is passable.
  3. The gameplay is still good, despite being repetitive at times.
  4. It introduces Agent Helix. she was named after the developer, in fact, she became an action figure in the 2009 edition of the toyline.
    • Agent Helix would later appear in the IDW comic book G.I. Joe: Special - Helix. Although the promo copy says this story ties in with the game, the depiction of the characters matches IDW's Real American Hero continuity, which considered both a video game tie-in and a promotional movie giveaway, it started as prelude to both the film and the comic.
  5. The DS version is a fun simplistic top-down shooter in the likes of Grand Theft Auto and it's a reskin of the cancelled DS game Gauntlet by the same developer. However, the DS version shares the same sequel plot as the console and PSP versions despite how bad this version is, while the mobile phone version is a side-scrolling platform with top-down shoot 'em up missions, such as the MOBAT tank and the Nightraven.

Reception

Much like the film, the game received unfavorable reviews. With a Metacritic score of 43 for the PlayStation 3 version, while the Xbox 360 version has a lower score of 42, GameSpot gave the console and DS versions 4 and 5 out of 10 respectively, IGN gave the console versions 5 and 5.8 out of 10, as well as the DS version a more positive review 7.1 out of 10, X-Play gave it a 1 out of 5, G4 X-Play's Adam Sessler stated "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is the new gold standard for lazy and uninspired cash-in licensed games. It could perhaps be argued that the developers didn’t have much to work with given the source material, but that doesn’t help the unfortunate consumer who ends up stuck with this Junkyard Dog of a game in his collection." It also has a 42% on GameFaqs, Common Sense Media gave it a 3/10, Game Informer gave the PS3 and 360 versions of the game 3.5, out of 10, KidzWorld gave both the Wii and DS versions 4 out of 5, and Angry Joe was given the game a 3/10.

Trivia

  • The game was released on August 3, 2009, three days before the release of the movie.
  • Dwayne Johnson was rumored to appear in the first film as Shipwreck, but he was unfortunately cut. It however, he made an appearance in the game.
    • Brendan Fraser was reportedly going to play Gung Ho, but was instead later revealed to be playing Sergeant Stone. Also, Gung Ho made an appearance in the game as well.

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