When the trailer for G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra was first released in theaters, I think we all had the same thought:

…holy shit, this is going to be terrible.

And we were right. The movie was downright bad. However, for as much of an abomination to the G.I. JOE name as the movie was, the game is 20x worse. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “a movie game that sucks? Say it isn’t so.” While it’s true that movie tie-in games have a long and storied history of being awful, G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra goes above and beyond the call of doody. In fact, I would go so far as to say that G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra is, without debate, the single worst thing Electronic Arts has ever attached its name to.

The Good…

Let’s get the positives out of the way since it won’t take long: It’s G.I. JOE, the orchestral music from the old show that plays when you put on your accelerator suit sounds pretty awesome and there are a ton of unlockables — including the epic PSAs.

Normally having lots of unlockables would be a good thing. However, when your game is as bad as G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra to where you can barely stand to finish more than a single stage in a sitting, those unlockables become annoyances that try to lure you back to this blood-sucking abomination.

Now that we’ve gotten those pesky positives out of the way, let’s get to it.

Story and Gameplay

G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra puts you in the shoes of one of many different members of the GI JOE team. The characters are split into three classes: Heavy Weapons, which is the only class worth playing, Soldiers, which are good until you can unlock a second Heavy Weapon character, and Commandos, who serve absolutely no purpose other than occasionally opening certain doors.

The JOEs, as per usual, are fighting against the forces of COBRA, who are… off… being evil, I guess. Look, the plot is even more confusing, convoluted and hard to follow than the movie was. It’s obvious that the story was written with people who haven’t watched the movie in mind and I can’t really fault them for that. If you haven’t seen the movie, it won’t hurt your understanding of what is going on. Sure, you still won’t know what’s going on, but it won’t be because you haven’t seen the film.

Once you pick your two JOEs two Heavy Weapons characters, you are dropped into one of several environments with the singular objective of destroying everything that stands between you and your first “checkpoint”. You do this by moving forward and holding down the right trigger (or R2 on PS3). Because the game uses lock-on targeting, you don’t have to worry about precision aiming — just point at the guy and let it rip. It sounds simple, right?

Well it’s not. It’s actually broke as shit.

By design, the game will auto-target an enemy, putting up a health bar that you can watch tick away. While it’s somewhat convenient for the one or two times you fight a single bad guy, the moment you are facing off against two or more enemies the auto-targeting turns to liquid shit. The targeting never locks on to the enemy you actually want to kill and trying to switch targets is an act in futility. No matter where you move the right joystick to try and change your target, the game pretty much does whatever it wants. Even worse, many times you are left open to enemy fire and take cheap hits because the targeting has locked on to a barrel or a door or a power-up.

Because when it comes down to it — bad guys are doing their job in trying to kill you. Barrels are just fuckers.

When you die — and you WILL die — you have to start the level over again from the very beginning. Sure, many terrible games do this, but G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra stands out because the game actually has “checkpoints”. However, these checkpoints are merely loading screens disguised as an excuse to tally the completely arbitrary points you earn.

Hold up! Stop the review for a minute!

JW NOTE:
Why in the blue blazing monkey fuck would you call something a damn “checkpoint” if when you die you still have to spawn at the beginning of the level? What’s the fucking point of putting checkpoints into the game in the first place? If you had no intention of putting in checkpoints, why not just put up a fucking loading screen instead of giving the player the false impression that their fucking progress has been saved?!

It’s the single dumbest fucking thing I have ever seen in a video game!

…back to the review before I pop a vein or something…

Have I mentioned the busted ass camera? No? Well, there you go. The camera tries to stay behind the player and you have ability to move it (I guess they needed the joystick free for auto-targeting). I’m fairly convinced that the camera wants you dead as it has an uncanny tendency to turn away from the enemies. Not only does this ensure that you have no idea where the hell to shoot, but it also messes with the movement controls.

Speaking of movement controls, there are points in the game where you’re forced to drive vehicles. The controls here are, simply put, the worst I’ve ever seen.

The game isn’t even fun to play with friends. There’s no online multiplayer, co-op or otherwise, to speak of. If you have a friend with you in the room, you can technically play co-op but then you have to ask yourself if you can look your friend in the face and see the pain in their eyes as you force them to sit through this travesty. If the answer is yes, then congratulations! You’re a fucking monster.

Presentation

From the moment you see Channing Tatum’s “somebody farted” face on the game’s start screen, you just know that the game has minimal presentation values. Partially because all of the characters from the movie are only recognizable through the oil paintings you see in the character selection screen. Those painings are the high point of the game’s presentation.

G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra looks like a budget PlayStation 2 title. The level design and aesthetics are straight from the “Generic Gaming Worlds” catalogue and the character models are, simply put, wrong. Some characters carry only a vague resemblance to their movie counterparts and the animations are stiff. I find it hilarious (and somewhat pathetic), however, that the femane character models like Baroness and Scarlett are far more detailed and better animated than the male characters.

And yet, for all of this the game still has framerate issues at certain points. Go figure.

The audio is equally pathetic. Only one cast member from the film is actually in the game (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and he is the one who gives the absolute worst performance, with the most ear-bleedingly terrible “COOOOOOOOOOBRAAAAAAAAAAAAA” cries I’ve ever heard.

The rest of the voice cast is terrible, with characters like Duke and Scarlett soundling like they’re reading their lines from cue cards while others are trying to talk with made-up accents. General Hawk sounds like he’s doing a bad Han Solo impression, and, if you can get through more than five minutes without hearing Stalker spitting out bad lines, consider yourself lucky.

The sound effects are even worse. Somehow. Without going into any specific detail, there is a point in the game where shooting a tree produced the same sound as shooting a metal door. I don’t think I need to say anything else.

Overview

As it stands, I am currently checking the United Nations Resolutions for any loopholes that will allow me to bring this game up on war crimes. The gameplay is uninspired, the controls are awful with a broken auto-target system, there’s no online multiplayer, and the presentation is atrocious. But with all of that, the biggest slap in the face?

The game is being sold for full price.

If you spend $50 on this, you’re an idiot. If you buy this for your kids, they should be taken from you. If your parents buy this for you, they don’t love you. This game has zero redeeming value absolutely no reason to exist. Now you know, and knowing…

…no, fuck that. This game doesn’t even deserve a clever quip. It gets a 1 out of 5 and that’s only because I can’t go any lower.

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