The game puts you in the boots of several different members of G.I. Joe as they fight against a still-rising Cobra. You work through four different areas, each with several missions. Along the way you'll find dog-tags that give you the option to unlock more characters, each with a different weapon. You eventually get the ability to unlock a few different members of Cobra, as well. This doesn't make much sense from a story perspective, and the throwaway line of dialogue at the beginning of such a mission, where Storm Shadow makes some crammed-in comment about tainting his soul or something by working with the Joes doesn't really do much to explain it. But you get the impression that no one was really interested in making it all make sense, instead focusing on getting as many different classic characters from the franchise in there as possible. That's noble, but the occasional bit of fan service doesn't make the gameplay any better.
The Rise of Cobra is a third-person shooter that feels like a misguided mix of classic arcade games like Commando and modern shooters like Gears of War. The camera is pulled back and moves automatically, but it also has (offline only) co-op play and a cover mechanic. Weirdly enough, you heal much faster when behind cover, but most of the cover is destructible, so when you need it most, it's not going to be there long enough to make a difference. Instead, you're better off making use of the game's roll button, which lets you flip out of the way and dodge incoming fire. The game does all of the aiming for you, so a lot of the action is of the "hold up on the analog stick while holding the fire button" variety. This gets incredibly annoying when you're trying to shoot at a specific target, as the right stick that's supposed to let you select different targets doesn't work very well at all. If you have two enemies ahead of you and want to shoot one instead of the other, it can be frustratingly difficult to get the auto-aim to obey. Half the time, the auto-aim seems to lock onto some off-screen object--usually a helpless box that gives you points when shot--and shoot at it until it's dead while you flail around trying to get it to aim at something that's actually shooting back at you.
In addition to the on-foot shooting, the game offers up a few vehicles and a satellite minigame where you blast ground troops with an orbital laser. While a break from the standard action is a good idea, the vehicle control is a mess. The laser minigame is decent, but that's also where I ran into an issue where the game wouldn't advance at the end of the minigame, leaving me stuck and forcing me to abort the mission and start over.
But the occasional bug isn't what makes G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra a bad game. There's no one thing that you can point at here. Every little thing about it, from the bland presentation to the dead-simple gameplay, conspires to make the final product incredibly lame. It has the depth of a bad downloadable game with the price tag of a full-on retail release. It's the worst of both worlds. And now you know.
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