G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

The Skinny: Your G.I. Joe buddies have been captured and scattered across arctic, desert, and tropical war zones. Be a good boy and go find them, mmkay?

The Good: They didn't even want people to see the movie before release, so what did you expect here, folks?

The Bad: We can't really put how bad of an experience this was into words. Awful? Frustrating? Awfulstrating? If you have a five-year-old in your household, this is a great game to have him or her play to a) make them feel like they're playing a game and b) help you up your gamerscore and trophies. Other than that, stay far, far away. You can pretty much go through the whole game holding down the fire button and strafing on the casual difficulty, but even attempting to challenge yourself on harder settings is a big no-no. While you'll go through clearly-marked "checkpoints", your progress in each level is not saved. If you die 99.9 percent through a 25-minute long level or quit the game, you have to start FROM THE EFFIN' BEGINNING of the level. Couple that huge gameplay oversight with very corny dialogue, characters that glide (instead of walk) across the screen, and subpar technical and production values and you've got a big pile of stink on your hands. Even our Xbox 360 didn't want to play the game—it froze four separate times during our marathon suck session.

Something? Anything? EA could have saved face with some sort of substantial nod to the original TV series, something similar to Activision including four full episodes from the G1 Transformers cartoon in their recent Transformers 2 tie-in. But, alas, the only unlockables you can expect are concept artwork, four short PSA commercials proliferating important life lessons (i.e. Do not jump over electrical wires with a bicycle), and some of the clips shown while progressing through the game. Oh, and you'll have to actually play through this horrible, horrible game just to see them.



Buy, Rent, or Disembowel: No go, Joe. Where's a stop loss program when you need one?

Updated 8/29/09