GI Joe the rise of cobra for the DS is a movie tie-in game to the recent film of the same name. The game is basically a top-down arcade style shooter. You have a choice of 6 Joes to play as including Duke, Snake Eyes, Heavy Duty, and others. Surprisingly, the game does not directly follow the plot of the movie, but rather, it follows from where the film left off. This is good as it gives you a new plot to play through rather than just re-hashing the same story like so many other movie based games do.
In terms of the game play, it's very reminiscent of the 90’s arcade shooter Smash TV. However, the top-down perspective doesn’t end up working to well here. The camera is zoomed in too close to your character which makes it difficult to see not only upcoming enemies, but also hard to navigate your surroundings. Thankfully the touch screen serves as a map which helps to alleviate the problem of getting lost. Still, it gets very frustrating when you are getting showered in a hail of enemy fire and you're dead before you have a chance to know where they are coming from. Even more infuriating is that you will get frequent calls from your leader and team mates on the touch screen. There is no spoken dialogue for these as it is all just scrolling text. Some times the game will pause in order to give you a chance to read these, but most of the time it won't give you the chance. So if you try to read a conversation between General Hawk and a scientist when this happens, odds are you’ll die from the continued enemy onslaught.
In terms of the game's presentation, the overhead perspective doesn't work well and fails to do the Joes or their on-screen counterparts justice.. The franchise has always had a colorful cast of characters and that transitioned well into the new film series. When you pick your Joe in the game, he or she is represented with a full portrait. However, once you start the level, your Joe is just a patchy colored blur. It’s a shame when the DS is capable of pulling off so much more. Another odd art choice is that while the characters from the movie are represented with still images of the actors during the pre-mission scenes, other characters are just drawings, such as the scientist who briefs you. They couldn’t just pay some guy to wear a lab coat so the game would be consistent?
The level variety doesn't fare any better. The majority of the levels consist of going from point A to point B, either destroying enemy respawn hangars or missile silos, with the occasional vehicle (that’s very hard to steer properly) thrown in. The levels try to be different, but after a few minutes, you’ll realize you’re basically doing the same thing in each stage. On the plus side, the Joes have different stats and weapons which help to somewhat alleviate this problem. For example, Snake Eyes has his sword for melee attacks while Heavy Duty has a chain gun for heavier fire power as opposed to Shipwreck who only has a small hand gun.
The game controls well for the most part. B is for your main weapon, Y is for your secondary weapon, and A and X are for dodging and melee strikes. Unfortunately there are some collision issues to be had with your character interacting with the scenery. In the second level of the game I destroyed an enemy hangar with Snake Eyes sword. In the explosion I found that my character had literally gotten stuck in the wreckage. No matter what I did or what button I pressed I could not free myself. In addition to this, there were no enemies in the area to kill me, so I had no choice but to turn off the game and start the level over. The Touch screen only acts as a map so there are no stylus issues to discuss. Perhaps its better that it wasn’t used for the game itself as the face buttons work fine on their own here.
Despite these flaws, there's still some replay value left in this title. You can level up your team members in order to improve your stats and gain new costumes, though the costumes are just palette swaps. As a nice bonus, you can also play as members of COBRA after you get through the Joes' missions. However, in order to get these bonuses you have to play through the game’s repetitive missions which are a task unto itself.
