For every Batman Arkham Asylum, there has to be a G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, a game that's so god awful you can sum up the review in a single sentiment. Putting salt, lemon, lime and battery acid on an open wound would be a more pleasurable experience than playing this game, seriously.

Save your money and don't even bother to buy it.

Story

It's badly written, terribly designed and appallingly brought to life by ham-acted cut-scenes and vomit inducing voice acting. The story didn't make me care at all and I have to admit that after a couple of plays, I began to loathe all of the characters.

Gameplay

Bog standard controls make up this fixed perspective shooter and there's not much you can really say, you shoot, you take cover, you rinse and repeat through some of the most bland and uninspiring environments in a video game yet against the same-old same-old boring enemies. Seriously, there's nothing here in this game that is remotely worth doing and if you love shooting things, save money and buy Shadow Complex instead from XBLA.

Vehicle controls are just as bad as the character controls and the whole game just suffers from a lack of polish in all areas. From the bland upgrades to the annoying habit of the characters yelling GO JOE when they fire up their accelerator suits, there's nothing to like in the game at all, even if you are a fan of G.I. Joe in any way, shape or form.

Not even getting access to unlockable characters can save it. A lack of a mid-point in any of the missions means that if you die, and the game can be quite hard with the cruddy controls...you go right back to the start of the level.

Graphics

The graphics are bland, they're uninspired and they're extremely pixelated at times. The whole hodge-podge of badly modelled characters and linear levels fits together like trying to shove a square peg through a star-shaped hole. The lighting provides flat texturing and everything just looks as though it walked in from the 8-bit era, in fact, some of the 8-bit games were better looking than this.

Animations

In some cases the animations might be passable; in most they're stiff and unimaginative. There's no sense of character at all here and every Joe and Cobra from the bosses to the troopers just smacks of derivative and boring design. Typical for a movie-based game.

Physics

Things explode, bodies sometimes ragdoll, that's about it...next?

AI

It has laughable AI, truly terrible and formulaic attack patterns combined with the typical charge ahead into gunfire mentality. Your AI Partner is just as bad as can be expected and so on.

Sound

Weak and sometimes gets caught in a loop, there's a lot of stutter to the sound effects and the game crashed a couple of times with a high pitched juddering noise, not very inspiring at all. I guess that's what Q&A is for.

Music

The soundtrack isn't too bad, perhaps the one saving grace of the game.

Dialogue/Voice

A hackneyed plot, script and writing all combine to make this truly chuckle-worthy. If you can stand to listen to the macho dialogue and gung-ho Joe then you might find a few note-worthy lines. The voice acting is just as atrocious as the script and Cobra Commander is...well...terrible doesn't truly describe it. All in all, very bad and especially cringe worthy when they bust out the cheesy GO Joe!

Multiplayer

You can play with a friend, seriously though, why would you want to inflict this game on anyone else?

Go Joe!

Yep Go Joe, go away, and don't come back ever. This is one that deserves to be left on the shelf. I can't even recommend it as a fun experience for you and a friend. You are seriously better off buying one of the recent XBLA games or saving up for a real game and not just poorly made cash in.