There seems to be a noticeable uptick in classic cartoons and TV shows getting adapted into pixelated beat ’em ups and, man, I’m here for it. GI Joe is hopping into the fray as well with Wrath of Cobra, but my time with the demo isn’t as wrathful as I’d hoped.
Before we start, I have a confession to make: I never watched more than a single episode of GI Joe. Yes, I am what you can laboriously call a ’90s kid, but I also grew up in the sticks where cable TV was a luxury. However, when I wasn’t squinting at cartoons through static, I was playing a ton of beat ’em up games. I hope that’s enough authority for some of you dyed-in-the-wool Joe fans. For the most part, I have enough experience in the genre to know that Wrath of Cobra is lacking at this stage.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. As mentioned, GI Joe: Wrath of Cobra, coming from the team at Maple Powered Games, is looking to join the very welcome trend of “old shows your uncle liked are video game brawlers now.” TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge brought the boys in green back to high praise, and the recently revealed Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind is looking spicy. It makes perfect sense for Maple to want the same for the Joes.
Go, Joe!
The demo provides a nice vertical slice of the game, starring several characters of the series’ main cast. You can play as Duke, Scarlett, or the ninja Snake Eyes. Naturally, I first dove in as Snake Eyes for the very scientific reason of “ninjas are cool.” And Snake Eyes is cool, decked out in black gear and wielding a katana.
The game’s combat is typical, consisting of light and strong attacks you can combo in a few ways. Three light attacks in a row is your bread-and-butter move, but you can swap the third out for a strong attack. You can hold a block button to negate seemingly all damage from fists to laser blasts, which is impressive. Tapping up or down while pressing block lets you hop in either direction. Jumping leaves you dangling in the air long enough to get a little weird, but at least it works for when you need to hop over a hole in the floor.
Damage is oddly inconsistent in Wrath of Cobra, with the floating numbers fluctuating without any clear reason. Both the combos seem to deal similar damage regardless, with the latter (light-light-strong) ending in a flourish. Snake Eyes flings a couple ninja stars, for example, while Duke follows up with a big boot. You can’t combo if you’re not hitting an enemy.
These beats are so fresh
But since they both combos dish out the same amount of pain, I didn’t see much reason to not spam the bread-and-butter attack. You can charge the strong attack for an ultra-powerful move, but it takes so long that most enemies are able to smack you before you can pull it off. The same issue affects the light-strong combo, as the second half is a wind-up attack that leaves you open for just enough time for an enemy to bop you in the face. So, yeah, spam it is.
There is a dash to get you across the screen, and it can be followed up with a dash attack. It can do some decent damage, and Snake Eyes can attack again quickly with a slash that should make anime fans happy.
You also get a super move that charges up via a blue bar underneath your health. Snake Eyes sends out his wolf Timber to attack several enemies onscreen, while Duke drops a volley of explosive shells. Charging it up is fairly quick, as each defeated enemy adds to the bar. There’s really no reason not to hold onto it for a boss fight. I do wish they were a bit more impressive, though. With Duke and Snake, you can either kill a handful of enemies or a handful of enemies but slower.
Combat is the core of beat ’em ups, as is indicative of the name, so I’m disappointed that Wrath of Cobra feels so rudimentary and stiff in the demo. Moving around an arena can be tiresome, and both Snake Eyes and Duke play almost the same. The game does give characters different stats like strength and speed, but I hardly noticed the difference. Weapons dropped from crates range from laser rifles to grenade launchers, and they can liven up the party a bit.
I did mention a third character, Scarlett. I played her after the guys and, thankfully, she does change things up. Her light-strong combo has her flip into the air with a vicious kick, and her air attack has her whip out a crossbow that fires an explosive bolt. Yes! Precious variety. We really had to work to get here.
Tackling the Cobra legion
Enemy types is also rather typical. You have your blue Cobra soldier fodder, sometimes wielding guns, and blue Cobra soldiers with leather straps who have the power to, uh, block for an irritating amount of time. There is also a soldier variant who tosses bombs at a rhythm that continues knocking you back to the ground before you can react — that’s nice.
The game does fill the screen with plenty of enemies and it can be fun to combo multiple at once, but a lot of the time they merely crowd your character and spam attacks (so that’s what it feels like). Having more players in co-op should, at least, help pare down the numbers. Mini-bosses are also present, but act more like a punching bag than anything close to a threat.
The actual bosses don’t fair much better. There is a boss battle at the end of both stages, one where you infiltrate a flying Cobra fortress and another in which you storm a mountain base. The Baroness stands against you in the former, where she flips around and occasionally fires her gun. It was an easy fight, but nothing compared to Dr. Mindbender at the end of the mountain stage who meandered around and attacked maybe twice. I was playing on Normal, for those wondering.
Visually, Wrath of Cobra looks fine. The game’s pixelated characters and enemies closely match its contemporaries, though the level backgrounds can use some brushing up. There’s no parallax scrolling in the mountain level, making it look more like the backdrop of a stage play.
Stop all the downloadin’
In the end, I suppose my biggest gripe is that Wrath of Cobra feels like a run-of-the-mill brawler buoyed by a GI Joe veneer. The demo didn’t include any dialogue sections, so fans of the ’80s Joe cartoon may be disappointed with the lack of corny one-liners. Worse, though, is that the game is mostly a bit boring. Scarlett does liven things up, so I’m hopeful for the other characters I haven’t tried yet. I also have no idea what the floppy disks enemies drop are supposed to do.
The game is still in development and is set to launch this year. There may still be time for Wrath of Cobra to become something Joe fans can be happy with. But let’s admit it, the demo is probably already better than GI Joe: Operation Blackout.
GI Joe has certainly seen its fair share of video game adaptations since the halcyon days of the 1980s, back when the cartoon arrived and the franchise arguably hit its peak. Granted, a lot of those video games kinda sucked. Cobra Strike on the Atari 2600 was the only one I played while growing up, and I still have no idea what you were supposed to do.
GI Joe: Wrath of Cobra is, so far, thankfully not gearing up to be as bad as its worst predecessors, and may ultimately stand above them all. There is still a journey ahead of it, though, so hopefully “better than the others” isn’t the only praise the game will ultimately receive. But if you’d rather find out how the game feels, you should try the Steam demo and decide for yourself if it’s worth the excitement.
After all, knowing is half the battle.
