Pixelated beat 'em up games based on old cartoons and TV series seem to be becoming more and more popular, and I for one am all for it. With Wrath of Cobra, GI Joe is also joining the fight, but my experience with the demo isn't as wrathful as I'd anticipated.
I must admit something before we begin: I have never seen more than one episode of GI Joe. Granted, I was up in the sticks, where cable TV was considered a luxury, so I guess you could call me a product of the '90s generation. Nonetheless, I spent a lot of time playing beat 'em up games when I wasn't straining at cartoons through static. I hope that some of you die-hard Joe supporters will find that sufficient authority. I know enough about the genre, for the most part, to say that Wrath of Cobra isn't quite up to standard right now.
I'm getting ahead of myself, however. As previously indicated, the team at Maple Powered Games is aiming to follow the very welcome trend of "old shows your uncle liked are video game brawlers now" with GI Joe: Wrath of Cobra. TMNT: The Vengeance of Shredder restored the boys' green suit to great acclaim, and the newly unveiled Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind is appearing spicy. Maple's desire for the Joes to be the same makes great sense.
Joe, go!
A great vertical slice of the game including many important cast members from the series is included in the demo. You may take on the roles of Scarlett, Duke, or Snake Eyes, a ninja. I immediately jumped in as Snake Eyes because, well, science tells us that ninjas are awesome. Additionally, Snake Eyes is cool—he's got black clothing on and a katana.
The fighting in the game is standard, with light and powerful strikes that may be combined in a few different ways. Your main move is to chain three mild attacks in a succession, but you may also chain a heavy strike for the third. It's amazing that you can hold down a block button to prevent almost any damage, including laser blasts and fists. You may hop in either direction by tapping up or down and hitting block at the same time. Leaping causes you to hang in midair for a considerable amount of time, which may seem uncomfortable, but it's functional when you need to jump over a floor hole.
In Wrath of Cobra, damage is strangely inconsistent, with floating figures that change for no apparent reason. Despite this, it seems that both combinations inflict about the same amount of damage; the later (light-light-strong) finishes beautifully. For example, when Snake Eyes throws a few ninja stars, Duke responds with a large boot. If you are not striking an adversary, you cannot combo.
These tracks sound so new
But I didn't see much of a reason not to spam the bread-and-butter assault since both combinations provide the same amount of agony. The strong attack has a charge time that allows most foes to hit you before you can use it, yet it is still rather potent. The light-strong combination is also impacted by this problem, as the wind-up strike in the second part leaves you vulnerable for an attacker to land a blow to your face. Thus, indeed, it is spam.
In order to go across the screen, there is a dash that may be followed by a dash attack. It can do some respectable damage, and anime lovers should be pleased that Snake Eyes can strike again fast with a slash.
A blue bar located underneath your health indicates the charge of your super move. A barrage of explosive shells is detonated by Duke while Snake Eyes unleashes his wolf Timber to take aim at many opponents on screen. Since the bar is increased with every opponent vanquished, charging it up is quite fast. Really, there's no excuse not to save it for a boss battle. However, I do wish they were a little more spectacular. You can either kill a lot of foes quickly or a lot of enemies slowly while using Duke and Snake.
As implied by the title, combat is the essence of beat 'em ups, thus I'm upset that Wrath of Cobra seems very rigid and basic in the demo. It may be exhausting to move across an arena, as Snake Eyes and Duke play very identically. Characters in the game are given varying attributes, such as strength and speed, although I never really noticed the differences. Weapons that are dropped from boxes may add some spice to the party; they can include anything from grenade launchers to laser guns.
Scarlett, a third character, was mentioned by me. She does, luckily, spice things up; I played her after the males. She can flip into the air with a nasty kick in her light-strong combination, and she can use her air attack to pull out a crossbow that unleashes an explosive bolt. Indeed! precious diversity. It took a lot of effort for us to get here.
Fighting the Legion of Cobra
Enemy kinds are also rather common. There are blue Cobra troops with leather straps that can, um, block for an annoying duration, and you have your blue Cobra soldier fodder, who sometimes brandishes a rifle. It's good that there is a military type as well, where the bombs are thrown in a rhythm that keeps you on the ground before you can respond.
Although there are a lot of opponents in the game and it may be entertaining to combo them all at once, most of the time they just swarm your character and spam strikes, which is how it feels. In co-op, having additional players should at least aid in reducing the totals. There are also mini-bosses, although they function more as punching bags than as real threats.
Not much better are the real bosses. At the conclusion of both phases, there is a boss encounter in which you have to attack a mountain base and penetrate a flying Cobra castle. In the former, the Baroness is standing against you, periodically letting off a gunshot. It was a simple battle, but nothing compared to Dr. Mindbender's meanderings and maybe two attacks at the conclusion of the mountain stage. In case you were wondering, I was playing on Normal.
Graphically, Cobra's Wrath seems fine. The pixelated opponents and characters in the game are rather similar to those of their peers, however the level backdrops might need some cleaning up. The lack of parallax scrolling in the mountain level gives it a stage play backdrop-like appearance.
Cease all downloads
.Ultimately, I think my main complaint is that Wrath of Cobra seems like a generic fighter supported by a GI Joe front. Fans of the '80s Joe cartoon may be upset by the demo's absence of conversation parts, since it had no overly corny one-liners. Even worse, the majority of the game is quite dull. I'm optimistic about the other characters I haven't tried yet since Scarlett certainly makes things lively. Furthermore, I'm not sure what the opponents' dropped floppy disks are meant to do.
The game is scheduled to release this year and is currently under production. It is possible that Wrath of Cobra has more time to develop into a work that Joe fans would find satisfactory. Let's face it, though: the demo is probably already superior than .Operation Blackout (GI Joe).
GI Joe has undoubtedly had a good number of video game adaptations since the 1980s, when the animation first appeared and the series may have reached its zenith. Of course, a lot of those video games were really bad. Cobra Strike Growing up, I only ever played one game on the Atari 2600, and I still don't know what you were meant to do.
Knowing is, after all, half the fight.