Every G.I. Joe game has been a shooter. It makes perfect sense, since the 1980s cartoon series is about a top-secret military outfit, and even though some fight scenes featured the heroes punching a few Cobra soldiers, everyone remembers Cobra and G.I. Joe soldiers engaged in shootouts where no one got hit but lots of vehicles were blown to smithereens. When G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra was initially announced, it threw people for a loop. A genre change was fresh, but the decision to go for a beat-'em-up felt like the developers were chasing the trend of popular brands from the 1980s and 1990s coming back under the guise of a beat-'em-up from yesteryear. Now that the game has been released, we can finally see if the genre change was a good decision.

The story is exactly what's expected if you were watching a random episode of the 1980s show. Cobra has a scheme to take over the world, and you've been sent into action to stop said plan. This plan involves shrinking down the world's monuments and stealing them, but that is just a cover for a bigger plan that Cobra has in mind that somehow involves cloning. Stories are usually inconsequential in games of this genre, but it is nice to see something that feels faithful to the old cartoon.

You start off by choosing one of four characters from the G.I. Joe team (Duke, Roadblock, Scarlett, and Snake Eyes) and choosing to go it alone or teamed up with up to four players in local multiplayer only. From here, standard beat-'em-up rules apply. You go from left to right, punching and kicking everything in your path, with the occasional weapon pick-up along the way, until you reach the boss. "Everything" doesn't encompasses Cobra soldiers and vehicles. Everything from the Ferret A.T.V. to the instantly recognizable H.I.S.S. and Flight Pod are all susceptible to constant punching, which is both awesome and hilarious to see in action.

Compared to most of its contemporaries, the combat system takes some basic defensive maneuvers into account. You can perform a hop up and down the screen to avoid attacks. You can also do a basic block and even parry opponents to stun them and give yourself an attack opening. To be fair, you can get by without playing defensively, but it is a nice option for those who want to play more strategically.

The game also does something different by making each of its characters distinct from one another in more than just looks. Pick Duke, and you'll get moves that look like what you'd expect from a beat-'em-up, but select Scarlett, and her jump kick is replaced by a downward firing arrow. Everyone's special move is also different. Roadblock will bring up a heavy machine gun for a short while, Scarlett will fire an arrow to shock everyone on screen, Duke calls in a bombing run to blow up everyone, and Snake Eyes will call on his wolf Timber to help attack any nearby enemies for a short while. It's a nice touch that goes beyond simple stat differences and encourages some replayability.

Another difference the game adopts is the weapons you can pick up. Unlike many beat-'em-ups, the only things you can pick up in Wrath of Cobra are guns. The guns and first aid kits can only be obtained when you break open Cobra crates. The guns are varied; you'll find basic rifles, grenade launchers, crossbows with electric arrows, and sonic wave rifles. Every gun has a limited amount of ammo, and while you can't reload the guns, you can throw them at enemies to score an extra hit.

These are nice, but the game doesn't know how to handle weapons well. Hold a gun, and any jumping attacks fail. Perform a run, and you'll drop your gun the minute you attack; that's easily done, as running seems to be activated with the slightest of motions regardless of the options in the settings screen. The time it takes to pick up a weapon is long enough that you'll easily get sucker-punched, which causes you to drop the weapon again. You'll still want to pick up every gun you find due to it giving you the chance to attack from a distance, but those issues take away the fun of using them.

The weapons issues also highlight some problems with the combat. One of the game's positives is that you can quickly recover when hit — even airborne — so pulling off a counterattack is painless. However, that also means that you have no invincibility when hit with an attack that sends you to the ground. Do this when there are a ton of enemies throwing projectiles, and you can get juggled and easily lose a big chunk of your health before you can do anything. The physics are also way off. Perform a combo of light attacks, and you can easily send the enemy sailing to the other side of the screen. Perform a heavy attack, and foes will fall at your feet. This poses a problem, as a good number of levels features pits that enemies will suddenly fly into; this takes away any spoils in the process. Some large enemies can also hit you while you're directly behind them, even though the animation for their attacks doesn't come close to touching you. The result is a feeling of uncontrolled chaos, which doles out an equal amount of fun and frustration depending on how each bout goes.

The game features 12 levels, and while that is a good length for a beat-'em-up, that number loses its luster when you see that levels 10 and 12 are simply reskins of existing levels instead of being new creations. The bosses are all going to be very familiar to fans of the show, and while it may seem like a cop-out to have clones of G.I Joe heroes, it fits with the plot and makes sense if you dig back to discover that there aren't too many big names on the Cobra roster.

The problem with the levels is that they feel like they go on for much longer than usual. Having a multitude of enemies to fight at once is awesome, but it's tedious to stop every few feet for a big brawl. To top it off, only a few of the boss fights feel like they pose any great challenge even if you play solo. Unless you're playing at the higher difficulty levels, the only way you'll die in a boss fight is if you're being careless or enter the fight with less than a full bar of health.

There are other issues in Wrath of Cobra that give the impression that the title still needs a layer of polish. Defeat the large Cobra mech, and it disappears after a few small explosions. It's a big difference compared to other minibosses that go out with a big boom after a string of small explosions. Some menu highlights can be difficult to read, while the menu for the unlocks can feel like it was a placeholder since the fonts are basic and some descriptions are repeated. The credits sequence is also incomplete, as it never goes past the title for the music credits section. This isn't the kind of thing you'd want to see for a build with a 1.0 designation.

The game has plenty more for players to do once they've completed all 12 levels in Story mode. There are also a Boss Rush mode and a Time Attack mode. Those looking to play the game at a higher difficulty level can play Arcade mode. There are a ton of modifiers you can apply to the Story mode, such as one-hit kills, boss and item randomizers, and a doubling of the enemy count. You can even unlock two more heroes, Ripcord and Gung-Ho, but the latter seems to have learned some martial arts instead of basic hand-to-hand combat (as featured in the show). The problem is that you'll need to do quite a bit of grinding to unlock anything. Everything is unlocked with disks that are obtained by defeating enemies, but the disk count is so high that one arcade run is good enough to only unlock one item. If you want to get all of the fun stuff unlocked first, be prepared to replay all of the game's stages several times over.

Graphically, Wrath of Cobra looks good. The sprite work tries to mimic its contemporaries like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, and while this fits for some of the heroes, others like Gung-Ho look lankier than expected. The animations are good, and while there are fewer frames for some of the larger enemies like the Cobra mech, at least the important stuff is readable. The environments look fine but get a nice graphical boost thanks to some modern lighting effects, like god rays in the sky and more translucent smoke layers.

Like the graphics, the audio is mostly fine. The game lacks voices except for the opening cut scene, and while this isn't the original voice cast, they mimic the familiar tones well enough. The sound effects hit as hard as expected, while the soundtrack is almost perfect. The rendition of the original theme song is good enough, but the opening movie's song and the tracks for every level are perfect for the beat-'em-up action. The main issue is in the song editing. The opening movie's song ends poorly; it suddenly stops before the title screen music plays. Tracks for the levels also have long pauses reminiscent of old Saturn and PlayStation games that used CD audio. The pauses are so long that all of the songs need some editing to ensure that the loop point is nearly indistinguishable.

Steam Deck users will see that the game already has an official Playable rating. The game runs at the device's native 1280x800 resolution, and running at a locked 60fps is no sweat for the system. On a full charge, the LCD version of the device can squeeze out almost five hours of game time. Even though the device states it supports Steam Cloud saves, we never actually got that working. You'll have to dedicate yourself to playing on just one machine to start grinding for disks until that is fixed in a patch.

G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra is a fun game, but it is also flawed in several different ways. The differences in characters provide some incentive to try out everyone, but the combat is plagued with issues in every category. The unlockables are fun, but you have to be able to stomach the grinding needed to unlock everything. The levels are nice but feel like they go on forever; the presentation is good if you can ignore some of the audio issues. Depending on the price, Wrath of Cobra might still be worth checking out for big G.I. Joe fans, but it also could've been so much better.

Score: 6.0/10