Childhood franchise with tons of nostalgia value? Check. Movie based on said franchise? Check. Shoddy game to cash-in on aforementioned nostalgia? Check. 

Like most video games based on movies, GI Joe is an attempt at making a quick buck. You can choose between various characters, all of whom have different skills and class types. The commando class is good at close-range combat, heavy weapons shoot well from a distance and the soldier is combines a bit of both classes. Not like any of that would matter because the gameplay is shoddy and unpolished to the point where you realise that whether you’re playing this drunk or sober, the outcome is the same, you’re going to end up hating the controls and hating yourself even more for playing it. 

If that wasn’t enough, you’d realise that there are train wrecks that look better. GI Joe would have been a graphics masterpiece if it was a PlayStation 1 release. It looks quite out of place compared to what we’ve come to expect this generation. The cut-scenes are of incredibly low quality, the aiming is glitchy, the AI is brutally unforgiving on anything but the lowest difficulty and the checkpoint system is broken. Instead of saving your game mid-level it just saves your score, so if you die you have to restart the level all over again. Oh and there’s some form of a story that apparently serves as the reason to why you’d play this in the first place, but it doesn’t make a shred of difference to the gameplay.

This is a classic case of developers trying to get the maximum mileage off a big summer blockbuster and trying to pass off a shoddy game on nostalgia. Sadly for GI Joe, this won’t work with even the most hardcore fans.