The GI Joe movie "reboot" was released this year to almost universal apathy, save for a few howls of derision from die hard Joe fans. "Dennis Quaid as Hawk? What is this nonsense?" they may or may not have been heard to exclaim. Unsurprisingly, a flood of merchandise followed the two hour, big screen toy advert, and at the front of that wave of tacky plastic and lunch boxes surfs GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra the video game, a third person shooter, because game developers seem unable to make movie adaptations that aren't third person something or others. Oddly enough though, despite being a game based on a movie based on a decidedly imperialistic toy, GI Joe the game of the film of the doll isn't as bad as it should be. Don't get me wrong, it's by no means good, but "not bad" is a decent step forward for movie adaptations, the single most derided game genre in the history of derided game genres.

You play as one of the "Joes" a multinational fighting unit made up of people who speak perfect English, commanded by an American, who does too. You fight your way through a series of levels, aided either by a friend or an AI companion, killing humans, robots, tanks, helicopters, turrets, computers, generators, walls, boxes and anything else that gets in your way. The "characters" you choose from are one of three types; commando, combat or heavy, and all of them play almost exactly the same. Run around, holding down the fire button, letting the computer auto target the bad guys and shooting them until they dissolve. Rinse and repeat.

There's an arbitrary cover system that apes the one button style of Gears of War, yet somehow manages to make a single button press feel unwieldy and counter intuitive, often sending your character leaping around like a maddened squirrel rather than ducking behind a wall. Once you've shot enough things enough times, you unlock a character specific special attack; these range from useful, such as increasing your rate of fire and the damage your bullets do, to weird, such as unleashing a kamikaze parrot. Killing also builds up the power in your "accelerator suit", which, once powered, turns you into an unstoppable slaughter bot for the duration of a brief orchestral theme.

The levels you fight through are split into three distinct terrains; Tundra, Desert and Jungle, with the final levels set in a dormant volcano at the magnetic North Pole. Obviously. The story involves meteorite fragments, tiny robots, ancient artefacts and a teleportation device, and is quite frankly the single worst excuse for a narrative I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. All the characters are one dimensional clichés, the set pieces underwhelming and the story itself a convoluted, muddled, nonsensical wafting of the highest order. If you're looking for a game that pulls you in and refuses to let go until its last, amazing reveal, then Pacman is probably a better starting point than this unimaginative tripe.

Every level progresses down the same inevitable path; brief skirmishes followed by a handful of larger battles before a big, repetitive boss fight at the end. The graphics are ugly and blocky, the camera quite often gets stuck in annoying places, obscuring the direction that everyone's shooting at you from, leaving you spinning around, trying to get a lock on something before your health runs out. The voice acting is surprisingly good, easily matching the better Saturday morning cartoons, and whilst the words they main characters are speaking are utter drivel, at least the delivery is top notch. The same cannot be said for the brief snippets of dialogue that enemies spew out as they charge towards you, which seem to be specifically designed to annoy the top layer of your soul away. The first time you hear someone scream "Coooooooooooooobraaaaaaaa" at you, it's quite funny, by the eighty fourth time you're on the verge of bludgeoning your own skull in with the controller.

In spite of all this, I still found myself having fun with GI Joe. Yes, it's shoddily made, repetitive and quite often frustrating, but the sheer old school thrill of spewing bullets, cheesy power ups and big explosions give it a level of playability that, given the sum of its parts, it just shouldn't have. It's by no means a classic, and there are roughly a hundred other games you should buy before this one, but there's just something about GI Joe, a dumb, blockbuster fun that carries you past the broken, poorly built bits and on to the next shoot out.

If this was an Xbox Live Arcade title, then the score would be a little bit higher than it is, but as a full price release, there's just not enough content, and too many problems, to bump GI Joe up into the higher brackets. Still, as movie adaptations go, GI Joe isn't as appalling as some, and while it does feel like a rush job, there's a little spark somewhere inside, the tiny ember of a decent game, glowing more than burning, waiting for a little more care and attention than the developers had time to lavish upon it. If you can find it for cheap, and I do mean cheap, pick it up, give it a blast with a mate, and it'll keep you entertained for a couple of hours.

Reviewed by Harry Slater for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).