G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra

My first thought loading into Wrath of Cobra was genuine warmth. The cartoon-styled opening cutscene, the guitar-shredding intro music, Cobra Commander and Destro scheming over what appears to be a chicken dinner - it is all wonderfully ridiculous in exactly the right way. The presentation whispers promises of a lost Konami arcade cabinet, the kind that ate your quarters in a good mood. That first stage even delivers on it, a little. The pixel sprites are colorful, the soundtrack holds its own, and picking up Duke or Snake Eyes and wading into a sea of Cobra grunts carries a brief, uncomplicated joy. Then the cracks appear. The four starting characters - Duke, Scarlett, Roadblock, and Snake Eyes - each carry distinct stats, combo strings, and a special meter attack that genuinely differs between them. Duke calls in an airstrike, Roadblock unleashes a gatling gun, Snake Eyes sends Timber his wolf after every enemy on screen. Those differences are real and nudge you toward replaying with each character. The combat loop itself, though, is built on a narrow foundation: light attack, heavy attack, dash attack, a block and parry button that most players will forget exists, and enemy drops you can pick up as temporary firearms. There is no grab or command throw, a gap that beats-em-up veterans will feel immediately. The enemy roster leans heavily on color-swapped Cobra troopers who become familiar long before the end credits, and the twelve stage boss fights, despite featuring iconic villains like Baroness, Zartan, Storm Shadow, and Cobra Commander himself, tend to recycle the same move patterns with little escalation. The unlock system deserves more credit than critics gave it. Defeating enemies drops floppy disks - a charmingly tactile piece of 80s iconography serving as in-game currency. Grind enough of them and you unlock two additional playable heroes, Gung-Ho and Ripcord, plus a genuinely varied menu of modes: Boss Rush, Arcade, a one-hit lethality mode, a Double Trouble variant that doubles enemy count, low gravity modifiers, and a mode that randomizes boss encounter order. The stages can also be tackled in any sequence, and up to four players can share a couch for local co-op across both story and arcade modes. That co-op is where the game breathes most freely - the chaotic bombast of the IP maps well onto split-couch chaos, even if the underlying combat holds you back from truly great moments. The honest summary is that Wrath of Cobra lands in the mixed zone for a reason. Steam user reviews sit around 58 percent positive, and the professional reception was split between forgiving fans who enjoyed it as a love letter to the 80s cartoon and critics who found it a shallow brawler that never matches Streets of Rage 4 or Shredder's Revenge in depth or feel. The runtime is honest - a single run through all twelve stages clocks in around two to three hours - and there is no online multiplayer, only local. Frame drops on some platforms were noted at launch too, though their severity varied by reviewer. Whether the unlockables justify the grind required to reach them is a question your tolerance for repetition will answer for you. For franchise faithful who grew up with Duke and Snake Eyes on Saturday mornings, there is something genuinely lovely in the presentation that a stranger to the IP simply will not feel the same way. For beat 'em up purists who measure everything against the current high watermark of the genre, this falls noticeably short of those heights. The heart is in the right place. The mechanics needed more time in The Pit.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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