G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra Review (Macaw)
This game is one of the worst beat-em-ups I have ever played.
The combat is about as sparse and boring as you can get with only small handful of moves per character that aren't that satisfying to use. Stage design is utterly boring, despite a decent amount of enemy variety almost every stage feels exactly the same with the pacing and the enemy encounters making everything blend together. Occasionally it throws a big mid boss style enemy at you that provide at least something of interest breaking these boring stages up, but they have a huge amount of HP and have to be dealt with using the most tedious techniques making them become an incredible drag.
Character balance is non existent, I played through the game as Duke that was an unbelievably tedious and annoying ordeal, but Snake Eyes makes everything much easier. The game is also amazingly buggy, the game would consistently crash after the opening cutscene for me and playing through it I encountered an endless string of bugs and glitches.
The game also does absolutely nothing of interest with an IP as cool as GI JOE. The first 4 or so of the previously mentioned bland stages are generic facility looking areas, and once you get into the middle of the game you get a string of like 5 or 6 boring suburban street levels that look like they would be more fitting for a Simpsons game than GI JOE.
The Bosses are just mindboggling terrible as well. Every boss in the game just appears with barely any fanfare suddenly at the end of whatever of the 12 boring long corridor levels you're in, and what follows is tedious fights against super armour bosses with enormous amount of health. Many of the bosses have the same AI, many of the bosses are just palette swaps or sprite edits of existing sprites, and all of them are completely uninteresting to both look at and to fight. Only the final boss has elements of being some kind of interesting setpiece.
To summarise, the game is terrible both in terms of gameplay and presentation. The combat is very basic, unsatisfying, and tedious with barely any of the satisfying aspects of good beat-em-ups. The stages look bland, plain, have no pacing or any cool or interesting moments, and lead to equally bland bosses. The GI JOE license is not being used to even any of it's potential here.
For modern beat-em-ups, Streets of Rage 4 is million times better. TMNT Shredders Revenge is a million times better. Fight 'n Rage is a million times better. Final Vendetta is a million times better. Even the extremely flawed and very recently released Karate Kid Street Rumble (which is currently very overpriced and should only be bought once it's on sale or has its price lowered) is filled with infinitely more charm and highlights than GI JOE Wrath of Cobra.
Or you could just get the Capcom Beat-em-up Collection that contains many of the old arcade titles that remain as some of the best beat-em-ups ever made.