GI Joe: War on Cobra

While I'm not a huge fan of mobile gaming, every once in awhile a game comes along that I find interesting enough to download and take up some precious memory on my iPhone. The latest game that I seem to be playing for a few minutes each day is GI Joe: War on Cobra by Emerald City Games.

I'm going out on a limb to guess this game was released as Hasbro is gearing up another run of GI Joe action figures for retail shelves later this summer with GI Joe Classified. I say this is just a guess because the art style in the War on Cobra mobile game is more stylized and definitely different than the more serious tone the Classified series of action figures seems to be going with.

Upon downloading the game and launching it for the first time it had a very familiar feel. If your familiar with or have played the Transformers: Earth Wars, this is more of the same basically. If you enjoyed Earth Wars then this is good news. If Earth Wars wasn't your cup of tea, you still may want to try this one out.

The premise of the game is quite simple. 1) Build your headquarters to defend itself from the opposition's attack. 2) Go out into the field and attack the opposition's headquarters to win medals and materials. Each character or vehicle will have a predetermined point value (battle points), shown with a small red lightning bolt and a number. This is what it "costs" you to deploy that character/vehicle. You'll start with so many battle points to launch your attack. With each item or weapon you destroy of the opposition you'll be rewarded with more battle points. You can constantly launch your characters as long as you have battle points available. Once you run out and your last character dies, you have lost the fight and you'll go back to the map.

The interesting thing about War on Cobra is that you actually get to play both of the warring factions. I've always enjoyed the Cobra side of GI Joe more than the Joes themselves so I started off by selecting the Baroness and Cobra. This is where I've spent the most of my time playing the game - building up my volcano based headquarters with all sorts of weapons and traps. However playing the Joes has been fun too as I've unlocked different types of characters and vehicles to use and this keeps it fresh - going back and forth between the two factions.

If you select the Joes the first character you get to use is Roadblock. I love the Sigma-6 esque look to the character models. Roadblock will lay down a heavy layer of fire for you, but it's fairly slow moving on the battlefield.

Each character/vehicle has a different class. Roadblock falls into the Epic class, which is basically the top tier. You can level up your character/vehicle with gold and cards you get in the game. This will help improve the stats - health, range, damage and speed. You can also rank up your character using different items you unlock or are awarded with.

This is one of those games it tempts you to spend real world money on. Build your mini gun turret faster, buy in game currency to level up your characters...you get the drill. If you are patient and come back to the game at least once a day, you are awarded with free loot that will range from cards for your characters/vehicles to gold or even diamonds...which is basically the games currency.

I've been playing the game for several weeks now and have enjoyed it. Since starting I've managed to unlock several characters such as...

Each character has their own characteristics and attack style, making it tough sometimes to choose your army for attack. Snake Eyes for example will make short work of Cobra Troopers, while Gung-Ho or Bazooka can take out stronger enemies and weapons much faster. There are drawbacks for each character as well such as the larger characters are usually slower and land mines can take them out.

Once you've played the game for a bit you can start to unlock vehicles. This is where the game can really get fun...and tough at the same time. Knowing what vehicle to use makes a difference. Add one of your characters to the vehicle will unlock even more firepower.

All of the levels take place on the coast so you have a limited area where you can deploy water based vehicles. Sometimes you may have a battle that consists solely on the water, but most of the time is both land/water battles. I started with a lowly Devilfish, then unlocked the more powerful Megalodon. Most recently I unlocked the MOBAT and I love using it.

Above is what the map looks like. This is where you get to launch your attacks from. If the icon with the name shows a character, GI Joe in this case, then you are attacking the base of another player. If the icon is a generic crosshairs I believe these levels are just generic. The number below the icon tells you the level of the base. Obviously the higher the number, the more difficult the fight could be. As you level up your HQ's radar dish, you can expand upon the area on the map in which you can attack. The more options you have the better because your army may not be quite ready to take on some of the higher levels. You do have however the option of spending gold to swap out that tougher HQ. It may be replaced with a lower level or it may be replaced with an equally tough fight.

Earlier I mentioned that I started the game by choosing Cobra. I'm glad that (most of) the characters are different and play different as it makes it fun going back and forth playing both sides. I've devoted most of my time and resources to building up the Cobra side of things.

You start off your Cobra army with the Baroness. She starts off a little weak in the health department, but her ability is one shot, one kill on most enemies. Deploy her behind your front line of B.A.T.s or Cobra Troopers and she can be a pain in the butt for the Joes.

Eventually I unlocked Destro and Storm Shadow. Destro is meh in my book so I don't use him much. Scrap Iron is a lot of fun as he deploys and controls from a distance a little rocket pod. This is one of first characters you can use to take out airborne enemies. Storm Shadow is quite versatile and plays a lot like Snake Eyes.

I love deploying armies of B.A.T.s, then following them up with a some ground fire by a group of Cobra Troopers or SAW Vipers that I recently unlocked.

Cobra has always had some awesome vehicles and I'm glad to see that some of these have made their way into the game. Like with the Joes vehicles, drop a character into the vehicle and you'll have more firepower. The Maggot for instance. Standalone it will fire a machine gun from the front. With a pilot it will use it's massive cannon to launch spiked projectile bombs at your enemies!

I understand that mobile games can't compare to console games, however that doesn't mean that they can't be fun...at least in small chunks. Being a GI Joe fan I'm just happy that there is something new out there. The fact that the game is well designed and fun to play is a bonus. If you decide to download the game (it's free by the way) just pack some patience. Don't spend your real hard earned money on anything in the game just because you get frustrated or you don't want to wait. To me at least it's made to be played in short sessions. Enjoy it for what it is...a fun and somewhat addictive mobile game. Yo Joe!