There was a huge red flag right from the off, when G.I. Joe: Operation Blackout had not been accurately renamed Action Force: Operation Blackout for a British audience. We don’t want to be reminded of the incredibly crap films, we want to be reminded of the brilliant IPC comic Battle, and its Action Force strips that eventually spun off into their own publication. Give us that, somehow, Hasbro!
We have no affection for G.I Joe. Maybe that isn’t the case for you – maybe G.I Joe is your favourite thing ever. Somehow, even if that’s the case, we doubt you’ll find much to get excited about here. G.I Joe: Operation Blackout is the most bog-standard third-person shooter we’ve ever seen. It most reminded us of Volition’s all-but-forgotten Agents of Mayhem, but rather than inheriting that game’s character, Operation Blackout has elected to simply 'borrow' its bland, forgettable gameplay.
The game’s campaign mode is a serviceable enough slice of blasting action, but it doesn’t stand out even on the Switch – a system not exactly swimming in third-person shooters (compared to other platforms). Unfortunately, the shooting in this shooter doesn’t feel good, making it a failure on a very crucial level. There’s copious auto-aim which always seems to snap to the wrong target when you hit the left trigger, leading to frustrating misses. You can turn the auto-aim off entirely, but even this doesn’t fix things as the manual aiming felt weird no matter how much we messed with the stick sensitivity. All other aspects of movement are decent enough, but the most fundamental thing in a title like Operation Blackout is its meat-and-potatoes shooting gameplay, which has been rather botched here.
Other aspects of the game elevate the proceedings a little; the level design is decent, with a pleasant verticality in places and smartly-designed combat zones. Hidden collectables give a reason to explore them, too. The objectives are pretty standard stuff — capture this area, activate these consoles, use this turret — but they're paced nicely and you're never doing the same thing for too long. It's surprisingly challenging, too, even on Normal — though this is partly down to a notable lack of a cover system, meaning pot-shots are about your only recourse when enemies start to pour in. There are some vehicle sections too, which reminded us a little bit of the action-packed driving bits from 007: Blood Stone, but about ten times worse. They were great in 007, though, so that's still faint praise.
You can pick from the various different "Joes" (deep, profound sigh), with such names as Duke, Snake Eyes, Roadblock, Scarlet, Bookfair and Caramac. We made up a couple of those — sorry — but it's that kind of Saturday morning jingoistic-military-fetishism-disguised-as-japes kind of campness you've come to know and love (...?) from the Action Force cartoon. They have different weapons and powers in the same manner as, well, Agents of Mayhem, but it effectively amounts to one gun and one special move, activated by tapping L and R when a bar fills up. Oddly enough, though, this don't seem to actually do a whole lot. They're so situational that most enemies will simply run in the opposite direction of whatever it is you inflict. Duke, for example, has a grenade that explodes multiple times, but it's pretty hard to imagine a situation where it would even hit once given that enemies beeline away from your regular grenades, too. Sensibly, we might add.
The story is communicated via mostly still scenes, but they're attractive and capture the vibe of the cartoon nicely. Presentation is, generally, quite good. The graphics lack the cel-shaded flair of the other console versions, but you can't play them on the bog, so who cares? Actually, we suppose you could, but it would arguably be quite unwieldy... but we digress. The graphics: they're fine. They're fit for purpose, the stages look distinct from one another and they're well populated. Plenty of enemies on the screen, no slowdown. It runs at what feels like a locked 30fps, which is perfectly acceptable for a (hybrid!) handheld shooter with environments as large as Operation Blackout's. And if you get bored with the campaign, which is quite easy to do, you can hop into versus multiplayer modes! But only locally. No online. Hmm.
Conclusion
If we've made this game sound thoroughly generic, that's because it is. But it's not a disaster — Operation Blackout has plenty to do, with unlockable skins and modifiers to mess around with if you get into it, and there's love for the G.I Joe property here, so fans of the toys may get a kick out of it. For everyone else, though, it's a very difficult game to recommend. If you want a third-person shooter on Switch, Rebellion's Rogue Trooper or Zombie Army Trilogy are both better buys. And now you know. And knowing is half the- actually, no, forget it. We're not even going to finish the thought. We're better than that.
Comments 63
Wish Konami (or whoever owns them now) would remaster GI Joe Arcade and release it for 5$ or something. That game was great.
They can make this crap while im still waiting for mischeif makers and snowboard kids.... its like companys dont like my money... apart from nintendo
Heard chris, colin and dustin talk about this at the sacred symbols podcast. Seemed like somethings for fans of GI joe.
Sounds really boring even though they seem to have put it together ok (runs well enough for example)
Thanks for the review.
I like it. It's good fun.
So it’s basically baby’s first Gears of War. Fair enough given the brand.
There are certain franchises that someone over 30 should never feel nostalgic enough to revisit. GI Joe, Captain Planet, and Power Rangers to name three.
@NotTelevision
I’m over 30 and still have great love for the Rangers and all the above.
Review posted on a saturday morning in the US, nice one.
Torchlight 3 review please please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The time is long gone for this license to excel as a video game.
Not surprising. There are very few licensed games that are genuinely enjoyable. Its kind of a pity that that trend has continued to aim for mediocrity or terrible. Oh well.
@NinChocolate Yeah but it coulda. I was hoping to hear it had Contra levels of fun.
@quangtuyensa90 8/10, its great, buy it.
Even before the game released I assumed it would be an average-at-best experience. The publisher, Game Mill, is known for that kind of quality.
Now THIS is a 5 Average game. Some of the reviews recently have been 5 and sounded much worse. Glad to see such an average score for an average game 😂
Thats about what I expected, as a Joe fan from the 80's I will buy this when there is a sale. My question though is, is there a fan base at all in England (or other countries) for G.I. Joe? I just wonder if the review would be a tad different if you were a fan.
no transformer battleground review yet
@quangtuyensa90 that mobile cash grab will probably get a better score. but BUY first second one or anything else
I have been playing this
It's not that bad at all ok it's not The best game you will ever play
But still good.
They stopped calling it "Action Force" in 1990 or so and did a mini-comic in an issue of Transformers explaining the name change to "G.I. Joe The Action Force":
https://www.yojoe.com/international/unitedkingdom/actionforce_gijoecomic.shtml
@GameOtaku Imagine a Captain Planet game from the guys who made Spellbreak. Just reskin it and done!
I liked G.I. Joe very much in the 90’s. I played a lot with the figurines and stuff. So I was quite excited about this.
But.. it’s not what I expected. It’s pretty bland and standard. Not much going on.
It’s not bad by all means, I’m still having fun, but I wish I hadn’t bought it for €40 on release....
Would have been happy with a new take on the GI Joe NES games, those are surprisingly decent.
Have no hope for the new TF game either. Hope to see a review of that here soon.
@frogopus @pixel_jones
I'm wondering the same thing. It's almost like having someone who doesn't like sports review a sports game.
GameMill are the new LJN. Just be warned.
A 5/10 review and yet it takes center stage on the @Nintendolife page.
I don't get it, they do that quite often. What kind of journalistic principle is this, the worse a game is, the more attention you give it?
As an analogy: back in the age of print media, this kind of game would've been somewhere on the latter pages in a tiny section, not right on the cover of the magazine.
If the game is not good, it should be buried deep inside your page, not take the most prominent spot and get so much attention.
Just give us the NES games on the online service
@Yanina
No they will remaster the nes game.
It certainly wouldn't be ACCURATE to rename it Action Force. Selling out a license and renaming it to cater to an audience that a corporation believes will only buy something foreign if they repackage it and pretend it's something else is a practice that most gamers are happy to leave in the past. There's a reason Final Fantasy VI isn't still called Final Fantasy 3. There's a reason Dragon Quest isn't still called Dragon Warrior.
It's a G.I. Joe game. That's what it is. It should be called G.I. Joe. Doesn't make it a good game, and that's fine. But it certainly wouldn't be better off renaming it.
@shani It's because it has a lot of comments, it's there.
Articles with a lot of clicks/comments/likes are highlighted.
I think it's pretty much autogenerated.
You know the game released the 13th, but has only now been reviewed. It's not like Nintendolife has pushed it to the "frontpage" at all.
I am a big GI Joe fan and really wanted this to be good, but never expected it would be. Can see myself maybe getting it on sale one day for dirt cheap out of morbid curiosity, though.
A fair review. The only thing that saves it, is the fan service. But I'm a huge fan, and it was a present, so I loved it. Wouldn't recommend anyone spend more than $20 on it though. Agents of Mayhem is still the best Joe game tho. Gonna reinstall it now.
@shani Like our features, our reviews are weighted so they have more time on the homepage than news items, generally because reviews and features are, ordinarily, more in-depth than a news item - so we want them to have as much time on the front page as possible.
This is standard practice with ALL of our reviews; this one isn't being treated any differently.
Average beats trash, so if it drops to $20 or less, might be worth a look. At least it's functional.
I think im just a little over halfway through with story. I play 1 or 2 missions a day. I would not say its a bad game, I would say it needs a few more things to be great. Gunplay has potential but is indeed missing something like a cover system as the review says but enemies are extremely mobile and may outpace or flank you so giving players the rechargeable forcefield fits better.
The variety in enemy types this game throws at you is pleasing, so are character unique guns and specials although as review said its not easy hitting stuff with them.
I think inventory needs to be bigger(1 more firearm slot ) and maybe 1 more character unique action( unique dash button actions in game are cool) what if storm shadow could actually throw shurikens or he and snake eyes could grab enemies.
Im really reaching here but the way drones instantly up the challenge of a gunfight kind of make me wish the joes had smaller but unique drones. (I think scifi does but its his special)It would be great if multiplayer modes could be played solo with bots. Also the mission modifications was a cool idea.
@drdaisy @frogopus Exactly it would be like me reviewing a Pokemon game it's not my thing but every die hard fan would string me up lol
@NotTelevision ‘We’re the Planeteers, and you can be one too...’ I loved Captain Planet I have to say lol
Hasbro always does this. Half arsed licensed game on a shoestring budget. Why didn't they spend that money on putting GI Joe in Fortnite or something. Actually get modern kids into the brand. This will just be another shovelware soon forgotten.
Shame.
Yeah this looked like a poor man's Fortnite which is funny because that's a free2play game.
I for one DID love G.I. JOE back in the day. The 3 3/4" line debuted in 1982 smack during the height of Kenner's original Star Wars line, and as they were the same size, I and countless other kids would mix them all in together as we played for hours on end. The huge assortment of great characters (both heroes and villains) and amazing, real world-based vehicle designs in G.I. JOE/Action Force made for some of the best toys for any generation ever (and unlike the delicate shelf pieces targeted at adults nowadays that cost several times as much, many of those vehicles especially had the durability of Tonka trucks). And while the Sunbow cartoon certainly doesn't hold up under adult scrutiny, its 12-year run with Marvel comics was absolutely unexpected and unprecedented for a toy line-based comic series, and was given (along with all the character bio cards that accompanied the figures) some gravitas and grounding in actual military procedure by the superb writing of Larry Hama (who was a former U.S. Army Ranger).
As for this game (and Transformers: Battlegrounds), both are sadly just corporate-sponsored cash-ins with no heart, soul, or passion. For beloved franchises like these so rich in characters, locations, and themes to draw upon, the only way to do them justice would be to have folks who truly are fans of the original IPs and the time and resources necessary to craft a game worthy of them. Take either one of these, place it into a hybrid turn-based/real-time tactical game with a similar engine and animation style to Sega's Valkyria Chronicles (you could even use the same expanded roster, character and hardware backgrounds, and storyline approach from the in-game "book", which itself was incredible fan service), and you'd have some games that would absolutely blow both fans and newcomers away (whether your memories identify more with G.I. JOE or Action Force).
@PhilKenSebben I'm perish to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Shadow Wars on 3DS. There's a female operative with red hair codenames Scarlet and the enemy is really just Cobra. It's a fun turn based strategy game.
@frogopus I definitely detected some serious bias against the G.I.JOE license (and beyond that, its pro-American military theme which was indeed common across US popular culture during the 1980s). I'm not saying that bias affected the review of the game itself, but it was expressed in ways that, especially considering current and recent events and the mainstream media's attacks on things like national identity and patriotism, wasn't appreciated by me as an American.
Nothing wrong with mentioning that the game would have been better titled "Action Force" for a British audience. That by itself would have been more than sufficient to make its point. But that line in particular about "military fetishism" felt political and out of place in a videogame review (and, daresay, blatantly hypocritical given the popularity of first and third-person shooters in the hobby for decades now). Nobody sane loves war and our world has certainly gotten a bellyfull over the past few decades, but a sense of time and place is important. And 1980s America was, while in no way perfect, a great time and place to grow up as a kid, and there are plenty of things about today's pop culture I could point to and find offensive and frankly far less safe than things were then.
You could just start and end the review with one sentence: “This game offers no online co-op or multiplayer versus”
We could then just skip ahead to the score.
Such a disappointment.
This and the transformers battlegrounds are such shameful uses of those IPs....
I liked GI Joe as a kid, but not the action hero cartoon stuff. I liked the toys that looked more like real soldiers with real vehicles and weapons. Based on the older ones that my dad had from the 1960s.
Anybody remember GI Joe: Renegades? Yo we need a video game based off of that.
I feel like ***** on the license gave this whole shebang zero credibility. Now I'm relatively certain that this was mostly intended as a gag that lasted throughout, but it nonetheless comes across as particularly catty. Especially when you must certainly know that a faction of your audience will be adherent to that particular franchise. The rest of the review has then to stand on the one shaky leg that wasn't blasted away by this errant hand grenade of mistrust.
@NotTelevision
Power Rangers is amazing! Dino Charge is one of my favourite telly programmes. You’re never too old to have fun! 😉
What is the point of this? "We made up a couple of those — sorry — but it's that kind of Saturday morning jingoistic-military-fetishism-disguised-as-japes kind of campness you've come to know and love (...?) from the Action Force cartoon." Seems mostly unnecessarirly catty.
@pixel_jones It just seems odd that NL would pick someone with an apparent dislike for G.I. Joe to review this game. Maybe he just wants to vent about it, which doesn't seem to fit the purpose of a professional review, especially when only one person is doing said review. This kinda reminds me of the soapbox rant which took up roughly half of a review for the last FIFA game.
@nilcam Its a fantastic game, that really deserves a sequel.
A fair review, I got this a week ago and have had a decent amount fun with it but that may be because I had the toys back when I was a kid. The couch multiplayer has been a lot of fun with the kids.
I'd take this over gears 4 and judgement
@OptometristLime
They suggested that unless you're a fan of GI Joe then this might not be your cup of tea, I don't see the problem with this.
I've played very good games based on franchises I wouldn't normally go for just because I'd heard that the game was good. I've also played some pretty ropey games based on franchises I was a big fan of and had bought based on the name. It read to me that they are indifferent to the GI Joe franchise and the game is mediocre but might appeal to fans, sounds pretty reasonable in my opinion.
Welp I have no ties to GI joe beyond having a Snake Eyes playmask as a kid (the only way my folks would buy me something with a sword) and the Striker doll from matel ( since I wasn’t allowed many action figures this was a sneak it under the radar present for me) so I just wanted a decent 3rd person shooter that had a color palette beyond grey and brown.
Military fetishism is a pretty good way to describe the “rah rah eagleland is the greatest by way of guns” nonsense that many claim is patriotic and part of the reason I never liked gi joe anyway, but this should be a decent enough distraction. Sounds like the game is technically sound, which is all I need.
I liked gi joe renegades and maybe the animated and live action movie, beyond that not the figures or original animations.
I think for the majority of people 5 out of 10 is the honest score, but for the minority remaining, which includes me, if they can find more than 3 things likeable or familiar about it then its a 6 or maybe a 7.
The game offers too many decent traits to be a bad game and hits just shy of being a great game. Im optimistic, I might want more licensed games from these guys with local co-op but they would need to do just.... a little more.
When I play this I keep asking myself, could they pull off he man? Could they pull off he man!
We had a lot of fun with this game yesterday and played it coop. Controls and variation of characters are massive. Can not confirm the bad rating. The funniest thing in the conclusion are the alternative recommendations. Two of the lame af games on Switch!
Sorry, but the game, and I'm not a fan of GI Joe, is perfect for coop fans.
I'm personally having alot of fun with it. Run n gun. I do hope for some patches in some areas but overall its fun.
This game might be meh but G.I. Joe from the 80s was awesome!
I feel like trying to cash in on Gen-X'ers nostalgia for crappy merchandise-driven 80's cartoons is going to have increasingly diminishing returns.
With those screenshots, you could be forgiven for thinking this game is a fortnite clone.
@KnightsTemplar G.I. Joe is a bigger property than those two. G.I. Joe means something to more people, particularly those who grew up in the 80's.
@DrDaisy Can you show me this rant?
@Dog https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/nintendo-switch/fifa_21
It's still a review, but big portions of it seem to be more about raking the series over the coals. That's my takeaway.
@sword_9mm I would pay for $7.99
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