Published: Monday, 17th August, 2009 12:23pm

G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra

Nintendo DS

GI Joe does not have the same kudos abroad as it does in the US, where the Joes are a merchandising steamtrain akin to Barbie, or our own Action Man. While the recently-released film is doing rather well outside of its home nation - it's made $200 million in the first fortnight of its release - and is actually one of my favourite dumb films of the summer, alas GI Joe on the DS is lacking a little something.

Picking up where the film leaves off, GI Joe is a third person action-arcade shooter merging moments from the film, cartoon and those ubitquitous toys. You can play as all the major characters and villains and, if you are a fan, all this is pretty good fun.

You blast through the baddies, picking the character with the best talents and specialities for the situation you're in, hitting checkpoints on your map and working through the area until you've blown everything up and are ready to move on. If you like blowing things up this is the game for you, but if you're hoping for some puzzles to solve along the way then abandon hope. The blowing-things-up-policy works especially well with one of the more interesting elements of the game - an RPG style character upgrade where killing enemies will give you XP to improve further until your Joes really are an elite unbeatable force.

The single player mode is fairly short, but the four player multiplayer is fun - although each player needs their own copy of the game, something which seems rather wishful thinking really for something is most definitely not the definition of a must-buy release.

The problem is though that the game itself isn't that pretty. The low res, badly rendered cut scenes make it look cheap and while the game itself is fun it just doesn't look like much love has been lavished on it.

Another summer blockbuster, another hastily cobbled together video game tie in which doesn't quite pass muster? Alas yes, although there's more than enough here to keep a casual gamer entertained for a while and - as it did in cinematic terms too - it's considerably better than Transformers 2.

A solid three stars