izigame.me

Okay, less than an hour on this but if you think that's not enough time to get the handle of a beat 'em up, then take this review with a grain of salt.
This is a 5/10, do not recommend.
How it plays:
The controls work well enough, but there definitely feels a like a little bit of stiffness, as if you don't have as much control as you want. Every character has their typical light punch combo string, a heavy attack that can be charged, two different run attack for light and heavy, one jumping attack that is essentially a dive kick for everyone but Scarlett, a taunt that just seems to taunt and show how great you are, a block button, and finally a special move that is charged up based on your combo. Characters have different "stats", which seem to affect how fast they attack and how much damage they take, but really the difference come down to their attack animations and, most importantly, their specials.
The key techniques the game is demanding of you is to maintain your combo string while balancing a block here and there to keep you alive - and the block absolutely is paramount, as you can block *anything*, punch? Rifle shot? HISS tank cannon shell? Just hold that block button; that said, enemies can too and there is no conventional "grab" mechanic in this one, rather you have to knock down an enemy then you can grab them, but if an enemy is blocking you just have to kind of wail on them - it seems like a charged heavy would do the trick, but I've seen them blocked too.
The special, unlike most beat 'em ups, doesn't drain any of your life away and given generally skilled gameplay you'll fill it up about every other screen of enemies, sometimes every screen if enough enemies are spawned. Duke has the best special by far as it is a full screen attack; Roadblock's might be the coolest as he gets his trademark chain gun with the trigger apparently glued down, but it has to be aimed at enemies; Snake Eyes calls out Timber to passively attack enemies for a short time (attacks which can also be blocked), and Scarlett stuns all the enemies on the screen without doing damage to them - she can run around and smack most of them around, but it's just a far less useful special than Duke's, in my opinion.
The enemies here are typical fare both in terms of beat 'em ups and G.I. Joe, the A.I. is not great at times as I've seen a half dozen COBRA troopers just hug the top left fo the screen several screens in a row. There aren't a lot of frames to telegraph the attacks of the normal grunts, so they pose the biggest threat, meanwhile the big thugs, mid-level bosses, and end level bosses ending up being a breeze even on the hardest mode thanks to the "block to end all blocks" abilities - they all feature the same heavily telegraphed attacks as other beat 'em up bosses, but now you can just hold that block button and go back to wailing away on them, rinse, repeat.
And that's it, it's a beat 'em up, a not particularly good one by today's standards, but if it were released in the early 90s it'd be fondly remembered today of course.
How it Runs:
"How it runs?" you say, looking at this 16-bit presentation; Well, not the best. The opening cinematic was skipped when I first started Story Mode - suspecting it was weird I was given NOTHING for context, I returned to the main menu and started again and sure enough got the opening cut-scene. While fighting one of the end-level bosses as Duke, hit his special and all the frames for the characters (including me) on screen slowed down to less than 1 fps - I say "all the on the screen" because soon some more enemies were spawned that were running at normal speed... I'm not even sure how that possibly happens, and I tested video games for almost a decade. Didn't crash in the hour that I played though.
How its presented:
As said, there is an opening cartoon with decent animation and pretty bad voice acting; Sounds like a few guys and a girl in with a bad set-up and mediocre voice acting chops. From there, we're given short paragraphs between levels as the Joes beat back Cobra and, well, it's presented exactly like you might suspect a straight-forward G.I. Joe game would be, there are no surprises there. As you play, floppy disks will drop from KO'd enemies, these disks are actually currency used in the frontend "Shop" where a few QoL features can be purchased as well as two additional characters: Gung Ho and Ripcord. I'd tell you how they play, but earning enough disks to unlock ONE of them might require a full story mode playthrough, and they are not the only unlockables here - yeah, disks are earned at a painfully slow pace.
There are 4 different difficulties, but to be honest I saw no difference between them, maybe an increase to enemy health? I played on the hardest difficulty a couple levels in a row and seemed to be doing just as good, if not better (because I had gotten the hang of balancing blocks vs. specials) than I had in the early levels; Really the difficulty is in which character you choose, as with Scarlett you get a somewhat less useful special AND a jumping attack that leaves you pretty vulnerable to enemies, so go that route if you're looking for a challenge.
Overall this is a fun novelty, but don't expect the level of consideration that was put into TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, this is a linear level system, scant story points, purely left-to-right scrolling, and unbalanced playable characters which is a shame when you consider this is a franchise that people will heavily favor a specific Joe over others.
If it ran fine, it'd be a 6 or 6.5/10, but the technical issues have to bring those points down at least a bit, and I would not recommend it at the current or even intro sale price of $22; maybe if it dips down to $9.99 in its current state.