Thor: God of Thunder

At a time where breaking the mould and the monotony of 3DS titles is welcome, it’s an opportunity for developers to steal the limelight, earn themselves some kudos and let consumers look forward to future titles. I have very mixed emotions about Thor: God of Thunder and what Sega have provided. No developer or publisher can take the chance of making themselves look bad in this climate especially with possibly the most competitive season of games just beginning.

Thor: God of Thunder tells the story of Thor’s home world Asgard being under attack from what looks like an attack from Ymir the ruler of Niflheim. There is a tragedy during the attack that sends Thor into a rage, at which point he seeks revenge on Ymir and, being misled by his step brother Loki, opens a gateway to another world, unleashing demons whose only intent is to destroy Odin and Asgard.

Thor’s weapon of choice, as you would expect, is Mjolnir which is his enchanted hammer, and as you move through the game you begin to learn combinations to help you deal with the enemy. Progression opens rune slots on Mjolnir up to a maximum of four. These four slots can be filled up from a choice of up to 20 different runes that each contain a different buff like increasing your attack power once your health drops below 25% or increasing your aerial attack strength.

Thor also learns additional attacks including Mjolnir power-ups, whirlwind attacks and focused electrical and wind attacks. The use of 3D throughout the game lacks depth. Often I didn’t know if I was close enough to enemies so I could start pulling off a string of attacks. Plus, if I was trying to pull off the focused electrical or wind attacks, if my reticle got caught behind rocks then they simply didn’t work.

As well as increasing the power of Mjolnir you have three upgrade trees available that can either be purchased through coins gained via levelling or finding upgrade items throughout the game. The three trees are Might which gives you additional and increasingly more powerful attack chains, Valor which supplies maximum health increase and defensive skills and finally Storm which can help increase Thor’s mana – known as Odinforce in game  – or bonuses to combination points.

It doesn’t take long in the game until you become quite overpowered and you will also find an ‘I WIN’ combination that can deal with even the most powerful enemy. It’s unfortunate because when I originally started playing Thor: God of Thunder I got a warm God of War fuzzy feeling inside. It’s not quite of that calibre but there is quite a satisfying hack ‘n’ slash type feel to it. Mini boss fights and certain situations that require more power than normal introduce quick time events but even though they aren’t challenging, they’re tasteful and don’t take your eyes away from the action too much.

As you can imagine, once finding the ‘I WIN’ combination, the game can start to feel slow. Beating down every enemy with that move is monotonous but what makes it worse is the lack of variety of dynamics in the majority of the game. About the first 70% of the game includes the very same gameplay. Walking along corridors, reaching magically sealed walls, defeating all enemies, destroying the magical barrier and moving on.

Occasionally that monotony is broken with some flying scenes and early boss fights. In between each level there are some cool storyline still animation cartoons to keep you entertained and whilst the storyline is pretty predictable with some very cheesy voice acting, it is still slightly more-ish. I think that the RPG player in me, with all the collectables helping to increase my powers, managed to keep me playing but if you don’t have any staying power then you may not get to see the very best bits of the game.

Once you reach the part of Thor where you discover and obtain the secret to helping save Asgard the game starts to get good. A couple of boss fights that are reasonably challenging and interesting leads to the final battle where you get some team players who aren’t dumb AI. A true feeling of power overwhelms you and a sense of achievement settles in but having to wait so long to get to this stage is a mistake by the developers.

Aside from the developers, Gl33k who were responsible for audio in games like Age of Empires Online and the more recent Red Orchestra 2, are also the people who provided the audio for Thor: God of Thunder. Aside the cheesy heroic voice acting which may or may not be suitable for a Marvel based super hero game, I think some of the audio is the best I have heard in the Nintendo 3DS title so far. A lot of it is majestic and fits very well into the game and utilised the 3DS sound capabilities well.

Does the game have more to offer than just the one playthrough? There isn’t any multiplayer but I suppose on the 3DS this can be forgiven. Once you finish the first run through a new difficulty level is opened up called Ragnarok. Runes and an outfit that weren’t previously attainable gave me the urge to at least start another playthrough but whether I could handle it again is another question.