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Thor: God of Thunder

Thor: God of Thunder

Marvel are scraping the bottom of the super hero barrel as Thor gets a feature movie, and with that comes a licensed video game. Bengt brings his hammer down!

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My girlfriend is more of a comic book fan than I am, and she said something along the lines that all weird and crappy comic book heroes are DC, while Marvel heroes are usually better. Yeah, you guess it she's biased and a massive Marvel fan. Her system for keeping the universes apart has it flaws and there are exceptions. Thor, a God from Norse mythology, is a rather odd super hero, and a rather odd choice for a Hollywood movie starring Nathalie Portman (you know, the girl that our dicks are scared of). And perhaps he would be a better fit in DC Comics odd assortment of super heroes. As with most super hero movies there is a video game released alongside the movie. Brace yourself for an incoming licensed game review!

We've read statements by Sega that they haven't been pleased with sales or quality of their previous Marvel games, and it seemed like they'd just given up on making something good with the license they have to do games on Marvel films (Activision holds the rights to X-Men and Spider-Man). That takes us to Thor: God of Thunder. Hammer Time!

Thor: God of Thunder

Sega enrolled Liquid Entertainment to develop Thor: God of Thunder after disbanding the studio responsible for the Iron Man titles. An odd choice given Liquids past that has seen them developing real-time strategy titles and most recently action-RPG Rise of the Argonauts. And while it's immediately obvious that this isn't a labour of love, there is no immediate alarm that goes off indicating that this is a broken game. It's your standard button mashing third person action title, with a rather limited scope and semi-decent system of abilities and powers, and a rather thick-headed main character who let's his hammer do the thinking.

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The game starts of with ice creatures from Niflheim attacking Asgard, domain of the Norse Gods. Thor defends against the attackers, but ultimately goes on a quest to take revenge spurred on by Loki, his half-brother who obviously is working some kind of power scheme. Why can't Gods just be happy with what they've got? Oh well, semi-God in this case. The lesson here is that we need to pray just to make it today.

The story is paper-thin and basically just an excuse for Thor get his hammer on in a few of the nine worlds in order to save Asgard. Thor has a few different powers, wind, thunder, lightning to mix it up and you should in theory have a rather exciting set of God powers. However, the stiff implementation of the combat and the rather poor supply of odinforce (your mana if you will) results in a game where you basically need to use the right powers on certain enemies and you never really feel the raw sense of power of God. I would like to Feel My Power.

Thor: God of Thunder

After the first rather soft start in Asgard we continue onto Niflheim and Vanaheim. Ice and Jungle worlds respectively. It damns on us that this isn't a decent action adventure, nor is it really broken. It just lacks ambition, vision and it reeks of design philosophies that governed the Playstation 2 era. Repetitive combat, linear and simple level design, frustrating triggers that you need to hit in order to win boss fights (you will need one or two tries to figure out what you're supposed to do), stiff and sometimes imprecise controls. We soldier on with the game despite the fact that it grows worse with every step we take in Thor's boots. One of the most awful experience is part way through Vanaheim, when we're tugged through the marshes by a giant ogre for an on-rails shooter section. And while it may have been a welcome change of pace in a more polished game, in Thor: God of Thunder every time we stray from the basics of bashing enemies with Mjolnir and God powers the experience suffers. We want to turn the damn console off but we're just Too Legit To Quit.

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From a technical perspective Thor: God of Thunder also fails to impress. It looks just as old as it feels, and while we haven't encountered any game killing bugs, it still feels glitchy in places. Some games with a poor technical may be saved by the design, but given the subject matter Liquid Entertainment just aren't catching any breaks. The voice acting and music is perhaps the least annoying part of the experience even if it's decent at best. Thor: God of Thunder isn't completely without merit, but there is also absolutely no reason to play this as there are so many other games out there more worthy of your time and money. Frustration, some ill conceived boss fights and a rather unsatisfying combat system sends this God of Thunder fast on his way to the bargain bin. U shouldn't touch this.

Can you find all the MC Hammer references in this text? Give it a shot!

HQ
03 Gamereactor UK
3 / 10
+
Parts of the mindless hammering is decent, some good ideas even if they're poorly implemented.
-
Lacks ambition, looks and feels old and ugly, weak story, stiff controls, frustrating game design.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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Thor: God of ThunderScore

Thor: God of Thunder

REVIEW. Written by Bengt Lemne

"Frustration, some ill conceived boss fights and a rather unsatisfying combat system sends this God of Thunder fast on his way to the bargain bin."



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