Thor: God of Thunder Review

It’s quite clearly been heavily influenced by the God of War series, but unfortunately for Liquid Entertainment and Sega, Thor: God of Thunder is nowhere near as good. Nobody expected it to be the pinnacle of action games, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted how bad this game actually is. Seriously, it’s not very good.

The majority of games of this type follow a pretty set-in-stone formula, and we all know that the only reason this game has been made is to make money on the back of a major new film, so it’s no surprised that this has quite clearly been rushed, and on a limited budget by the looks of it. It’s been happening for years now, comic book and movie franchises everywhere have been subject to spinoff games that pop up at opportune moments and are usually nothing to shout about, and Thor: God of Thunder certainly isn’t the exception that proves the rule.

The biggest problem I have with Thor is the fact the game doesn’t find a way to tell you if your attack has made any damage, or even contact, with your foe, so the best way to go about things is to just mindlessly hack at enemies until they lie lifeless on the floor. A shoddily designed move set and a poor hit detection system are the most immediate factors that can be blamed for this, but the whole thing just smacks of rushed programming on the part of Liquid, who have a pretty decent track record if you remember their past titles like Dungeons and Dragons: Dragonshard and forget about the dreadful Desperate Housewives game that they were responsible for.

Thor: God of Thunder is a combat game, I think we can all agree with that, but when the actual combat in the game is dreadful, we’ve got a problem. The satisfying thrill of hacking and slashing your opponent is not there, it makes it seem like a chore. The game’s introduction is mediocre at best, and after playing a rather reasonable first mission, the game doesn’t get better. In fact, the it spirals downwards in quality the further in you get.

The story wasn’t completely clear, but from what I gathered, Thor battles through the numerous worlds of Norse mythology to save Asgard. He wields the almighty Mjölnir war hammer and, along the way, he must overcome  some challenging baddies from the comic books, with Ulik, Ymir and Surtur among the most iconic.

The game’s graphics are nothing to shout about, although sometimes they do shout out “I’m a last-gen game!” at you. Movement can be a problem at times, with your character not going the exact way you intended while the sound design and background music compliments the rest of the game’s content well as it to is nothing special.

The most enjoyable thing I can think of from my time playing Thor is Thor himself. He’s a bit of a bad ass, able to hurl projectiles, obliterate enemies with a mean battle-axe, or even summon an earthquake, pretty cool eh? Well no, while those features do exist, the game’s level design doesn’t take advantage of them, meaning you never get the most out of them from playing a man who could have made you feel like a god.

Thor: God of Thunder is available for the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, 3DS and DS for a scandalous price of £39.99. So unless you find this in the bargain bin, avoid it like the plague.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox 360 code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.