RadioSEGA Review: Thor: God of Thunder (Xbox 360)

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richarddavies
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RadioSEGA Review: Thor: God of Thunder (Xbox 360)

Post by richarddavies »

Thor's made me feel like a tit.

I asked myself if I could have the copy of Thor so I could review it as I was looking forward to playing it.I knew the history of movie tie ins and in particular the Marvel games being less than moderate but I hoped that Thor might buck the trend and be something more than a cheap cash in. How wrong I was.

The game itself is your standard Beat em up fair in the God of War vain. It has upgradeable powers and moves you can buy like God of war it even has it's own equivalent of the God of war chests that fill up your magic and health bars that they call runes. The combat itself is essentially a button masher. A is your jump, X is your attack button and B is your grab. The Y button serves as both your strong attacks and your magic attacks. If you press Y on it's own you Thor will rain down a can of magic whoop ass from a choice of four different magic types. Thunder,Lightning, wind and earthquake. To use Y as a normal strong attack you have to press it while in the middle of a flurry of X button attacks. The dual function of the button means more often than not when your trying to complete a combo Thor instead does a magic attack which depletes your magic bar when you least want it to. As the combo system has a tendency to break down due to the control scheme you end up finding yourself just having to mash the buttons and hope you come out of the other side ok and it shows how clever the AI is as that's pretty much enough to get you through the whole game.

The enemies are split into two groups, small and large enemies. The small ones can just be grabbed and finished off with one grab but the larger ones can be beaten down and then killed with a finishing move, which you can activate when a flashing icon appears on there body and then grabbing them. If you then press one of the attack buttons you get one of three finishers which you'll quickly get sick of seeing.

[youtube]srqiR4Hu7IU[/youtube]
[This trailer's making it look better than it is. It blows]

The story is voiced by the Thor movie star Chris Hemsworth who and the guy who plays Loki who's name I can't remember and can't be bothered to google. Im thinking the developers where not told the full story of the film as the central theme from the film is there (Thors a twat, goes on a journey of self discovery and comes out a hero) but everything in between is completely different from the film.

The game has 14 chapters and is strewn of 4 different worlds and there your usual fireland, iceland (not the supermarket, though I think Thor would be great in the Iceland adverts as there new spokesperson,anyway), jungleland etc. Again i The level design is uninspiring and dull and the art design is drab. Though I have read in a few reviews that the graphics are PS2 standard which is really unfair when it's easily at Gamecube's level. The game probably clocks in at around 5-6 hours but it genuinely felt longer.It took me a week to finish it as I could only bring myself to play it in small chunks before tedium set in. There is only the one game mode, the single player adventure and that's it aswell so the re playability factors pretty low too unless your into your achievements. In that case there are your usual trinkets and collectibles strewn around the levels for you to pick up but that's about all there is to it. I'd love to say the game has given me feelings as powerful as a thunderstorm but it's just left me with a belly grumble. (Sorry that's the best Lightning/thunder pun I could come up with).

Probably being too generous 3/10

I was going to add some screenshots of the game but these pics of Chris are more interesting
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Post by Gavvie »

I would blog this, but the CMS isn't working so I can't XD Tweeted it though!

Quite a good review, truth be told. Looking forward to giving this a whirl and seeing just how bad it actually is.

Can't be as bad as Iron Man or Iron Man 2, right?
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richarddavies
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Post by richarddavies »

It's a special, special game. I'll give it that. It's one of them games where it isn't exactly a stelar title but I can't be really mad at the devs for it. You can tell just playing it they've had to make it on a tight budget and a probably even tighter deadline to get it out for the movie. It's the way it goes with movie titles though I suppose.

Oh and I forgot to metion for anyone that's playing it. On the last chapter (Chapter 14). Make sure you save on an extra slot at the begining of the level. Due to some piss poor design choices I was tearing my own hair out when I couldn't physically finsih the last chapter and due to it not having a level select I was faced with the prospect of having to start the whole game over. Luckily when I checked my save states I found one that wasn't too far from the end so I carried on from there. I honestly think if I didn't have taht save I would've owed Gavvie a new copy of this as I would've put this one in the Microwave.
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Post by Killer French Bread »

Why did you have the initial hope it would be good - was it hyped up and supposed to be decent?

I was going to see the film of this the other week but managed to get out of it and convinced my mates to play snooker instead.
Tic Tac, sir?
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richarddavies
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Post by richarddavies »

Killer French Bread wrote:Why did you have the initial hope it would be good - was it hyped up and supposed to be decent?

I was going to see the film of this the other week but managed to get out of it and convinced my mates to play snooker instead.

I should of known better to be fair going off there track record.

I've seen the film though. It really suprised me just how good it was considering the source material. I fully expected the film to suck balls. Snooker is great though. I used to go every week. Was never very good like but I enjoyed it. I'd get progressively worse as the night went on as I drank more while getting more pissed off at my dip in performance.

Great times.
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Post by Gavvie »

I think it's Captain America that's been getting the bigger hype, game wise. It's supposedly been in development since 2008.
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Post by Shockerbey »

Gavvie wrote:I think it's Captain America that's been getting the bigger hype, game wise. It's supposedly been in development since 2008.
think iron man 2 was in the same boat there, in terms of development. But marvel movie games have always been bad. Spider man might be an exception but Wolverine X2 one anyway, hulk, iron man and now thor. Please stop killing heroes
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Post by Black_Jack »

Can't say I'm suprised. Bad movie games? What? Those never happen...
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Post by dab_dob »

Thanks for this
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