Review by: Brandon "Hammer Time" Cackowski-Schnell

Designing a god game must be tough, and I’m not talking about Populous, although I doubt that’s a walk in the park either. I’m talking about brawlers like God of War and Thor: God of Thunder, the movie tie-in game that seems to have forgotten that the movie it’s tied to came out six months ago. Gods are supposed to be super powerful and not have the same failings as you or I. Gods don’t have every joint in their legs popping like a popcorn popper when they walk up the stairs. Gods can do more than ten push-ups without collapsing. The challenge is that if the player’s character is too strong, things become boring, which is exactly the problem with this game.

Typically, games with extremely mighty protagonists have the main character knocked down a peg or two once the game starts. Kratos loses all of his gear at the beginning of his outings as does Samus at the beginning of every Metroid game. Not so here. Thor is powerful at the beginning of his journey and gets more powerful as the game goes on, easily defeating every frost giant, fire giant and weird, techno-Asgardian spirit dude who gets in his way. Death is never a threat, especially given that Thor will just warp back in with full health and mana if he does fall.

Sure, you hit all of the locations you would expect to visit in a Thor game. Frost giants, here, fire giants there, a visit to Midgard too, complete with a token line about being Earth’s protector. This last part is odd given that the game features the voice work of Thor and Loki from the recent Marvel film but doesn’t fit well with the movie’s timeline. If it’s before the movie, then Thor isn’t Earth’s protector yet. If it’s after then Thor and Loki wouldn’t be working together. For a game made specifically to tie in to a movie, it sure does a poor job of fitting in.

As you knock down foes, you gain experience points to be spent on new combos as well as health and mana upgrades. Thor also obtains special moves automatically during the game which also doesn’t make a lot of sense, as why wouldn’t he know how to do this stuff already? The combos are largely unnecessary to deal with the game’s enemies but they do provide some variety for the player. Thor’s special moves are far less interesting. Here’s a lightning globe that takes away shields and renders enemies immobile. Here’s a cyclone that does the same thing. In understand that when dealing with the god of thunder, you’re somewhat limited to lightning and wind, but a little difference would go a long way.

One nice touch is the rune system which allows Thor to slot in different magical stones to affect his performance. Most have a trade-off, be it dealing out more damage but taking more damage, or a berserker rage that kicks in once Thor gets under 25% health. Scattering the runes throughout the levels gives a reason to poke around, and with no damage or death penalty for falling off of a ledge, exploring is mostly penalty free. Seeing how you’re already pretty pumped up in the combat department, it’s not like you need the runes all that much, but tinkering with one’s abilities is always welcome, if only as a respite from the largely unchallenging combat.

Once you’re finished, something that should only take about five hours, you can unlock the super hard Ragnorak mode, and maybe then your thirst for challenge will be sated, but at that point, why bother? There may be more moves to unlock and different costumes to flit about in, but by then you’ve seen all there is to see and honestly, hitting a giant with a hammer is only so interesting, regardless of how many different ways you can swing it.