THOR: God of Thunder: an Alternate Focus Review

Again with the movie tie-ins. Oy! But what can I say? I'm a Marvel junkie. And who can argue with a blonde guy the size of an 18-wheeler sporting a Chuck-ly beard and whose weapon of choice is a cinderblock on a stick? No one, that's who. Thus I gift you mortals with this review of THOR: God of Thunder. That's right- he's so awesome his name is in all caps.

Our titular hero is a man with two faces; one a rage-fueled badass with an affinity for the violent enbludgeonment of his enemies, and yet at the same time he shows himself to be a rage-blinded dope whose predictably hair-trigger temper is the basis for the game's storyline. That and his little brother's squirrely antics.

The storyline is as follows: an Abominable Snowman army invades Asgard. Thor(being Thor), isn't satisfied with merely driving them off, no- he's out for blood. And it isn't just the head snowman he's after- Thor is out to destroy their entire PLANET. Little brother Loki has a trick or two up his sleeve to aid his big brother in the endeavor(for his own ends- and nefarious ones at that) and thus, mayhem ensues.

It was kind of hard for me to play the first half of the game- in the same way it's hard to watch a horror film in that moment where Chesty Teen #3 enters the eerily-lit-house-where-people-you-know-are-there-aren't-responding-when-you-call-out-to-them and then heads upstairs to investigate the sinister noise rather than running the hell out the front door. You know what's going to happen but you can't stop it because the blonde in front of you is too dumb to recognize a trap when they're walking into one.

Superhuman blond-itude aside, nothing says God of Thunder like smackin' the crap out of badguys, and that is certainly one thing Thor excels at. With any number of combos for heavy damage, crowd control, aerial maneuvers and powerful finishers, Thor is well equipped from the start to deal with mobs of enemies, and as he levels up, he only becomes more capable as the game progresses.

Thor has a number of storm powers unlocked during the course of the campaign(based on lightning, thunder and wind, and powered by a magic meter called Odinforce), a combo system that increases the effectiveness of certain abilities once you reach preset numbers of hits, equippable runes you can use to power up storm abilities or buff Thor's physical traits, and a 3-tiered leveling system to upgrade Thor's might(+melee dmg, new combos), valor(+health, +rune slots), and Storm powers(+Odinforce, +storm dmg). The game gives you these tools to get the job done. And get the job done you will, if Thor's got anything to say about it.

In between pummeling the rank and file, you're tasked with hammering large minibosses into submission before finishing them off with minor quick time events, and then onto leveling massive end bosses in more cinematic QTEs.

When you add to all that the extras- a level select for all levels completed, 4 unlockable costumes, the unlockable "Ragnarok" difficulty, concept art, replayable cinematics, and even an episode of the "Avengers" cartoon- what you end up with is a surprisingly fully-featured handheld experience who's modest campaign length is made up for by it's replayability.




++++++++++++++++
Below I'll add some screens I took of a couple of the costumes available in the game. Excuse the quality- I took pictures of my 3DS's screen.

Movie Thor(Default)


Classic Thor(called Kirby Thor in game- named for Jack Kirby, one of Thor's co creators)


The Destroyer costume