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Ignore what some of the professional reviewers say about this game. It is NOT the worst game of the year. If anything, it was the most over hyped game of 2011, but the hype came from the same critics that hated it later on. Mostly because it didn't live up to their own hype.
Yes, there is button mashing to the game. And yes, the cut scenes are generally left in the 3D mode, so they seem a little blurry. But they are surprisingly short for cut scenes these days, and are easily ignored if you don't want to look at them. Granted, the story wasn't as good as the movie. But you aren't watching the movie, you're playing a story made for a game. BIG difference.
Let's break all of this down. First off, the button mashing. The designers seemed (at least to me), to acknowledge that there is a fan base for Thor beyond the movie. For those that don't know, the character is over 40 years old. He has his traditional comic book version (the 616 world Thor), the Ultimate version (the universe the Marvel movies are based on), the Dimension X series, as well as the movie variant.
If the designers went with any one of those versions, there would have been fans complaining. So they obviously (at least to me), tried to meld them together to some degree. This still didn't satisfy the fanboys out there, since they can only tolerate one version of a character. The one that THEY want.
This amalgam also led to some button mashing. The programmers wanted to give Thor as many of his powers as they could. I remember when the trailers for the game came out. Certain TV critics on a cable show raved about how Thor should be a powerful character, and the trailer made it seem like he would be. Then the game came out, and they complained that Thor not only had all of these powers (the button mashing), but that he started off too weak for them. Yet if the programmers started him off at full power, the same critics would have said he was too powerful, making the game too easy.
Finally, the story. If you made the game an exact transcript of the game, then the critics would have complained that the game was only two hours. Not worth $60. So the design team stretched it out, and gave you more to do. They turned the character(s) into a game version, and gave you more to do with Thor. What was their reward? Being compared to virtually EVERY RPG out there. Yet, when their favorite series come out with a "new" game, they can over look the fact that every war game is basically you, as the good guy, killing off all of the enemies and winning the war. Every dungeon crawler tends to be you trying to avenge a fallen king (friend or mentors may also be used). In the end, you kill off all the evil in the world, and either become the new ruler, or marry the former kings daughter to become the heir.
Buy Thor. Play it, enjoy it. And if you have a 3D TV, all the better. Just don't let all of the jaded fanboy critics out there deprive you of a game that really isn't as bad as they say it is. Just as the movie was a "popcorn" movie, that you go to see, have fun, and move on with your life, the game is a fun, play it once, and move on with your life game. You won't be playing it for years to come, but if you get it on sale, you will get your money's worth from it.
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Thor: God of Thunder is a movie tie-in game that could of been very unique and fun but instead turns out to be a very bad clone of God of War mixed with some The Force Unleashed (in my opinion). While I do not own a physical copy of Thor I was given the opportunity to play through the game by a friend and in doing so I was glad I did not purchase the title, despite being a big fan of Thor.GAMEPLAY
This is one of the major problem this game has in my opinion. What we have here is a bad clone of God of War mixed with a little The Force Unleashed style gameplay. I enjoyed both titles and the hack and slash style of gameplay. However, Thor's execution of this gameplay style was poorly implemented. After the first hour of smashing and electrocuting mobs I began to notice there is very little in the way of enemy variety or reason to even use your combos. Just mashing attack is often good enough (on normal difficulty setting) to get past most mobs with the occasional need to perform a simple combo attack to break a mob's armor and such. Like in God of War, when you kill mobs you will get experience points pretty much and can use them on a grid to level Thor's abilities up. The grid I felt was easy to use despite having a complex look to it. Included in the gameplay are numerous bugs that plague the title. Animation glitches, sound glitches, bad dialogue, poor physics engine the list goes on. While the problems are not game breaking, they are annoying and some of the bugs I ran into were down right inexcusable to have in a game. ( Next objective did not load for me twice during my playthrough. Restarting at the last checkpoint/save resolved it ). My biggest gripe about the gameplay is the poor execution of the grapple. Sometimes you will get the grapple notification and I would grapple the mob only to have the mob "automatically" counter my grapple and throw me away. It seemed completely random and I never could figure out why the enemy was able to just randomly counter me(could of been a PS3 bug as it didn't happen nearly as much on the 360).
GRAPHICS
I would say the graphics in this game are lacking. In fact early 360/PS3 or perhaps almost PS2/Xbox level at times. At times it felt like the Remastered God of War II where they took a 480p game and remastered it in 720p. It looked nice but you can tell something wasn't right. There are plenty of graphical hiccups throughout the game including a funny moment where Thor's cap actually rendered backwards and he was walking around with his cape over his chest for about 5 minutes. Don't expect mind blowing graphics from this title pretty much.. however the game is 3D capable. I was not able to test this feature out however due to a lack of a 3DTV.
SOUND/STORY
When it comes to music and sound effects I would say they are fair. The game uses the actors from the movie so there is some care and thought put into the dialogue, even if it was sometimes very cheesy. Game sound effects were not bad either but seemed to lack some power/muscle to them at times. STORY wise, this is a movie tie-in game which technically does not follow the movie. In a way this is good since it tries to be its own entity while using the movie actors and voices. However the storyline is very shallow and is essentially there to give you a reason to move to the next room of bad guys to smash.
REPLAY/LENGTH
It took me about 7-8 hours to beat the game on the standard difficulty setting (Midguardian). Throughout the game you will find various bosses to slay and of course hidden collectibles. The placement and nature of the collectibles reminds me a bit of The Force Unleashed here as these collectibles will unlock additional costumes, colors for Thor's lightning, etc. The added replay value here really isn't in the gameplay or storyline... but that these collectible items have DIFFICULTY REQUIREMENTS. Some of the collectibles you will be unable to pick up unless you are playing on the proper difficulty.
OVERALL F (58%)
Sadly I have to give THOR 1 star (an F rating in my book). The game is plagued with problems, and feels a bit like a fancy PS2 / Xbox title trying to mimic God of War II but left off much of what made that game fun. Is Thor: God of War a horrible game that should be avoided like the Lunchroom Meatloaf? No. It is a game that just has many problems and feels rushed and badly executed. Playing through the game, you can feel and even see the potential for a great game here that could of even brought some unique aspects into the genre but instead just got thrown out there to capitalize on the movie. With that said I feel Thor: God of Thunder is the kind of game that is perfect as a weekend RENTALLet's be honest. I've played the game... but not played it all the way through to the end. So, as a result, my review may somewhat seem a little bit premature, but I sincerely doubt it. The reasons are numerous: The graphics belong to a game of 7-8 years old. The dialogue, cheesy... The fight/action sequences, reminiscent of Mortal Kombat games, combos and such... Player interface, poor and old-fashioned... Screen mechanics/layouts, those that have been used many times past, no innovation there. All in all, nothing new, nothing exciting. Just go, go, go, fight, fight, fight...
To be fair, I will come back and edit this entry in a positive light if I do find anything new or exciting along the way, if this game gives me something to be thrilled about. Otherwise, this entry will stay as it is.
Read Best Reviews of Thor: God of Thunder Here
You know that rule about comic book movie adaptations that have really bad tie-in video games? Yeah, that's in full effect with Thor: God of Thunder. From the same crew that was behind Sega's two Iron Man games (and the upcoming Captain America game), Thor puts you in the boots of the titular God of Thunder as he takes on Frost Giants and other assorted baddies, in a style that is pretty much a quasi-God of War ripoff. That in itself would only make the game monotonous, but combine that with the dated graphics engine (it looks like an early PS2 game), buggy gameplay, and horrible controls, and you have a game that is flat out atrocious. Actors Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, who portray Thor and Loki respectively in the film, sound like they're both half asleep, and the game as a whole feels like it was so rushed out of the gate that it comes off as being unfinished. Avoid.Want Thor: God of Thunder Discount?
This game has so many problems.First is that it seems like it takes the game about 3/4seconds to respond to certain commands. I feel like this gets worse as the game goes along, especially with the need to grapple and press button combinations in a fight sequence. But even a simple walk+jump together and Thor walks off the edge of something.
Which brings me to #2 level design. Most of the time what to do or where to go is confusing. Part of it stems from the fact that Thor can only jump about as high as I can (forget that he can fly). But the camera views don't seem to move behind the avatar at all. Instead the camera is far away looking down at you and a wall and any attempt to look towards the camera view is pointless. So if you need to go up or over or something other than what's right in front of you, forget it. As you are trying to jump from here to there, the camera might angle or pan for no apparent reason and suddenly you're falling and hero rescue kicks in and you can do it like a hundred times while cursing the poor level design and camera and lagging controls.
#3 This game isn't fun. It should be fun to be Thor, there should be really cool combos. There should be bodies bouncing all over the screen. Instead Thor is phenomenally weak. It takes him a hundred hits to kill most monsters. The combos to do it are awful. The grappling is lame.
Some people have mentioned other games. Force Unleashed had some button combos, but the timing to press the button seemed long enough and the icon was big unlike the tiny ones in Thor and the buttons actually seemed to respond when you pressed them. That game you could do a bunch of different force powers, push pull explode lighting throw saber, any number of ways to mix it up. This game is just so bad. It isn't fun to kill things at all. I feel like the easy guys are maybe too easy and then the bosses are for some reason overly complicated. It'd be nice if there was more divisions of easy, medium, medium hard, hard, difficult and there was a understandable reason for each and maybe a unique sort of mindset to tackle each kind. There isn't any kind of thought process like that.
What amazes me is how not current the game play is in this game. With games like Drake's Fortune with really good camera and controls and hint system, to Darksiders fun story good leveling, even Halo with grunts and chiefs different weapons and everything in between to mix it up. This game has no thought. None. And all the other problems just make it worse. I'm really disappointed.
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