His Review with Ian

If you’re a fan of video games, comics, Thor the movie or life itself – do not purchase this title on the Xbox 360 under any circumstances. Without doubt it is the worst title I’ve ever reviewed for SFL.
You’d think given Thor’s heritage from the Marvel stable, created by the almighty Stan Lee then turned into a film (which has garnered average ratings), that a game featuring the hammer bashing brute wouldn’t be that hard to a) make interesting or b) have something of interest for fans of the original comic.

It’s a third person single player, developed by Liquid Entertainment, co-written by Matt Fraction (Eisner Award winner) and published by Sega. You battle ever-bigger foes (taken straight from the comic pages) with your big rubber mallet combined with all your wind, lighting and thunder – that’s about it.

There’s no sense of Thor’s fury within the game as there’s a complete disconnection to the character and story that leaves you devoid of any feeling because you don’t care about it. The gameplay is awful, featuring about 50 different combos and moves that you won’t remember and if you do, won’t work properly as the response is shoddy. Ever increasing in difficulty with no sense of satisfaction for playing Thor is a genuinely ruinous and horrible experience. I cannot give anymore screen time to this terrible, terrible waste of time.

Her Review with Tracey

Regular readers of the His and Her Review will know that Ian often gets a grump on if a game fails to meet his high expectations and I suspect he actually quite likes writing bad things about most of the games we play. Think of us as the good cop/bad cop of video games. This time however, he was so devoid of feeling about Thor, he could hardly bring himself to write anything at all.

As always, I tried to remain positive as I headed into Asgard and on first impressions, yes, it is a bit hard to like but felt nowhere near as bad as Ian makes out. Admittedly, Thor is one tightly packed muscled giant with very little personality. His friend kops it, he seeks revenge and unwittingly unleashes Armageddon on the whole world. His response of “What have I done?” is the first instance you realise he is supposed to have emotions and isn’t just some super pimped up Viking god. Egged on by the most mediocre bad guy ever Loki, Thor needs to get back home and save his people – yes, it is hard to care about this but he has a super smashing hammer to play with, that’s gotta be cool right?

The first level of ice is a process of going through the motions but there are some interesting ideas you can put into practice along the way – playing with Thunder, Lightning and Wind creates different levels of action whilst grappling an enormous enemy allows you to grab your way around the front of their body and pound your hammer into their chest or face. Depending on how you do this, you can collect extra health or Odin (power needed for special moves). You can also gain XP in order to make Thor even stronger or have more abilities – sadly there are no personality upgrades available. The first couple of showdowns have some genuinely impressive moves and make up for the fact that by the time you get there, you’re nearly close to death as have been shafted by huge icicles on your way through, despite being nowhere near them. Thor is obviously so huge, he can’t run fast or jump very high and when you do think you’ve avoided something, it gets you anyway, such is the poor design.

The jungle ruins stage that follows does get better. There is a bit more exploration needed to get on the right path with plenty of things to collect (to unlock costumes and different coloured lightning and other things you don’t care about) whilst the river boat challenge is challenging fun but again full of niggles – why can you aim at enemies on the river bank when on the boat but not at any other time? Why is Thor, the most powerful bulk of all Asgard unable to climb ledges without the help of a tiny blue dot and his hammer and when he gets to the top, why can’t he accurately coast in the direction you want – he has a cape and everything – why???

But still I ploughed onwards, not really enjoying it but curious as to how the game would progress and wanting to learn more dazzling moves. However, I can’t get past the final fight on this level. Not only can I not get past, I got so enraged playing as it’s so damn unresponsive and unfeasible that I almost threw the controller out of the window and had to go and lie in a cool room, reading Beatrix Potter. There are so many things going against the gamer in this battle it’s impossible not to feel like punching something very hard. First of all in order to stand any chance whatsoever, you have to go back on yourself and collect a health power up, then fast-forward through a lengthy cut scene before you even reach the battle. Doing this several times in a row increases your rage by at least 218%. Then when you are in battle (and I’m guessing here because I didn’t succeed), you have to increase your rage gauge to progress – ironic when inside you feel your blood boiling as you try and build this up. Simply, you can’t. Annoying Skraelings with guns, fire grenades at you. You can’t avoid them as you’re either too slow or frozen to the spot by huge trolls firing freeze balls at you. Trying to eliminate the Skraelings whilst fighting the armoured trolls would be almost achievable BUT you’ll only fill your rage meter when their armour is off. This takes ages and as you’re doing it, your rage level actually depletes!!! AAAGGGHHHHH! Combined with the fact that even if you’re nowhere near a grenade when it goes off, chances are it will still blow you up and the fact that once the armour IS off, you still don’t have enough rage to fill your meter once you defeat them and more armoured trolls jump in, this battle is a never ending cycle of anger inducing, frustrating, glitchy, messy, inaccurate, bad camera angled, useless, unresponsive button mashing hatred. Never before I have so passionately grown to hate a game so quickly.

So I felt compelled to write more than Ian but the feeling is the same. Thor is one of the most awful games ever to have been made. I feel my Xbox is sullied for having this bilge in its disk draw. Under no circumstances should anyone alive or dead go anywhere near this game. Phew! Think I need another lie down.

For those of you without emotional capabilities and who might still be interested, Thor is available now on Xbox360, Playstation3, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS.