Thor: God of Thunder for Nintendo DS is how to do a beat em' up the right way.

I know I said I wasn't "that much" of a fan of the beat em up genre in my first blog post about "Tokyo Beat Down", but the new Thor game made me downright giddy with glee at how polished it was. Finally the DS can be proud to have a beat em up that doesn't rely on crazy parody humor! Not that that's a bad thing or anything of course, but hey it pays to have variety (and good gameplay).

And Thor has both of those aspects in spades. Right from the get go you start out with an assortment of badass moves, Thor's move-set reminded me very much of a smash brothers character in design, hell he even has a smash attack, performed exactly like a smash attack. But this gives him much versatility as he can use this to launch enemy's upwards, air juggle a bit, then launch them back down. The combat is extremely smooth, think Castlevania mixed with  "God of War" (if god of war was a beautifully detailed, animated 2-d game). Although I wasn't too big of a fan of his super abilities, they require touch control, which may disrupt the flow of game play. These attacks usually clear the screen or give you some invulnerability frames so its not too much of an issue to touch the screen, watch a cool attack, then easily go back into the action. It is a tad unnecessary though.

Thor also has the ability to grab enemy's and pillars from the environment, which he can either throw or give an enemy a nice good thump with. This can usually reveal hidden "runes" as well, which are ability modifiers that enhance Thor's abilities. This system allows you to feel a natural progression of badassery as the game ups the ante on you.

The bosses in Thor deserve a mention as well. They are very much in spirit to the comic, larger then life giant titanic beasts, which Thor must brutally beat down. Sometimes they'll take up two screens and the camera will zoom out showing the scope of how little Thor is compared to what he is up against. It captures that paritcular epic nature of the comics very well. 

As well as having a full, rich rewarding campaign, Thor comes with a plethora of modes to keep you occupied. There is a survival mode, which is available in every setting you traversed in the story mode, an art gallery (the art in this game seems to have been done by a professional, its very nice work), and a bunch of other cool extras that won't make this game stale.

I bought this game on a blind buy, but my faith was totally invested in the developer, Way Forward. The only title I've owned by them was "Contra 4" for DS, so I knew they have what it takes to make a solid 2-d action game. They did not disappoint me in the slightest. I will gladly blindly buy their next game.

Thor is currently on sale at Target (sale ends May 21st) for the affordable bargain price of $20. Do yourself a favor and snatch it up.

Nothing to do with bargain bin gaming but....

my first ever audio mash up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4KIooimhXw
fun.