Thorium Wars

Genre: Action

Players: 1

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Review:

Thorium Wars is an Action game released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2009 and then grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when that system was released. In this futuristic game, players pilot fighter jets, tanks, and other vehicles in a battle with machine opponents threatening humanity. I should note that this game was famously the first DSiWare game to be priced as high as $10, while earlier games tended to be $8 or less.

Given this game’s original release as a DSiWare game, the presentation in this game is quite good, featuring some decent (for the time, at least) 3D visuals, and backed by a fittingly intense soundtrack that works well for the action-packed nature of the game. By today’s standards, this game’s environments are pretty sub-par, but overall this is a pretty decent-looking game.

Another bright point in this game is the controls for the fighter jets, which are fun to move around and easy enough to get the hang of. I see others online talking about the need for a tutorial, but I tend to think that anyone who has played a Combat Flight Simulator on a console before should take to this portion of the game pretty naturally.

The tank controls, on the other hand, are a bit more awkward and unwieldy, taking some time to aim properly. This is particularly bad because enemies in this game do not let up in targeting you, meaning that you’ll need to be constantly moving, and won’t have the luxury of sitting in one spot to aim. Making things worse is that enemies can and will target you even if they only appear as a tiny speck on your screen, making it feel like you’re being barraged with attacks from an enemy you can’t fight back against.

There are more problems, as well. Thorium Wars is extremely monotonous – your vehicles have only one weapon, with no bombs or anything else to add variety. In addition, the missions themselves are pretty tedious too – destroy all enemies, destroy all enemies, destroy all enemies… and if destroying enemies in this game was fun, that would be one thing, but there is one final element of this game that makes the entire experience a frustrating nightmare. The damn drones.

Players will constantly be swarmed by drones flitting around their vehicle in this game, taking occasional potshots at you while you try to carry out your mission. Targeting and destroying these drones is frustrating as they jump around wildly, and ultimately pointless as they endlessly respawn… or at least, they do until you specifically have to pick them off one by one. Until then, it seems that you’re just supposed to tolerate them and try your best to ignore them as you go about playing the rest of the game. It’s like being told to ignore the mosquitos constantly flying around your head as you try to focus on doing your taxes.

Yeah, if that last sentence wasn’t indication enough, I do not find Thorium Wars to be fun in the slightest. Which is a real shame, because its decent presentation and core gameplay mechanics (well, in the aircraft at least) set a strong foundation for a much better game. But instead of thrilling missions with an exciting and varied arsenal of weaponry, we get repetitive gameplay and the constant annoyance of drone enemies. Thankfully, Nintendo 3DS players craving a game like this have the far-superior sequel Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter, the Ace Combat games, and of course Star Fox 64 3D. You’re far better off getting one of those games instead.

tl;dr – Thorium Wars is an Action game that has you fighting in various futuristic vehicles against a multitude of robotic enemies. The presentation here is good, and the Combat Flight Sim portions have some solid gameplay at their core. Unfortunately, the land-based vehicles are a pain to control, the gameplay is overall far too repetitive, and the game constantly harasses players with endlessly-respawning drones that sap away any fun that could be had in this game. Nintendo 3DS players have far better options than this.

Grade: D+

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