Game Info
GAME NAME: Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter
DEVELOPER(S): 3PM Games
PUBLISHER(S): Big John Games
PLATFORM(S): 3DS
GENRE(S): Shooter
RELEASE DATE(S): August 28, 2014
I love space shooter games; Star Fox for example was one of my favorites growing up. I’m used to that high level of quality when it comes to storytelling and gameplay, I find it addicting. Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter is a promising adventure space shooter, it doesn’t match up to the Star Fox standards I’m use to, but it still has redeeming qualities.
Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter starts off as you taking to the skies and flying and following your mentor through a volcanic terrain. This is part two to the Thorium series, to catch you up the first Thorium game story; humanity over invests into Thorium powered robots to help us with the harvest, and you’re left with robots rising to a sentient level and then turn against humans. It’s your basic human vs machine story. You are a human pilot fighting to save humanity. The humans won the battle in the first game. Now after that happened, this story of Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter resumes at a place where humanity thought that its first victory against the Thorians would bring peace, they were wrong. A generation later the Thorians returned, seeking revenge and looking to wipe out the entire human race in a quest to dominate the galaxy. Now, this sounds a little bit like Battlestar Galactica and the Cylons, but still it’s a fun story to get into. Will you save humanity?
The graphics of the ships are pretty excellent; they look detailed and great in 3d. Some levels look excellent while others look bland. The one major thing about level design I would say is the developers made them spacious so you can maneuver around and buildings and objects which is great. Overall, I felt like the ships had so much effort and the levels were a little neglected but honestly this is a 3DS game and for a 3DS game this looks fantastic for this genre. Now I enjoyed the story it’s probably not something I’ll remember a year from now but I was entertained. The lack of characters bothered me though. For example, in Star Fox you have people or creatures to hold on to and actually care about within the story. In Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter you have 2-3 pages of text to read to motivate you before each mission. This felt cold. The story isn’t bad per say but you sometimes lack the connection and motivation to continue because you don’t feel too invested into it.
The controls were actually pretty great and worked well for me. I’m not an inverted control type of person but I needed to have it inverted to play this properly, it just felt natural in the ships. Lasers were limited to 2 options, single and dispersed fire and you can thrust forward and barrel roll to evade enemies. You’ll have different ships to choose from which adds great variety. You can choose from the Utu Skyfighter (medium armor and firepower), Indra Skyfighter(heavy armor and high firepower), Shango Skyfighter(light armor, low firepower).
Gameplay is objective based; you’ll need to destroy things within levels and also protect citizens, etc. Some levels you’ll experience droid bots or flying bug bots that follow you and just barely go out of range while hitting you almost making you hit walls. Those got to be very pesky during missions. The enemy AI is pretty good though, I found myself in a dog fight multiple times which I did not expect and highly enjoyed. The sound was great, blasters sounded fun as well. The music was set in a futuristic space tone and assisted bringing you into the game.
The Recommendation
Being a fan of space shooters and sci-fi games, I found Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter enjoyable. It had a Halo/Alien vibe to the environments and tone. The ships looked great and there was a variety to choose from. While the game lacked the character motivation to keep me really involved it overall had a decent story and was fun. The controls and music were pretty good too. Overall, if this genre is your cup of tea then you will have fun with it and I recommend checking it out. You can buy Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter for $7.99 in the eShop.
