Thorium Wars certainly looks better on the battlefield

by Peter Fiorilla

Fun factor: Average

Worth to: Buy/Rent

The war will be whether or not to try this game, as it offers a lot for a DSiWare title but also comes with a few annoyances.

With digital distribution on the rise, incredibly small developers have been able to release quality games at a reasonable price -- while raking in sizable profits, of course.

DSiWare has had far less success stories of this nature than other services, but this is not for a lack of willing developers. The latest attempt at stardom is Big John Games’ Thorium Wars, a futuristic vehicle shooter that feels as visually insipid, shallow and undistinguishable as its screenshots make it seem.



Screenshots are unable to convey how entertaining a game is, however, and Thorium Wars is more enjoyable than it initially looks.

Why do we keep creating machines that rebel?

Scattered across Earth is the military of mankind, reduced to a force with few weapons and fewer men that know how to use them. The Thorium robots -- machines of humanity that have rebelled against their masters -- have nearly taken control of the blue planet, crushing a species that has not fought its own battles in decades.

Despondent and humiliated by their tragic demise, survivors establish a meager elite force to combat the Thorium armies. Throughout the campaign the player takes control of anonymous soldiers in five different vehicles who aim to liberate settings throughout the planet and the final frontier.

As the lengthy download process suggests (Thorium Wars is a whopping 112 blocks), this is a content-packed purchase. Most of the campaign’s 4-5 hour length is spent blasting at a variety of enemy robots, meaning the narrative is almost nonexistent and entirely uninteresting.

There is certainly enough action to justify the $10 asking price, then, but can the quality of the levels match the quantity?

After text-only briefings the game thrusts you into a pretty world fully rendered in 3D, armed only with a pre-assigned vehicle. Environments are typically expansive to suit the ships’ swift speeds yet sluggish handling, and driving vehicles is about as fun as it can be with an eight-directional d-pad (the touch-screen controls are second-rate).



The controls are surprisingly serviceable using the all-button control scheme, with the d-pad controlling direction, face buttons speed and shoulder buttons camera perspective and fire. There may be no method of moving and aiming in different directions simultaneously, but this is not much of an issue. Any difficulty Thorium Wars presents is in mastering the vehicles’ handling and learning how to tactically fight enemies, which can be done in short order with the functional controls.

Smooth framerate for your sluggish vehicle

It is difficult to praise or criticize Thorium Wars’ gameplay, as its pros are universal yet its cons mission-specific; a flaw in one mission is nonexistent in another. Some levels, for example, have an infinite stream of enemies constantly attacking your vehicle, which feels like a cheap method of increasing the game’s difficulty; other missions do not have this annoyance. Some missions force the player into small rooms or tight areas, making it difficult to beat past enemies with the game’s sluggish controls; others are solely made up of enormous environments optimal for the ships’ handling. A couple missions have frequent checkpoints, while others do not; similarly, a few of the missions can be completed in just a few minutes, while others drag on for as long as a half-hour. Thorium Wars is an inconsistent package, if nothing else.

All of the boss fights are pretty lame, and too frequently are larger models of grunt units. Some of the coolest enemies, such as an evil-looking AT-AT clone, rarely appear throughout the game; in stark contrast, Thorium Wars’ most annoying enemies -- tiny flying bots that are difficult to hit -- are littered throughout the levels.



If not for the liquid smooth framerate and pretty visuals, Thorium Wars would be very difficult to recommend. The art direction can seem a bit boring and the color scheme subdued -- one mission, for example, is a long tunnel of brown and gray -- but this is still the best looking 3D game on DSiWare, which is impressive considering the competition that is starting to pop up. Flight missions in particular are pretty, with beautiful backgrounds and detailed ships that keep the eyes engaged.

It is a tragedy that less attention was put into the sound, which could have easily been decent if not for the shooting sound effect. It is loud, obnoxious and makes listening to the passable music impossible during dogfights.

Summary

Nevertheless, Thorium Wars is a satisfactory package, just not one that anyone should buy before looking into some of DSiWare’s superior downloads. If your imagination is exhausted from creating flipnotes in Flipnote Hatena and you’re tiring of hearing Brian Blessed’s superb voice acting in Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon, Thorium Wars may tide you over until something more interesting comes out.