Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter is a basic but solid ariel fighter and proves that you don’t have to be pretty to be good.
Here is a brief synopsis of the story of the game. Humanity thought that its victory in the war with the Thorions, a race of fearless war machines run amok, would restore peace to the Earth. But a generation later, humanity’s worst fear is realized: the Thorions have returned, seeking revenge and aiming to wipe out the human race in a quest to dominate the galaxy.
It’s up to you to go on the attack against the Thorions and defeat them in battle once more. Pilot your choice of three Skyfighters across alien worlds to protect human colonies and destroy Thorion forces. Blast away at hulking mechs, menacing gun turrets, and swarming drones. Push your dogfighting skills to their limits against adept Thorion Skyfighters.
The game controls and handles pretty well, with fairly intuitive controls. Using the control stick naturally moves your starfighter, with the (A) and (B) buttons controlling your throttle. The default setting for the throttle is set that holding the button increases or decreases your speed and when you release the ship will return to regular speed. This works very well and although the setting can be changed in the settings so that you can remain in either speed without holding the button down, I didn’t really do that.
Shooting uses the [R] button and there are two different levels to your guns. By tapping right on the d-pad you can switch between bursts and charges. Of course you’ll have to use your charges wisely. While the shot is more powerful and better at blasting your enemies, shooting and holding on the charge will heat up your guns. Overheat them and you’ll lose them for a short period of time.
One control that I really didn’t like was looking behind the starfighter. Perhaps I’ve gotten used to the controls in a driving game, but when flying the ship it would have been more intuitive to hold the [L] button to look behind the ship. Instead the (Y) button is tapped to look behind with another tap needed to look forward again. To look beside the ship you’ll need to tap (Y) while holding in the direction you want to look. A second tap rights the camera once again. It works alright, but makes looking around quickly a bit more of a hastle. Not to mention dangerous.
There are times during the missions when you need to destroy all of the enemies within a certain area in order to advance. While they are on the radar, seeing them behind you while you come around for another pass would be made easier if looking behind weren’t as difficult as it is.
Another thing I would have liked, though I almost feel like a spoiled gamer to complain about such a thing, is a quick turn option so I can quickly turn around in my starfighter. Doing so naturally in the game is easy enough. Simply throttle back and then turn for a sharper turn. Maybe I’m just used to such things. One other minor gripe is the radar in the game. It does a great job of showing where the enemies are with little triangles, including pointing whether they are above or below my ship. The once things that I would have appreciated is some topography to show my surroundings as well. Without the 3D enabled, some of the cave tunnels are tricky to navigate as occasionally the walls look very similar.
Overall this game isn’t bad. The level types are varied, the game has three difficulty levels, three different classes of ships to choose from and the music and soundtrack is well done.
It’s definitely worth checking out.
