Young Thor is one of those new PS3 Mini games. It can be downloaded and played on the PS3, or transferred to the PSPgo or a standard PSP. And your enjoyment of the game will probably depend on which platform you actually use.
Young Thor follows the path of the thunder god when he was still just a wee little boy. The evil Hel has kidnapped the three fates, and this causes the tree of life to start to die since it has no caretakers. All the other gods are busy getting ready for Ragnarok, you know, the final battle that will determine the fate of the world. But Young Thor has some time in his schedule, so he decides to head out and rescue the young maidens, and indirectly, the tree.
The only problem is that Thor is, well, a little on the young side. You start out as a level one kid, although with a big hammer. Thor will have to go through a bunch of different worlds, but the first one is the world of man. The world of man is currently being beset by orks (at least I think they are orks). You will have to plow through an army of them just to get to the tree in the first world.
The game is presented in a Saturday morning carton type of style, with the snarky Young Thor giving a mischievous grin as he sets off on his journey. The enemies are all cartoon-like as well, almost comical in nature. I kind of laughed as I smashed them. They look like they were pulled from The Order of The Stick D&D comic strip.
You have a variety of attacks to defend yourself. There is the standard hammer swing of course, but you can also charge up your attacks for a powerful blow, or even call down thunder on your enemies. The more powerful attacks drain your mana, which is a blue bar under your red hit points. You can regain mana by eating apples.
There is an experience bar that tells you how close you are to making a level, but there is not much to do once you hit the next one. Young Thor simply becomes more powerful automatically, and the bar resets to zero. Given that the enemies get more powerful as you move along, I really didn’t notice that I was leveling too much. The game just always seemed to be about the same challenge level the whole time. This isn’t really a bad thing. I think it struck the right balance, but there is limited thrill in leveling up.
You can only move in two directions along a line, so the enemies in your path in this true side-scroller are your biggest threat. There are also some environmental hazards, which forces you to jump at the right times to avoid falling to your doom. If you die, you are simply sent back to the last save stone, which thankfully isn’t ever too far behind.
Boss battles are actually pretty darn hard, with your enemies being at least twice Thor’s size and sometimes bigger. Given the limited field of movement, there isn’t really too much strategy. Just hit and don’t get hit.
The presentation of the game is spot on. As Young Thor gets hit, not only will his hit point bar decrease, but the smiling image of him will begin to frown. Cut scenes at major parts in the game also help to keep the excitement high.
Graphically, the game looks good on a PSP, but horrible on the PS3. It’s just not designed to be played on a nice HDTV. Even running in a windowed mode, graphics are jagged and unpolished. These flaws can’t be seen on the smaller PSP, but are highly evident on the main PS3 console. Also, you can’t move your character using the joystick on the PS3, only the D-pad keys, which mimics the PSP control layout, but feels really odd on the PS3. I kept wanting to run around super-mario style, but was locked into the thin line that Thor walks on. Having a defunct joystick is also a bit off-putting.
The price of the game on the PS3 network is $5, which is a good value, but only really if you want to transfer it to your portable player. As a PS3 game, it’s sub par. But as a PSP title, it’s a pretty wild ride.