What do you get when you take a hero from Norse mythology, the control scheme from God of War:Chains of Olympus, sprinkle in some acrobatics from Mini Ninjas, level design from Little Big Planet, and the animation from Disney’s Hercules movie and put them all in the blender? You get Frima Studio’s Young Thor, of course. Frima has already brought a few great games to the PSP minis, is Young Thor the next? Read on to find out. Young Thor is a side scrolling beat ‘em’ up with platforming elements. You control Young Thor, the Norse god of thunder, as he travels through Midgard the world of men and Asgard the realm of the gods, in a quest to help restore balance in the universe. It is your mission to save the world tree Yggdrasil from Hel, and her two evil allies Ratatoskr and Nidhogg, and to rescue the 3 Norns. With the help of your giant hammer Mjolnir, you embark on your journey, to save the tree and the realms it connects.
When I first booted up Young Thor I was very pleasantly surprised at the animation, it was very crisp and sharp. You are greeted by an animated cut scene, to get you started and it looked great on my tv. Young Thor plays very fast, like a platformer should, and handles very well. The only trouble I had with the controls was, I was playing on my PS3 and I kept wanting to use the analog stick to move him, but it is D-pad only. There are 4 very different worlds in Young Thor, that you transverse on your way from Midgard to Asgard, and each world has 4 variations. The level variations offer up higher difficulty levels, bigger and badder bad guys, and different paths to explore, which makes the game have 16 levels plus a finishing level. You have to figure out a correct path through the levels to advance, because they can get brutal. Along the way you will discover artifacts, which upgrade your gear, and power-ups that will get you out of some sticky situations, and you can level up all the way to 99.
Now for my impressions. Young Thor is great, I enjoyed every minute of the 5 hours it took me to come up with the correct path to make it through. It is very vibrant and colorful and it sparkled with a polished spit shine on my television. The character models, the background, and cut scenes all were done with the unique Frima charm. The games engine plays quick and fast, and the controls are spot on. Young Thor is what God of War would have been if it was made for the Super Nintendo but for the family, and very reminiscent of the solid Disney licensed platformers from that console. I wish there were more worlds to explore and a few different enemies, to give the game a little more depth, but that is because I enjoyed playing it so much. It has simple controls but a difficulty level that can catch up in a hurry, but I couldn’t put it down.I had to plow through to level up and find the artifacts, not bad for a game competing against I-Phone apps. Frima has been doing great things with 50 megabytes, now i beg them to take a gig and build a full PSN title, or build up Young Thor to a franchise, my $10 is already waiting. Young Thor is available today in the PSN for $4.99. If you enjoy fun fast platformers check this out, especially if you have a PS3 and a PSP, it doubles the value. I give Young Thor an excellent 9/10 and i hope to see more from Frima soon. Please support your Indie developer and here is a link to their site.
WWW.frimastudio.com
