‘Thunder Wolves’ Review – A Summer Blockbuster, In Game Form

I just spent the last fifteen minutes flying around and destroying buildings in Thunder Wolves. That wasn’t even a level objective…I just wanted to destroy every building I could find simply because it was fun to see things explode and fall apart. Not since the original Mercenaries have I spent so much time in a single-player game, focusing my efforts strictly on structural demolitions. Thunder Wolves is explosive, loud, and full of over-the-top radio chatter….it’s every component of the summer blockbusters many of us love, but in video game form. Most Wanted Entertainment isn’t even known for flashy, Hollywood blockbuster-esque games, —their previous titles include games like Sea Park Tycoon, Picture Puzzle Collection, and Mechanic Master. After playing through Thunder Wolves, I found myself wondering, what took them so long to find their footing? Thunder Wolves is a blast.

Thunder Wolves has a story, but it’s every bit as cheesy and forgettable as anything where the pyrotechnics have a bigger budget than the writing staff. But really, if you’re playing a game like Thunder Wolves for the story, you’re doing it wrong. The game centers around a group of mercenaries known as “The Thunder Wolves” who are hired out to go on missions all over the world. The game takes place in the early 1990s and through a few flashback levels, players learn of the sinister individual known as The Serpent, and it quickly becomes clear that a battle with him will come at the end. The credits roll literally seconds after The Serpent is killed, and that is that. There is just nothing to the story. Oddly enough, there was one part in the game where it took on a somber tone, near the end of a level, but it felt so out of place that I just shrugged it off and started the next mission.

With the story being the weakest part of Thunder Wolves, let’s get on to the good stuff, the good explosive infinite-bullets-and-rockets fun stuff.

I played Thunder Wolves on the PC using an Xbox 360 controller, and the control scheme worked fine. Only a slight issue: the switch-weapons button could have been shifted from the left D-pad button to the Y button, which enabled Thermal/Night vision (I never needed either one since every enemy is marked in red). Three difficulty settings are presented to players at the start of each level: Casual, Normal, and Expert. I played through the game on Casual, and found that enough of a challenge at times.

At the start, players are given a helicopter to complete the level with, but eventually they will unlock additional choppers to be able to go back, and replay the levels with. Every chopper is armed with a heavy machine-gun and both guided and unguided rockets. Each chopper has an additional fourth attack mode that is a mega attack, —anything from calling in a carpet-bomb strike, to launching one big rocket that bursts open into a half-dozen smaller rockets.

Enemies come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Players will be tasked with destroying anything from massive warships, to small trucks mounted with machine-guns. Rocket lock-ons are always a threat, but luckily every chopper comes armed with flares that (sometimes) can pull incoming missiles off course and spare the chopper the damage. This brings up my only real problem with the gameplay: the lock-on system sucks. For one, the lock-on alert noise is too quiet for a game where I have people hooting and hollering over the radio every four seconds on top of everything in sight exploding. The flares helped, but sometimes the rockets would just ignore them and continue their path into my chopper. Locking on to enemies only works well on ground targets. Trying to shoot enemy choppers with lock-on missiles was literally a hit-or-a-miss ordeal. I never saw the enemies drop flares, and the mechanic of achieving a lock on was flaky at best.

The level variety is what makes Thunder Wolves fun. For a game that is essentially a 3D shoot-em-up, Thunder Wolves keeps players engaged by offering them memorable opportunities. One level had me aiding a special forces soldier as he fought his way through a moving train, railcar by railcar. Another level had me flying a small unmanned chopper drone through an underground enemy base. From time to time, the game shifts into an on-rails shooter for brief moments. These portions help keep the typical objectives-based gameplay from feeling too repetitive, as they offer the player a chance to focus on just wrecking as much as possible.

It took me about four hours to play through Thunder Wolves‘ fifteen levels on the Casual difficulty setting. With two other difficulty levels, plenty of unlocks, and a local co-op mode (which I have not had the opportunity to delve into) there is plenty of replayability for the game’s current $14.99 price.