Thunder Wolves was developed by Most Wanted Entertainment and published by bitComposer Entertainment. It was released June 12, 2013 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

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Thunder Wolves is about one thing, and one thing only: blowing stuff up. There’s not so much a plot, as a collection of directives loosely stringing one over-the-top level to another, always boiling down to the same principle. Everything painted with red gets blasted to smithereens. There are softer moments, though whether Thunder Wolves is legitimately reaching for depth or just parodying cheeseball melodrama doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, you’ll likely foster stronger emotional bonds with your arsenal of helicopters than the sensational stereotypes piloting them.

Across the game’s thirteen levels you’ll pilot as many choppers, ranging from attack to recon, all loaded for bear with a variety of ordinance. In rare cases, you’ll swap out of the pilot seat to perform an on-rail shooting segment, lob bombs from a circling gunship or drive a dump truck. These instances mix up the gameplay but are never more engaging than the core experience, annihilating enemy bases and stemming the flow of oncoming waves. That’s really what Thunder Wolves has to offer – a simple, straightforward exercise in lighting things up from your volitant chariot.

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Here’s what we liked:

I am become death, destroyer of brackets – Thunder Wolves lays its cards on the table up front. It’s a power fantasy about trouncing through the Middle East and South America with gung-ho air superiority. Like Rambo on the wings of an eagle, you spew molten indifference for 4-6 hours of campaign missions, whittling away the resources of an unnamed super terrorist with little regard for pesky things like a mounting death toll or collateral damage. The satisfaction that comes with sending your payload into a group of combatants marked with red brackets – the universal ‘bad guy’ bracket – builds when you string three or four such instances together, inflating the score multiplier and your own infallible ego.

We need a montage – Openly admitting indulgence in that kind of carnage might be taboo, but Thunder Wolves sidesteps the moral dilemma by framing the experience through an outrageous ‘Gun Bro’ filter. Like a terrible, awesome ‘80s action flick, it never hides the fact it’s disposable entertainment, even taking steps to remind you at every turn. Cutscenes are overly dramatized and dialogue is a cringe-inducing mixture of cliche and bad. When you score a big kill, flaming-hot letters appear on the screen forming congratulatory statements like, “Hella Sick”, “Nice Bro”, and the always infuriating, “Hell To The Yeah”.

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Here’s what we didn’t like:

War never changes – What Thunder Wolves does, it does well, but that’s about it. If destroying wave after wave of enemies and remodeling remote military installations is your thing, you’ll find plenty to do, forever and ever. Yet Thunder Wolves has nothing to offer outside peppering targets with hot lead while waiting for your rockets to reload. Occasionally you’ll need to maneuver into place to pick up or drop off a friendly, but when you’re not playing war zone chauffeur you needn’t worry about anything other than pointing the business end of your chopper toward the next indicator. Unfortunately once you’ve connected those dots and completed the campaign, the only thing left to do is the campaign, all over again.

Up is up, down is down: it’s madness – Eschewing decades of virtual aircraft piloting design, Thunder Wolves does not include the option to invert the Y-axis. This means pressing up looks up and pressing down looks down, which is catastrophic if you’re not one of those people that aims with a 1:1 ratio, as you’ll likely spend the first few hours of the campaign firing wildly into the air like a drunken cowboy. It’s a shame that such a minor oversight causes a ripple effect, sending waves of annoyance and frustration throughout gameplay, and could have been easily avoided.

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Though it nails the pick-up-and-play arcade shooter, Thunder Wolves suffers from a lack of substance. It’s fast, frenetic and initially fun, but its “Johnny One Note” syndrome prevents it from being more than a few hours of high-explosive high-five distraction. At face value, Thunder Wolves is worth looking into, knowing that what you see is what you get, and that’s all you’re going to get.

Score: Try It