If you’ve ever dreamed of taking to the skies in a heavily-armed attack helicopter and blowing up everything you see for fun and profit, the upcoming arcade shooter Thunder Wolves might be just the game for you.
If you’ve ever dreamed of taking to the skies in a heavily-armed attack helicopter and blowing up everything you see for fun and profit, the upcoming arcade shooter Thunder Wolves might be just the game for you.
Thunder Wolves follows the adventures of a group of fast-talking, hard-flying airborne mercenaries who travel to exotic locations around the world and then blow them up with guns and rockets. As the newest member of the group, you’ll undertake a variety of high-risk, high-explosive missions, sometimes flying your own helicopter and sometimes serving as the gunner in on-rail first-person sequences.
It’s not the most sophisticated gameplay concept ever, but sometimes all you want to do is destroy, well, everything, and that’s a niche that Thunder Wolves looks set to fill quite nicely. The flight controls are very simple, consisting of up, down, forward, back, strafing and turning, and the weapons have limitless ammo, although rockets will deplete with use and need a few seconds to “recharge.” It’s all intended to create an environment in which nothing comes between you and the explosions, and it seems set to do a fine job of it.
I had a chance to take a preview version of the game for a spin and it appears pretty much as advertised. It’s silly, and some of the dialog is genuinely cringe-worthy, but just about everything explodes with glory and grandeur, and there are a lot of things to shoot at – far more than just the required mission targets. I’m not sure if there are any bonuses or penalties for doing so (I was too busy blowing things up to pay attention) but when I was sent out to attack a chemical plant, I actually ended up destroying, well… everything.
Thunder Wolves promises a huge variety of objectives to complete (although I’d bet that most of them involving blowing stuff up), tons of enemies ranging from terrorist foot soldiers to enemy helicopters, “spectacular” boss fights and even two-player local co-op, with one person flying while the other gets on the guns. It’s definitely a throwback, but it looks like a lot of fun, too. Watch for it to come out in late spring.
