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Thunderforce IV Review


The shoot ‘em up (or shmup); possibly the easiest genre to become acquainted with. Each game within the genre has a universal message of ‘shoot everything that moves’. So in a category filled with many a similar game how can you make yours stand out above the rest? This is how.

Thunderforce IV is a spectacular, white-knuckle blaster from start to finish. The graphics are stunning, the gameplay is simple yet challenging and the soundtrack just rocks. Not many shmups around this era provided such perfection.

The story of Thunderforce is also the typical plot you’d expect from a shmup. The computer of the Lohun Empire was destroyed by the Thunderforce team in the previous game, or so you thought! The machine was only damaged and now the Lohun’s allie, the Kha-Oss Legion are rebuilding the computer to oppose another threat against the Galaxy Federation’s defenses… well, don’t blame them for trying but we’ve heard this sort of thing a million times before so let’s just start blowing things up!

The difference Thunderforce IV shows in its’ gameplay compared to ther shmups is the use of multiple weapons and vast playing areas. Usually the playing field just consists of whatever you can see on screen but in Thunderforce, the playing area extends to the bottom and off the screen making it a lot more challenging to see every enemy on screen. Thanks to the inclusion of 2 standard weapons (a forward firing and a backward firing one) you can effectively take on anything that comes from any angle. This system is very difficult to grab a hold of at first but once you’ve had enough time mucking around with what works you soon begin to play the game well and thus enjoy it a lot better.

Graphically, I can’t remember another game with so many scrolling layers of parallax. It is simply jaw dropping and the stage’s colour palette even changes mid level to show a passage of time. A very unique graphical trick that just shows you how well a game can look. Speaking of graphical tricks, Thunderforce may be one of the earliest games to pull off the wobbly textures to simulate water (or heat in some cases). It’s only something small but the overall effect is astonishing for a 16 bit game.

But as I began to explain earlier, this technical wizardry comes at a price. This price being the game’s difficulty setting. Without giving yourself enough time to learn to switch between weapons and study where the largest amount of enemies are spawning from, you will find that the game becomes ever so irritating. But then again, is that a problem or does it just mean the game opposes more of a challenge? You decide.

Other than that, shmups don’t come much better than this. Just give yourself some time to learn the gameplay system before riding straight into battle and you’re in for a spectacular Mega Drive classic.



9/10



Written by Sonic Yoda on 4/10/06


Box Artwork

Cartridge

Instruction Manual



Screenshots

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