While the idea for the game is fairly solid - a mix of top-down twinstick action and Old Rainbow Six/SWAT tactical sim shooter - Thunder Tier One fails to deliver on several points across the board and lacks both punch and staying power.
It's quite light on content, for starters; a very uninspired campaign with not even a dozen levels, which also wildly vary in quality and polish, withWhile the idea for the game is fairly solid - a mix of top-down twinstick action and Old Rainbow Six/SWAT tactical sim shooter - Thunder Tier One fails to deliver on several points across the board and lacks both punch and staying power.
It's quite light on content, for starters; a very uninspired campaign with not even a dozen levels, which also wildly vary in quality and polish, with no characters to speak of and a story that would put you to sleep if it wasn't punctuated by explosions and gunfire. Some missions are a bit more interesting and actually present some form of challenge or feel somewhat interesting, like the boat 'infiltration' with its tight CQC environments or the capture and defense of a radio station complete with scripted "artillery shelling"; sadly, for each of those missions there's two more that are either deeply annoying, painfully boring, or bugged to hell.
The issue is, even when the levels aren't inherently terrible, the game mechanics and design actively hurt the experience. The teammate AI is spotty at best, and downright suicidal at worst, your best bet being to turn them into glorified personal assistants that carry key items and medkits for you and don't stray from your side unless they decide to bug out. They might be able to pick off enemies but they can't hold a flank even as a group (let alone clear one) most of the time, and forget about using them as solo operatives covering you from a different angle or anything resembling 'real' tactics. Luckily, they're expendable and fill the PA role well, so once you understand their limited capabilities things 'click' into place.
Enemy AI is arguably even worse, they don't do much beyond slowly approaching you and trying to not be completely exposed if you're actively looking at them - although they feel 'on rails' sometimes, they might've been better off being more scripted instead of trying to decide on their own. As it is, they mostly just run mindlessly into a killzone if you make a bit of noise and wait with an angle on a doorway/passage.
Despite the apparent variety of equipment they might carry, I never once felt like I was fighting a 'different' type of enemy - they're all basically "generic grunt #7" all the way up to the last level, with very little if any discernible changes in behavior and challenge. Armor didn't feel like it made a difference either, though to be fair I mostly used a machinegun, which would chew through it quite well according to the stat sheet.
This brings me to my next point: equipment. Apparel is pretty customizable, and reminded me of Jagged Alliance 2 a bit, but barring a few key things here and there, it barely has an impact on gameplay: carrying anything but extra mags and medkits is in most cases suboptimal and armor barely matters (with a simple vest you'll be fine) as you can heal or be revived by your teammates in most situations - a wipe will restart the mission or load a checkpoint but there's no penalty for it beyond that. This results in your character not being very hindered by equipment even if you tow an LMG with two or three extra mags, a medkit and maybe a grenade or smoke for **** 'n giggles, which at least keeps the gunplay snappier and the movement less of a slog than it could be, but it means a lot of the kit you can grab feels like a waste.
Guns also feel a bit inconsequential: beyond filling the basic roles of close/medium/long range and prolonged fire VS trigger discipline, there isn't a world of difference in what you choose and you'll be able to run 'n gun - and sit 'n gun! - with most auto weapons if you want to, the combination of which is almost universally the best course of action given the fact tactical gameplay (or in this case lack thereof) is meaningless without a tactical challenge to go with it. The gunplay itself is sometimes gratifying, but more through the arcadey "I just mowed down half a dozen mooks in a second" feelings than through anything else - in general, the whole experience works better as a twinstick shooter than any kind of light milsim or tactical game. Which is... fine, but it's clear the game was designed with the opposite in mind.
That all contributes to a generalized clash within the game, as it contradicts itself and its own designs constantly - at some points it wants to be more tactical but the situations feel shallow and extremely brief because there's no need for any tactics, then other times it goes too far into arcade mode and it doesn't really quite work either - you get overrun by swarms of enemies but can't manage them like you would in a game like that (neither can your PA's of course) so you have to bruteforce it and make use of the enemies' stupidity to progress.
Overall, the game seems to have a bit of an identity crisis and it doesn't manage to pull any particular gameplay aspect off in anything more than a passable fashion, and their promise of longevity through modding falls flat with such a poor base game. Pity.… Expand
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