Blackthorne

"A faithful port of a Blizzard classic"

This game was originally a PC hit developed by Blizzard, the guys behind Warcraft and Diablo, and then ported to the Super Nintendo and Sega 32X later on. This iteration is part of the Blizzard "classic arcade" line for the GBA and is pretty well done save for a few minor things. It's obviously indebted to Prince of Persia and Flashback in its control scheme, but it's different enough from those games that it does not feel like a ripoff.

Story: 8/10

You are the heir to the kingdom of Thrull. However, your father's evil mutant brother Skorn believes the kingdom rightfully belongs to him and invades one day. To save your life, your father has you spirited away to Earth, where you eventually grow up and become some kind of Special Ops super soldier. One day, while on a mission in the desert, you are whisked back to your homeland through a portal to find your people enslaved and subjugated by a mutant race. So, you decide to go after them like a one man army and the game flows from there.

Gameplay: 8/10

You will have to learn to use stealth and agility and not just try to blow everyone away if you really want to succeed at this game. Also, you may find yourself having to backtrack to find bombs, secret passages, and other such things but if you keep your head about you shouldn't ever get really stuck. You have to spend a lot of time rescuing people if you want to get far, because it's hard to get health any other way. If you've played Metal Slug, you can definitely tell they borrowed a lot from this game with their own hostage rescuing feature. Boss fights are much more action-oriented than the regular gameplay, they kind of remind me of Gunstar Heroes. THe controls are complicated by the GBA's button scheme, but so long as you can differentiate between jumping and drawing and firing your gun you should be fine. It can take some time, so don't get frustrated. Certain jumps get really tricky due to the darkness of the screen, even if you have a backlit GBA later on but overall the game never reaches the point where it feels unfair.

Graphics: 5/10

The game isn't nearly as detailed or colorful as the other console versions. The levels are much darker and less detailed. This was really my only major beef with the game, but it really shows that it was probably a rushed port.

Sound: 8/10

You hear screams of torture, enemy taunts and atmospheric effects quite clearly. It adds a lot to the game.

Overall: 7/10

I really like this game, but because of the graphical deficiencies I have to knock the score down a point or two. If you have the PC game on your laptop, it equates to a much better portable version of Blackthorne than this.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/17/07