Thunder Kid II: Null Mission [Xbox]

Renegade Sector Games’ Thunder Kid II: Null Mission follows on from the previous title, where the Robot Empire has returned to kidnap all of the humans. Helmed by a mysterious new leader after you brought about the demise of the Robot Emperor in the last game, you must work your way through the levels to rescue the humans and bring down the Robot Empire once and for all.

It suffers a similar fate as the first game, where many of the enemies can simply be ignored and ran straight past - with no detriment to the character nor story. Each level consists of you reaching the end, with an energy coin hidden somewhere within for you to collect… and that’s pretty much it. Levels are more difficult to make it through this time around with a more ‘bullet-hell’ structure, ramping up the challenge somewhat. The environments can also be a bit of a hazard, with enemy fire nudging you into quicksand that is a challenge to get out of, and lava that will instantly incinerate you upon exposure.

The menu visuals are pretty illegible, with tiny text against a checkerboard background, though the levels themselves feel much cleaner than the original, with graphics that feel sharper, despite levels retaining a similar vibe to the previous title. Some sections of the levels led to various problems due to the fixed camera angle, with one level having an area that clearly looks like it is prompting you to jump across a chasm, only leading you to another chasm that is just a pit that causes you to glitch through walls before being forced to respawn at the checkpoint/start of the level in order to progress, instead of moving over to the far left to find the path to move forward. Another level with purple quicksand (shown below) frequently traps you in the sand (which enemy fire often bumps you into, so it’s inevitable that you’ll end up in it at least a few times), and the path to the secret coin has a gap that allows you to fall through into the glitchy void below, once again forcing a restart.

Level layouts seem to have improved from the first game, with them having a bit more variety both in terms of visual style and the pathways to the end, which makes them feel a bit more enjoyable to explore, with the airship level being the most satisfying of them all. The bosses however, feel mostly the same as the first game with their layouts with many of them taking place inside a rather bland room, though thankfully their attack patterns proved to be a bit more worthwhile with a far more challenging barrage of bullets and laser beams. With the improvement to the level layouts comes a slight downside; there are routes through levels which require very precise jumps, and these often feel pretty much impossible to pull off without a significant amount of luck. The soundtrack throughout each level has a very retro feel, and this works well for the most part, though admittedly does begin to grate a bit after you’ve had to replay a section so many times.

Overall, it feels like there’s just not enough to separate it from its predecessor. The bullet-hell styled mechanics would have been better implemented if there was some kind of incentive for defeating all of the enemies, and allowing for aiming would have made this more enjoyable too - as it stands, the awkward permanently-forward-facing aim makes some of the enemies and bosses less of a challenge and more of a slog to take on, with much of the battle time spent jumping from side to side in order to get a shot to land. There’s also no invincibility after taking damage, resulting in you frequently losing multiple health bars from a single blast of enemy fire.

Available for £6.69 on the Xbox Store, the same price as the previous game (though currently on sale for £5.35 for a limited time), Thunder Kid II: Null Mission only just ends up a little bit more enjoyable than we found the original, mostly due to the lack of innovation since then. We had looked forward to a sequel, hoping that additional concepts would be included, such as new weapons or an upgrade system, but instead we’ve got quite a loose sequel, feeling more like a 1.5 than a 2.

In the end, we decided to give Thunder Kid II: Null Mission the Collecting Asylum rating of 6.5/10.

Are you interested in Thunder Kid II? What do you think of it?
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- V x

Thank you to EastAsiaSoft for the Thunder Kid II: Null Mission Xbox review code!