"A deadly wave of extremist terrorism has struck at all of the principle nations, paralyzing the world with fear. The globe's major powers immediately issue a state of emergency, merging their weapons resources and technologies into a clandestine project code named Operation Phoenix."--Thunder Strike's Mission Statement

If part of the mission statement doesn't seem eerily familiar, then you must have been living under a rock for the past 90 days.

Thunder Strike: Operation Phoenix is a new war game from Core Design and Eidos Interactive. Does it live up to the hype? Unfortunately, my answer is a definite no. Is it worth playing? That depends on how much patience you have, and how willing you are to struggle with the game's ridiculous play mechanics. Veterans of the series will wonder if they’re even playing the same game. The left analog stick is used to move the helicopter forward and backward. Press up to move the helicopter forward and press down to go backwards (very slowly, mind you. So if you don't have to move backwards, don't). To strafe, press the stick left or right. This wouldn't be so bad except that the right analog stick controls the rest of your helicopter's movements, making Thunder Strike all the more confusing. Words cannot describe how frustrating it is to continually die at the same spot in the game because you're too busy struggling with the controls to worry about anything else. Even worse than that is the fact that the controls didn't have to be this way. I can name several similar games that have better controls, most of which are on the PSone! It goes without saying that Core could have done better.

The controls can be reconfigured in some ways and there are four different pre-made controller settings to choose from. But you CANNOT change the movement of the analog sticks! You can reverse their actions, but that is as far as the customization goes.

Now that most of the near-perfect-looking games have been released, we're starting to see a lot of ugly games on the PlayStation 2 again. Thunder Strike's graphics are above average, but not by much. The textures on the mountains give them a fairly realistic look. Unfortunately, that's about the only eye-catching thing in the game. You battle tons of jeeps, tanks and helicopters throughout the game, but none of them are made up of enough polygons to make them stand out from the crowd. Most of the PS2's power has been wasted on this game. The explosions are hideous. Core should have known better than to use 2D explosions in a 3D game.

Thunder Strike is a game that could have been great. Some gamers will like it, but others will hate it. Even after getting a hang of the controls, I still would have rather been playing Top Gun: Combat Zones. They're two very different games, but the point is, a game should always hold its own. It isn’t a horrible game by any means, but it did not hold my interest as long as I thought [hoped] it would.

Gameplay: 6
Thunder Strike's gameplay is good, but not great. To be great, the controls would need a major overhaul. Core Design deserves credit for making this game fun to play at times, considering just how bad the play mechanics are. Any other game would have been completely ruined with controls like these, but somehow or other, Thunder Strike was not.

Graphics: 5.5 
The snowy mountains look good, as do the other types of terrain. But the rest of the game looks pretty average.

Sound: 7
Thunder Strike's sound is surprisingly good. I expected good graphics and a poor soundtrack, but got the reverse instead. Fair trade? Not really, considering that many games have good graphics and good music.

Difficulty: 9
The hardest part of Thunder Strike is mastering the stupid controls. If you can manage to do that, then you deserve a pat on the back.

Concept: 4 
Deja vu? Nothing about Thunder Strike is original -- not the story, not the play mechanics, nothing.

Overall: 5.9
This is a game that suffers from “could have been great“ syndrome. The weapons are cool and the missions are exciting, but the controls ruined everything.