Thunder Ray is a casual boxing game developed and published by Purple Tree SRL that takes a boxing sport to new heights, I mean out-of-this-world heights where you will get to experience unexpected opponents in a boxing business.
Story and Gameplay
Thunder Ray’s story is the opposite of most casual boxing games. Instead of becoming a world champion in boxing, you are already a world champion boxer who retires because no fighter in the business can bring up an equal fight to Ray, the main protagonist. Before Thunder Ray can enjoy retirement life, he gets smuggled into another universe where he will get to defeat the best boxers around the whole universe. Players will have to defeat all boxers to become the greatest boxer in the universe. It is a nice and simple premise for a casual boxing game.
The gameplay of Thunder Ray is somewhat similar to Super-Punch Out but instead of fighting other human boxers, you will get to fight various aliens who have unique attack patterns and abilities that you need to exploit to defeat them. At the start of the game, you will get a tutorial of the game where you will learn how to land normal punches and super punches when your meter gets filled up. Apart from that, you will learn how to dodge the attacks of the opponents to save your HP from going down.
There is nothing too complicated related to the gameplay of Thunder Ray but you do have to learn the attack patterns of your opponents to defeat them in the ring. There are 8 alien boxers in total that you will get to encounter in the whole campaign which is a sort of a low quantity of content for the game. Since the fights are limited, you will get to complete the game in roughly 2 – 3 hours depending on how quickly you picked up the exploit points of the opponents.
Art & Visuals
The art and visuals of Thunder Ray look decent enough for a modern game while keeping the original arcade game vibe. The visuals for blood splatter on screen are brutal as you land punches and the entrance of various alien fighters will keep you amused at the start of every fight. The vibrant colors of the fighters and the audience cheering in the background are clearly noticeable and will cheer you up as you land punches on the opponent’s face or belly.
The animations for the normal punches and super punches are quite appealing and the sound design for the animations does enhance the experience when you successfully land those punches.
Verdict – Score 8/10
Thunder Ray is a great addition to the casual boxing game genre as it has all the possible elements that you can ask for in an arcade casual boxing game. The game can certainly use some more content in the main campaign before you get to take out the final opponent to become the greatest boxer in the universe but you can always replay the journey of Thunder Ray to master all the moves and punches. If you are a fan of casual boxing games then we recommend Thunder Ray for you to give it a try and try to become the Real Champion.
Thunder Ray is now available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, and XBOX One.
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