Sorry to say, but despite paying 99 cents for this game I still don’t feel I got my money’s worth. Operation Thunderstorm is build upon Jupiter EX (the same engine used in FEAR 1) and that really is the only thing it has going for it. Movement feels good, weapons handle and sound weighty and there’s lots of soft shadows and particle effects.

Everything else is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ poor. The campaign is incredibly short, the story is silly and character development non-existent. Level design is a lazy mess and there’s practically no attempt at worldbuilding or anything remotely interesting at all. Instead we get the same ten props and propaganda posters in every room.

Doesn’t even work well on a technical level. Somehow, the AI manages to be both blind and braindead despite using Jupiter EX… what happened? And while the addition of blind fire sounded like a good idea on paper, its implementation felt amateurish. What is supposed to happen: you stand at the edge of a wall or comparable obstacle (the trigger zone is about five pixels wide or so) and automatically fire around the corner without exposing yourself. What actually happens: it constantly gets in the way when I instead want to lean and shoot accurately, especially when I have to sprint from one piece of cover to another and fend off the attackers. What’s worse: the blind fire animation resp. the transition into it is unrefined and janky as heck. Furthermore, my player character got stuck on or had trouble moving around level geometry and trash laying on the ground way too often.

I also experienced a game-breaking bug in Himmler’s castle. Someone kept shooting me through the floor in one of the hallways no matter where I went, and I couldn’t just run past either since I had to search every room for a key chain. God mode from FEAR 1 to the rescue...

There’s decent shovelware. They may even be interesting shovelware out there. But Operation Thunderstorm isn’t one of those. If you’re desperate for sweet Jupiter EX action, better replay FEAR 1 or one of its expansion packs instead. The bundle also frequently sells for 99 cents.