As games in the Minis series go, Young Thor is attractive. It looks and sounds like boxed product, the kind of thing we were paying $29.99 for not that long ago. It's a good thing for gamers that are enthused about download games for platforms like the PSP Go or on PS3. The PSP version sports nice visual design, especially in the art style of the characters. Elements of Norse mythology are scattered throughout, including locations like Bifrost, a rainbow bridge that runs between the world of men and the world of the gods. Balancing on the line between typical 3D and more of a cel-shaded look, Young Thor occasionally pulls out something distinctive. At other times, you'll be too busy fighting through waves of enemies to enjoy the scenery, but intermittent cut scenes are your eventual reward for good performance. Rousing music, triumphant and urging you on during battles, plus some emphatic grunts during battle, round out the audio offering in Young Thor. It's nice window dressing for what otherwise would be a very ordinary side-scrolling brawler. Nailing down some mythological accuracy in the game scores big points with us, but those uninitiated in Norse legend will still find plenty of nice stuff to hang their hats on. The biggest downer from a presentation standpoint is that there isn't more to see in Young Thor. Only four unique stages are included, but you play through each one multiple times against different enemies. This idea of recasting the level with a new story or objective wears a bit thin, since you don't actually get to explore new areas, but kudos to the development team for taking limited resources and finding ways to make them more engaging.

Pieces of mythology can start to swirl together, and opinions differ on whose gods were older. At the outset of Young Thor, the motivation for the godly beatings that form the bulk of the game is the abduction of the three mystical Norns. These three could be drop-in replacements for the Greek and Roman Fates, or even the three witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Unlike the more ominous picture painted in the southern climes for these ladies, they're depicted in Young Thor as three cute chicks you might see at the mall. When Hel, aided by the dragon Nidhogg, steals away with the Norns and disrupts the World Tree Yggdrasil, Young Thor must steel his nerve against powerful enemies and battle to the final confrontation with Hel. It's a lot like Final Fight but more...Nordic. Rescuing three girls should be motivation enough, but without their power, the whole world will eventually come crumbling down.

Embarking on this quest, you'll play as Young Thor and begin kicking a tremendous amount of butt. Light and heavy attacks, special items, and magic make up your arsenal. Enemies that initially wear you down will fall in crimson gushes before your might, as you level up and increase skill. The typical level has you grinding through with some mild platforming elements, periodically stopping to destroy an enemy or two. There are many enemies you can skip altogether, but that would be robbing you of precious experience needed to level up. There are branches of the game that open up before you're really ready to take them on, leading to some confusion. Mopping the floor with enemies is fine until you meet something as powerful as you, which is where twitchy skill comes into play. Young Thor is a button-mashing festival at first, but later levels and enemies require some strategy. Aside from battling through 16 levels (four variations each of the four worlds) and eventually creaming Hel, you have achievements to amuse you. These aren't shown online, but they are good bragging rights to friends that also have the game. Young Thor would have been improved with some multiplayer, a game-share option, or possibly some online leaderboard. What's here is good enough, and watching your character grow as you work through various trees for progression is good fun.

Pulling this much gameplay out of just four levels required some pretty profound tinkering with the A.I., and created some strange dynamics. Instead of a clear, ladder-style progression, Young Thor does more of a matrix. After you clear Stage 1, Level 1, you can proceed to 2/1 or to 1/2. You can judge difficulty by a skull-rating displayed for each level, and progress accordingly. The problem is that this only becomes clear through trial and error. You'll reach a point where it seems impossible to proceed, assuming you follow the convention that most of us have been trained to follow, playing all levels of a given stage. The game's difficulty is buffered considerably if you skip around various stages, clearing levels that are well suited to your ability. Leveling up in Young Thor is the key to unlocking various new areas, and defeating enemies. You just won't deal enough to destroy certain enemies unless you reach the appropriate level, which creates a grinding mechanic in the game.

Replaying is okay, because you'll find that enemies become much easier to defeat, but there's very little incentive such as treasure, hidden paths, gold to purchase new items, or any of the traditional rewards. Instead, you just have to replay to keep progressing through the game, which is an artificially imposed constraint intended to make four stages with four levels each feel like 20 stages. In defense of this whole idea, each time you visit a new level within a familiar stage, the enemy type and placement has changed. This helps create a sense of novelty, but part of facing off against new enemies is that you may be unprepared to vanquish them until you've replayed easier levels several times. Young Thor does a sneaky little trick to force your hand, which is to lock you in at certain points and force you to battle. Otherwise, you can skip battles and bounce around enemies on your way to clearing a level. Once you find yourself losing again and again in these forced battles, it's a sure sign you must - to paraphrase Steely Dan - "go back, Jack, and do it again."

Young Thor is presented in side-scrolling 3D, that strange perspective that uses a third dimension, when arguably none is required... The benefit of this schema is that it allows us to experience some depth in the world that Young Thor explores, but doesn't expose us to the foibles of navigating that world with a 3D camera. You'll appreciate the simplicity of controls, as Young Thor possesses a move-set right out of classic 2D platforming. Jumping and double-jumping helps you get around obstacles, while there is a wall jump that requires no complex motions with the Analog Stick. In fact, the Analog Stick doesn't come into play at all, which is a fine throwback move. The battle controls are configured for light and heavy attacks, plus a magical attack that can be combined with directional buttons to create some fine combos. Mashing buttons will do combos, but Young Thor doesn't exactly reward spastic gamers. Enemy attack patterns are such that overdoing it on the attack may leave you exposed, or may cause you to miss a critical opportunity. More often it's the former, and you'll find that strategic jumping in combination with light or heavy attacks does almost as well as supercharged magic attacks, assuming you have reached an appropriate level. The game employs an auto-save and scatters checkpoints throughout the level, so you don't have to think about saving.

If you've been exposed to any kind of 2D or 3D platforming title in the past few years, Young Thor will feel like familiar territory. We love the story material, and the fact that the developers drew from the source without dumbing it down. Norse mythology is hella cool, and even though Young Thor doesn't offer a huge amount of depth, you will get excited about creaming waves of enemies on the path to rescue the Norns and restore balance to the worlds. Especially as a download game, this works well, but we'd still liked to have seen some options for mini-games, item collection/purchase, multiplayer, or anything to create less of a sense of grinding through levels we already played. Frima squeezes a lot of gameplay out of four stages, but sometimes at the expense of our teeny-tiny patience and attention-span. Gamers are known to be a bit fickle, so it's hard to say if Young Thor will catch on, but it deserves a place in your download queue if you like action/platforming.