Review Gamezone spits at Hammer & Sickle

[Jinxed]

Tags: Hammer & Sickle; Nival Interactive

<a href="http://pc.gamezone.com">Gamezone</a> joins the list of sites to dish out a negative review of Hammer & Sickle. <a href="http://pc.gamezone.com/gzreviews/r26441.htm">The review</a> doesn't express anything good about the game. Here is a bit:<blockquote>While billed as an RPG (role-playing game, single player only), the game is more of a turn-based adventure with some RPG elements. Turn-based, you say, how so? Well, each turn your toon, this Soviet agent, who is supposedly spying but that will be addressed in a moment, has AP (action points) that are expended in either movement or performing deeds. After the AP are expended, the game switches to your opposition, the computer controlled forces. They are clever and unless you are playing this game of chess right, you will lose.</blockquote>Either this guy is an idiot or the gamezone's target audience are idiots. Either way, while explaining what turn based is, he forgot to mention that only the combat is turn based. How about letting someone who played the Jagged Alliance games review it? No? Then how about Silent Storm or at least Sentinels? No? Lets call it a turn based adventure and compare it to commandos and go home.<br>
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://pc.gamezone.com">Gamezone</A>

 

[callehe]

wow. what he's saying is, this game sucks because it´s turn based? how... fascinating.

 

[bryce777]

Your toon?

root of all our woes is when all the magazines got bought out and computer games became 'video games', no different than any bullshit on nintendo.

 

[AnalogKid]

I agree the last few specific reviews embrace stupidity, but I'm starting to get worried about H&S. SS had all the same "problems" that these guys are harping on, but as I recall, it got at least _some_ good reviews. Is H&S that much worse? Or is it just that the "RPG" label is not really appropriate? Or is it just down to moron reviewers?

To be blunt, I don't really give a fuck if H&S is a good RPG, is it even a good game?

 

[Jinxed]

I don't put too much stock into those reviews. Hammer & Sickle cannot be worse than Silent Storm.

The Gamezone review doesn't talk about the gameplay at all except it's turn based. I'll be able to say more about it when I play it and write a review, at this moment I would be talking out of my ass about the RPG component.

But compare the 3 reviews, except the spy thing, there is no common ground.

 

[Screaming_life]

I don't put too much stock into those reviews. Hammer & Sickle cannot be worse than Silent Storm.

I agree that the combat can't but the overall game could be worse... although i expect it to be better despite all the rather negative reviews.

There is at least one good review:

10/10

so it's completely perfect! :shock:

 

[Screaming_life]

Well just read the review, if you can call it that...

Gameplay: 5.5
Finite maps, long load times, overly dramatized dialogue scenes – what is here is not very good.

This is the second review i've read where they mention long load times but for me they're only a few seconds... unless they are talking about enemy turns?

Graphics: 5.5
There is a threshold for the graphics on the disks received – and before anyone asks, yes, all the drivers were up to date. The cutscenes look robotic and the talking heads is silly.

what the hell does that mean?

Overall he seems to mainly have problems with the game intro and spends the rest of it attempting to describe what TB combat is. No mention of alternate methods for completeing quests or the arching plot... these reviews really suck and the reviewers are just lazy.

 

[Jinxed]

I think he means that they were minimal insinuating that it was the because of the press copy. I'm not sure myself. And yeah, the gamezone review is like

*guy playing the game for 5 minutes

Man, this game sux

*guy writes review

I'll go over it tomorrow.

 

[merry andrew]

Gameplay: 5.5
Finite maps.

Yeah, I hate it when games have finite maps.

 

[Dragon]

Gameplay: 5.5
Finite maps.

Yeah, I hate it when games have finite maps.

Hey, Ultima VII had an infinite map !! You could go all around the world.
(was trying to think of a game with an infinite map)

 

[Elwro]

(was trying to think of a game with an infinite map)

Well, ADOM has an Infinite Dungeon, but I've checked it once at iirc it really has 7F FF levels, and if you descend from the last one you appear on the surface :D

 

[Psilon]

7FFF? So is that 32767 (7FFF big-endian), 65407 (7FFF little-endian unsigned), or -129 (7FFF little-endian signed)?

Me, I'd be very impressed if it were the latter.

 

[Roqua]

Re: Gamezone spits at Hammer & Sickle

Then how about Silent Storm or at least Sentinels? No? Lets call it a turn based adventure and compare it to commandos and go home.<br>
Spotted at: <A HREF="http://pc.gamezone.com">Gamezone</A>

Not to nit-pick but you can't play sentinels without silent storm. I think you might just have got it backwards as Sentinels added better features to ss, like a reason to pick up items on the map and manage inventory.

 

[Jinxed]

Huh, but you could play sentinels without playing silent storm. A lot of the loot you got in silent storm was ahead of the stuff you could equip at home.

 

[Roqua]

Yeah, in SS you needed to find new items before using them, but there was little to no incentive to hand around and loot corpses, collect crap, to sell, ext. Sentinels, the expansion, added this and other features I felt were missing in SS and made SS a much better game.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

When are we getting the Codex review to put some sense into this shit, eh?

 

[Elwro]

7FFF? So is that 32767 (7FFF big-endian)

I think so. But ADOM's website is down now so I can't check.