Review Hammer & Sickle torpedoed by GameSpot

Tags: Hammer & Sickle

<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/">GameSpot</a> lays some smack down on <a href="http://www.nival.ru/hs">Hammer & Sickle</a> in their <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/hammersickle/review.html">review</a> where the game garnered a <b>3.6/10</b> score. They had numerous problems with the game rangeding from it being a revamped <A href="http://www.nival.ru/ss">Silent Storm</a> not not being one, I think. Anyway, plot problems:
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<blockquote>Even more distressing is the awful way that this superspy story is told. Nothing is set up properly, so you're always left wondering what's going on and where you're supposed to go next. Dialogue is spit out in such a random fashion that it seems like somebody cut every third line for brevity just before shipping the game. It begins with the very first mission, where you're told to contact Vaclav, deliver a proposal, and kill the guy if he doesn't like what he hears…without the benefit of a preamble explaining who you are, where you are, who Vaclav is, what this proposal is all about, and so on. Mission assignments rarely come with proper instructions, so the game is often incoherent. Also, the story branches at points that are almost totally imperceptible to the player. Kill the wrong people at the wrong time (mainly Allied soldiers and civilians), and you can unknowingly set up an unstoppable slide to the start of World War III that will prematurely end your game.</blockquote>
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Well, if you keep killing people, you slide towards WW3. At least, that's how I understood it. You can't just murder everyone and expect happy times for all later on.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</A>

 

Well, I think that has something to do with players getting to used to being guided through the game by the hand.
I had no difficulties completing the game one of 'best' ways, myself - I did had to search locations, sometimes, or wander around already visited locations to see if I missed something - but I cannot say that it's THAT bad.
And besides, you have journal. It sports quite a few very useful hints of what to do.

 

altough i liked SS, i don't think i want to play this one. enemy turns in SS were slow already, and i don't have the patience for anything longer than that.

 

I dont get how they could move any slower? DId they mess up the programming or what?

 

You can jack up movement speed in the options menu... its really not an issue. Turn length also seemed much improved from SS.

 

I got the impression from reviews that the turn length hadn't improved - on the contrary. But good to hear you think it has improved.

 

I say that they are about the same. However, considering that SS had bigger maps and more enemies/allies on some of them I tend to say that they really did do something in H&S.

I noticed that enemies get STUCK somehow. For example, I've seen them crouch and then run and then again sit down and repeat the whole thing until they went dry. When you have 5 or more AIs doing this, then the delay is aggravating. The AI sometimes gets stuck on doors which also means a very long delay. Worst of all is that once they get stuck doing something, they continue to repeat their last action until you attack them or they see you somewhere else.

 

There was only one instance where It paused for (what felt like) a lengthy period. It involved a invisible sniper who must have been crunching some numbers. You can prevent enemy units from hiding though in custom difficulty settings. I'd set it to rare and he was the only one I encountered.

 

It is extremely short. If let`s say you start it 2nd time after playing one day, you can get it to a final in 4-5 hours with no problems.
It`s really a pitty, the combat is attractive, the weapons and charater animations look very fine, the unvierse is quite ok , but so little locations and things so rushed on..

 

I played the game for 2 hours or so and I must say: H&S suck huge decomposing balls...and I loved SS.

 

Care to elaborate?

 

I haven't seen a more ackward starting game.

after watching the intro with that calm moody music... You are thrown into battle with heavy metal busting your ear drums and most likely reloading because you didn't know how to deal with the multiple dudes... Or even skipped your turn because you didn't think this fight was for real.

 

Well, there's not much to say...the gamespot review already covered a lot of the problems in H&S.

I thought H&S was a RPG like it was being advertised, but the dialogue is ridiculous and you don't even know what's going on, who you are, or why are you fighting(at least on the beggining of the game). On the second mission you are trown in a small village with a bunch of crazed nazi-ninjas and you gotta kill them for no reason...then you gotta wait for their buddies to come and fight them all(with the "help" of some useless peasants).

The game is also stupidly hard. This is not about people not liking some challenge...this is outright stupid. I think I died 5 times on the second mission because of some impossible headshot from 100 metres away(and the fight was at night which should decrease everyones accuracy). It's all about trying again and again, and not because of a tactical challenge, but because the enemies are über.

And then there's the sound...those cartoonish screams of pain were unbelievable. Very disneyish.

 

I have to say I disagree completely on every point.

I don't see how you can be confused about what's going on. It ells you right at the start you are meeting up with some people to establish a spy ring. Not much to it.

I do think the second mission is a little hard, since in the version I got I did not even get a gun, but if anything I would think if it were even more realistic you would get smoked in that situation. I was a sniper with nightsight and the other 10 were zero challenge, so long as the grenades took out most of the first 5. You are probably not used to the ranges yet.

I do feel a lot like the way missions get unlocked sucks, though; it is very hard to figure out what to do. It is not like figuring things out, either, because all the mision unlocking events are very arbitrary and so far unexpected.

 

Yeah, it explains, but saying "You are going somewhere to meet someone. Good Luck. Dismissed" is not very good. Maybe I'm just stupid, but I felt pretty much lost in the game. Even worse after you cross the border then suddenly you are at that village and you have to fight.

 

Well, i think the idea is it's not supposed to be as planned. I dont think that makes you stupid, but it made sense to me. The plot is not as right out there, but there are a lot of clues something funny is going on in the allied forces, though.

 

Well, I found it a lot more fun with the walkthrough :
http://www.cdv-board.de/english/showthread.php?t=51941

And here's a schematic about the quest structure :
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6977 ... gram.1.jpg

Like someone said, the worst (along with time limited actions) is that the game doesn't give you the means to figure out by yourself what to do to get where you want.

 

Heh, CODEX HYPOCRISY!!!!!111!
At first you complain about games with compass pointing to the place where your quest will be solved...
Then, you complain about... pretty much lack of it.
I, personally, ENJOYED the 'lack of hand-helding' aspect of H&S.
H&S - a game for mature audiences, in a world that ddin't seem to crawl out of diapers yet!

 

Since my last post here, i played it a second time. I was complaining about being extremely short and then i started anew and did the right things. I quite enjoy it , i`m at the last mission and so far the combat locations have been quite varied and enjoyable and the plot evolved in a decent way.

 

From my experience with the demo, and from what people have been saying, I think it's not a case of people wanting explicit directions, but more that people want actual reasons to be progressing. Or more appropriately, enough information to form their own motivations for what they're doing. For instance, the demo was about finding Fidel and then rescuing him. Why?

 

Hey, it's goddamn DEMO!
In the game, you'll see him being arrested, and the protagonist notices that he is old friend of his. I think it's good enough reason to rescue him...
But you are free to NOT to rescue him, of course.

 

Just to clarify, two things I hated most :
- all these things wich seemed so random (and in fact were things were I had to be at the right place at the right time) . This is simply solved with more dialogues and more information (and its a plain fact that there are not many lines of dialogue in this game, even less than in SS I would say...). Seeing Fidel beeing arrested is just one of these. Apparently, it is trigerred by my discover in Zeizenburg that some Mr Smith leaves a lot with a car at night, booo, spooky.
- illogical things you have to do (or the game gets too tough). How could I know that, as an infiltrated spy, I had to blow up what seemed like an whole super armed british convoy to get access to most needed ID and uniforms ? Nothing hints to it beeing a convoy led by Hammer.

Hey, but I still enjoy the game, just complaining because of frustration (and you get a lot with all thoose situation were the game puts you, without any choice in the middle of very tough battles. Do I need to be 5 meters away from all these enemies when I dicover that they attacked the post ? Couldn't I have been hidden in the bushes with my spy ?)

 

There are way many ways to go about the game. The more you keep reading, you notice the difficulty in finding out what to do next ranges from very easy and intuative, to exactly the opposite. You sort of wish that they included some more of the content in the game's first playthrough...