Rating of
1.5/5
More Like Hammer-Crotch
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/15/18
“Hammerwatch” is the inaugural effort by Swedish Indie developer, Crackshell Games, released in 2013 on Steam before being ported-around to all of the console digital storefronts in 2017. In 2013, Indie games were something of an unknown quantity, and plenty of gaming writers and pundits – myself included – considered them to be the savior of an ailing industry. However, from the outset, there has always been a level of concern about Indie games that just don’t try hard enough, but instead lean on the nostalgia for the blueprint upon which they are based or the nostalgia for a chunky, pixilated art style to see them through. “Hammerwatch” earned quite a bit of early coverage, but has ultimately floundered when the review scores started rolling in. The MJ Crew took note of it several years ago when the 4-pack was dirt-cheap during a Steam sale, thinking it looked like a relatively innocuous de-mastered take on the ‘Diablo’-inspired Hack ‘n Slash genre, so we bought it and sat on that egg until it was well and truly rotten. Plucking “Hammerwatch” from our collective backlog proved a severely disappointing experience, as we found an impossibly shallow homage to “Gauntlet” mixed with the Bullet-Hell variety of SHMUP instead of anything remotely Hack ‘n Slash-y. In an era where most videogame review outlets grade on an American Public School-inspired scale where anything below an 80/100 might as well be a 0, I’m giving “Hammerwatch” the belated D- it deserves.
Presentation
“Hammerwatch” relies entirely on the nostalgia provided by its chunky-pixel art style. Enemies and allies are all tiny, simplistic, and frequently hard to differentiate from each other (I can’t count the number of times I died because an enemy looked so much like Chris’ Paladin that I let them stand next to me, expecting healing but receiving death). Environments fare a bit better, but again, the small size of everything makes hunting for (mandatory) secrets a bigger pain than it needs to be.
Audiowise, the game’s soundtrack may as well not exist. Instead, it was accompanied by my cursing. Sound effects are adequate, though I also found the horrible barking noise made by injured player characters to be extremely grating.
Technically, “Hammerwatch” is passable. While it never crashed on us, and does feature native Xinput support for 4 local players simultaneously, the initial setup required to make the game display correctly on Nick’s Samsung TV was a pain. Then there are the rather unintuitive menus and options without tool-tips.
Story
Ha! Story? You want STORY in a shameless “Gauntlet” clone? You’re barking up the wrong tree. “Hammerwatch” doesn’t even bother with an excuse narrative to launch the player(s) into the action. Instead, the player(s) starts out on the opposite side of a broken bridge from where a large group of other people – Bystanders? Villagers? Allies? Friends? Relatives? *shrug* – patiently waits. The player(s) must then make their way into and through the four different multi-floor regions of an abandoned keep, apparently called Hammerwatch, that is now infested with monsters and undead.
Not only is there no narrative quality to “Hammerwatch,” but it even kicks the player(s) in the teeth at the very end in an Eff-You moment the likes of which hasn’t been seen since “Ghosts ‘n Goblins” forced the player to suffer through it a second time. Without spoiling too much, the player must have found ALL of the secrets in the game to avoid this, and with no ability to backtrack to previous regions of the keep, that typically means starting over.
Indeed, “Hammerwatch” is a rather short game, clocking-in at around 6-8 hours, minus restarts. It seems to have been designed with speed-runners and perfectionists in mind, instead of normal people or even core gamers, since this short length is combined with punishing difficulty.
Gameplay
Early in its life, the MJ Crew mistook “Hammerwatch” for a low-fi ‘Diablo’ clone. But it doesn’t have nearly as much depth as ‘Diablo’ or any of that series’ copycats. Instead, “Hammerwatch” is very much a “Gauntlet” clone, only with tighter controls and a heaping helping of Bullet-Hell projectile avoidance to go along with those tighter controls.
Playing “Hammerwatch” the ‘correct’ way, the MJ Crew didn’t even manage to reach the first boss before getting wiped out, and the tiny pool of starting lives is shared amongst the group. Thankfully, “Hammerwatch” does make some concessions for those who aren’t interested in honing themselves into absolute masters of its gameplay. These concessions take the form of optional ‘Crutches’ that can be toggled on/off in the options (alongside other (also optional) Challenges that make the game even worse). We toggled on the Infinite Lives Crutch, and between the three of us playing burned through nearly 600 of them by the time we reached the end.
The basic gameplay of both “Gauntlet” and “Hammerwatch” revolves around killing large groups of relatively weak enemies while battling in an Arcadey top-down perspective. These weak enemies constantly respawn from monster nests, which must also be destroyed. What little I played of “Gauntlet” in the NES era, I disliked, and “Hammerwatch” does little to improve on the basics. The only real changes to the basic “Gauntlet” gameplay template involve character mobility, and are unfortunately NOT tutorialized at any point, thus we didn’t learn about them until we were nearly done with the game and read about them in an e-peen-waggling elitist’s forum thread. These ‘amazing’ new mechanics consist of the ability to strafe (move side-to-side while facing one direction) and the ability to hold position (and pivot to the game’s 8 direction to fire-off ranged attacks). Knowing of these abilities from the outset and practicing with them through the game’s 4 Acts might have improved our performance, but it would have done little to make the experience more enjoyable.
Like “Gauntlet,” the player(s) can choose from a number of classes, and must stick with the one they picked at the beginning for the duration of their playthrough. Our team consisted of me as the Warlock (a squishy melee character with some glass cannon spell options), Chris as the Paladin (a melee tank who eventually gains an area heal), and Nick as the Archer (a squishy ranged character).
The player’s chosen class doesn’t leave them with static abilities, however. Scattered all over the dungeons of “Hammerwatch” is treasure in the form of coins and gems. Collecting these allows player(s) to buy upgrades from the large number of merchants who populate the ruined keep. Available upgrades include basic things like Health, Mana, and Speed, class-specific things, Offense, Defense, and single-use Potions.
Each of “Hammerwatch’s” 4 Acts consists of roughly 3 large, sprawling dungeon floors (there is, mercifully, a toggle-able map that fills in as the player(s) explore) and a boss battle to cap them off. After defeating an Act boss, the player(s) move onto the next act and can’t backtrack. By the time we had reached Act 4, I was already so ‘entertained’ by “Hammerwatch’s” core gameplay that I was sighing and groaning with suffering like a character out of Greek mythology. Likewise, Chris could barely keep his eyes open.
Overall
“Hammerwatch” is one of those lazy Indie games that relies on nostalgia for an old, crappy game (in this case, “Gauntlet”) and chunky pixels to instill a sense of love in its audience. Alas, the shallow gameplay from the 8-bit, Arcade Mentality era hasn’t deepened all that much, and the added Bullet-Hell aspects don’t do anything to improve the experience. A hoary, old “Gauntlet” fan looking for a nostalgia fix, or a tryhard Millennial with a ‘Git Gud’ attitude might get something out of this title, but anyone seeking depth of gameplay or narrative should stay the Hell away. It’s clear that Crackshell has a certain audience in mind, especially when one considers that the sequel to this game is a friggin’ Rogue-lite.
Presentation: 2.5/5
Story: 0.5/5
Gameplay: 2/5
Overall (not an average): 1.5/5
