[h1]Summary[/h1]
For the price of free, Hammerfight is absolutely worth a try. It is laden with small but numerous problems, from poor gameplay balance to an interesting-but-shallow story to the game simply being old, from 2009. Better get used to the low resolution. But what it doesn't lack is charm that makes you wish there was a more modern version of this same game. According to How Long to Beat, a playthrough of Hammerfight takes 4 to 6 hours, so it's not that long, either!
[h1]Only mouse controls[/h1]
The core gameplay is very unique in all of gaming: You control a flying ship that has a massive weapon, easily larger than the ship itself, loosely attached to it. At first it's a simple boulder in a chain, but eventually you'll get to choose between swords, hammers, axes, even something outlandish like a circle saw with large spikes along a chain. All weapons are controlled the same: You move your ship with your mouse, and the weapon, loosely connected as it is, follows along.
So what you'll be doing to attack enemies is moving your mouse and the ship in a circular pattern to make the weapon swing. You'll quickly notice that the weapon [i]feels[/i] heavy. There are weapons of different weight-class, and personally I found smashing enemies against the wall with the heaviest possible weapon [i]very[/i] satisfying!
As you keep playing you'll learn to handle your weapon a bit more finely, but no new controls are introduced, except for dropping your weapon and taking a new weapon that an enemy might have dropped because you smashed it off their... shippy hands.
[h1]Lots of variation with weapons and levels[/h1]
Yes, you can steal the enemies' weapons! That's one thing I love about this game: You'll eventually get access to an armory where you can find all the weapons you've collected, and go to a mission with any of them. Saw an enemy with an awesome flaming spiky flail? Knock it off 'em and take it for yourself! If you can, that is. Chances are you'll be buying most of the unique weapons from the armory's shop, but still, wicked cool.
The game is divided into a bunch of short levels with an objective: Defeat x amount of enemies, survive for x amount of time, defeat a boss, protect this guy, escort these guys, the classic stuff. Then there are sports-like games like knock a ball as high as you can with a hammer, destroy as many baskets as possible with a thrown flail, play some soccer-like thing... While the core of the game is in the good ol' "beat enemies until you win" levels, as most of the levels consist of just that, it's still nice to have a bit of variety.
[h1]Quick retries, for better and worse[/h1]
As said, the levels are quite short, which is a good thing because sometimes an attempt at one can be quite short-lived. An enemy rushes you, stuns you, smashes you against a wall, and then you die. And there's nothing you can do about that, except dodge that first rush. This can be very frustrating, especially at the later levels because of the rising difficulty.
Even more, sometimes levels have a lot of visual clutter in them. There's a lot of blurring going around the movements of, well, [i]anything[/i] that can move, and I find it quite disorienting at times. Debris can be flying around, and you can't always tell whether some brick is just part of the particle effects or if it's something that you can crash into, stunning you, and then enemies swarm you and you die.
Eventually there'll be explosives, and then all hell breaks loose: Sound is muted except for ringing, there's slow-motion, and all visuals are blurred. It's cool to talk about it like this, but in practice all these combined is very disorienting. The game could've definitely done with options to tone down all the effects.
[h1]Shallow story, but the choices are good[/h1]
The story is interesting, and I especially like the arabic theme. Even though I don't always understand the words that are being used, I still appreciate the atmosphere. There are some choices, even moral dilemmas, that lead to different levels. The world and the story you find yourself in is presented as grandiose, but is overall quite shallow in its implementation. One thing that affects this is that you travel between countries, but they aren't graphically differentiated in any way.
Because the choices lead to different levels, the game does warrant at least two playthroughs to see everything, at least gameplaywise. There are enough choices that there won't be too much of repetition, and what repetition there is remains to show how much better you've become, plus you can try different weapons. Replayability done very well! Although there is one problem: You can't get all the weapons in one save file. The collector inside me screams.
Overall, Hammerfight is very worth it. Again, free to play, 4 to 6 hours to beat the game. You won't lose much in giving it an attempt!
