Hammer und Sichel

[Bones McCoy]

I stumbled across the Silent Storm series a few years ago by accident. After playing through the first X-Com and all 3 Jagged Alliance games several times through, I gave up on the genre. I didn't think anyone was making a decent tbs with all the attention toward sand-box gta games and fpses. Then I found Silent Storm at a local shop for $20 Canadian!

 

Obviously, I was quite pleased with the product.

 

Coupled with all of this, I had been waiting for the 3d version of Fallout 3 to finally hit the stores. With that project apparently dead, I pretty much forgot about role-playing games completely.

 

Which brings me to Hammer und Sichel: a veritable combination of RPG & 3d-TBS.

 

The Gamespot review gives it a terrible rating - but then they've given out good ratings to terrible games several times (Star Wars: Empire at War) and excellent ratings to ok games (Galactic Civs 2). The Worthplaying review is better, but what credibility does Worthplaying have?

 

Thus I present the following:

 

Is it worth getting?

 

Are the problems that bad?

 

Is the company patching the game to fix these problems?

 

Is it 'modable'?

 

Thanks!

[Crazy Gringo]

I to fell across Silent Storm as a novelty sitting in the darker corner of a computer store a few years back. Since then I never looked back.

Where Silent Storm and the sequel Silent Storm Sentinels are tactical turn based squad combat and Hammer and Sickle is more tactical turn based squad combat/RPG with no real clear mission purpose for you to complete except to go with or against the flow of events.

That said some people tend to find Hammer & Sickle a bit of a let down because they don't like a challenging game that require the use of brain power and that will make them give up on it because it is too hard.

But I can nothing but recommend Hammer & Sickle for you to play....Nothing like a little cloak and dagger to change world events.

About the patch and problems....There is a unofficial patch and along with the HSMOD it should make the game a bit more playable....

As for mods....There are some out there....And more in development....

[Naked_Lunch]

Hammer and Sickle is one of my favorite games of the past few years. Great stuff.

 

Don't trust any of the crappy big name website reviews. The game was reviewed by completely inept morons with little-to-no understanding of turn-based games or RPGs.

 

Not to toot my own horn, but I think my review does a fair job of going over the good and the not-so good in H&S

 

Plus, the game's only like 20 bucks! 20 bucks! How could you go wrong with that?

[Bones McCoy]

I suppose the biggest mistake I could make is hoping for another Fallout or JA or something like that.

 

Is there a modding community set up to right H&S's wrongs yet? I'd love to get involved with fixing the apparently crap dialogue... but my programming experience is virtually nil.

[Bones McCoy]

I suppose the biggest mistake I could make is hoping for another Fallout or JA or something like that.

 

Is there a modding community set up to right H&S's wrongs yet? I'd love to get involved with fixing the apparently crap dialogue... but my programming experience is virtually nil.

 

Well I received the game the other day...

 

It's good some good points, but its also quite disappointing...

 

The good: The premise is great. The Cold War is a seemingly forgotten chapter of our history even though it only ended 15 years ago.

 

The bad: The engine chugs. Combat takes longer and has nothing unique to offer. The 'light blue abyss' at the edge of each map seriously detracts from the effect - rpgs can't have that stuff. Add some crummy distance bitmaps and restrict the camera angles. The English is abysmal, perhaps even incoherent half the time.

 

The ugly: rpgs need to be character driven. That doesn't just mean that the character has to be in a certain place at a certain time to finish a quest. It means your approach to overcoming the challenges your character faces must reflect the skills of your character.

 

Take for example the very first mission: crossing the border. You should have been able to approach this in several different ways. Maybe you could bribe a Allied or Soviet officer? Pay a seedy woman at a local bar to go distract the guards? Mug an Allied guard and take his uniform, talking your way through? Dress up as a civilian? Hide in the trunk of a car? There could have been much more put into this very first mission to make it involve your character in more than a passive way - and it would have helped the game immensely. But instead, one has to follow a scripted path; there's no freedom, which is what we've come to expect from rpgs over the years.

 

Overall I give it a 5.5/10, with hopes of an all encompassing patch or add-on to sort out some of these problems. A modder/developer needs to recreate the dialogue system, revamp the combat, and introduce a longer and more open ended story. I don't think I'm being unfair here, its just its a little difficult to get involved with these sorts of issues.

[Novik]

there's no freedom, which is what we've come to expect from rpgs over the years.

First mission is a continue of learning curve. Some freedom you will receive at future missions. May be

[ShredZ]

Ive only played the demo thus far and it was really slow on my system, the AI would do the infamous laydown/standup/laydown/standup manuver over and over until finally their APs would run out, and thats just 1 out of the 20 enemy AI on the screen. That crazy music was kind of distracting along with the background color - and the campfire cut scene was kinda lame.

 

S2 & S3 are so good I dont think theres any need for me to buy H&S.

 

Weve heard plenty of Bad & Ugly, can anyone else post some good points?

[Crazy Gringo]

Good points for H&S?

*SPOILERS MIGHT BE PRESENT*

 

The challenge of playing the game and using your grey matter instead of going caveman and blowing everything to pieces. Planning your moves is the way to go.

The demo doesn't do it justice....The full game will challenge you and force you to get creative and use your scarce resources the best way possible.

For those of you who like to be sneaky....Buy this game.

In my current session I play as a sniper which took out some 20ish enemies in that mission with the execution squad without suffering a single hit. Hit and run tactics all the way home....

The weapons are also a chapter in their own right....The numbers of them and how more balanced they are. I pretty often get one-shot-one-kill with the sniper rifles where as in S2 and S3 a person would survive 4 to 5 headshots.

The freedom of the game might lead to a state of apathy by gamers who are used to the yellow info-markers. But they do not exsist in H&S. Instead you got to do some intelligence gathering to proceed in anyway. And if you fail your objective it is not game over the game does go on. Maybe down a more sinister trail that you would have wanted it to.