Stop! Hammerfight! (a list of HammerFight's big problems)

[Filipfonky]

The singleplayer game is very good and fun.
But there are some big problems(and when i say big problems, i mean big problems) that make the game less fun.

Let's start.

1. The tutorial.
The tutorial at the beginning doesn't say anything useful. At all.
It just says "move your mouse to move". The end.
A new player would say: How do i pick up weapons? Are there tactics? Can i throw things? How do i switch weapons? What does that do?
For a real tutorial, you need to search on the internet. And that's bad if the ingame tutorial is near to useless.

2. The HUD.
Besides the fact that there is no tutorial explaining what everything means, the question is: isn't it fun when you get r**ed by every single enemy in the lower left corner, and you can't do anything about it because the health HUD is on you? No, it isnt fun. You may laugh the first time, but then it gets annoying.
The HUD should be transparent when you go over it. Is that so hard to think of when making the HUD?

3. Unfair physics.
Here is a little example: Im standing still, the enemy slowly bumps my boulder. So slowly that he just moves it a bit, and doesnt get damage. It's ok, if the impact isnt too hard it shouldnt do damage.
But what if i do that? The enemy is standing still and i slowly... you get the situation. I get bumped all the way across the screen with stars on my flying machine and a quarter of my health of damage.
There are way more things about the physics, but i just wrote one in here.

4. If i'm a hero/savior...
...why do i get a dumb rock as a weapon, when my enemies have f**king war hammers!?

5. The game is not hard.
There is a difference between "hard but fair" and "unfairly frustrating".
The enemies move at the speed of light, and in a straight line.
I need to make a zig-zag movement with the mouse to- oh too late he got me with his magical speed and perfect boulder accuracy.
But maybe there is a better way to kill them. But how can i know? It's not on the tutorial!
Oh, right. I need to read a wall of text on the internet.

6. How idle enemies hurt you.
That's right. There is a level where you fight only one of them, and the others stay still to spectate.
If your non-idle enemy touches their weapon, it won't hurt to him.
But it will hurt to you.
That's nice.

7. Main menu lag.
When i hover my mouse pointer over the end of the screen, it scrolls it horizontally to the level selection or to the options.
Everything normal, right?
Sadly, no. The pointer lags and i control it harder. Not really a big problem, but seeing your mouse sensibility changing everytime is annoying.

8. The "You not ready, not yet" meme applies here.
Im fighting against a strong opponent.
Both his and my health is very low. Im about to attack him and kill him.
The boulder is almost on his head...
Slow motion. "You are not ready yet" (he says something like that). The circles come from the border of the screen. Ding-dang-dong. Do the mission again.

9. Your friends are your enemies.
Yeah. Everytime i see that bald bastard, it just means one thing: Death.
His role is taking damage, flying around the screen, bumping on rocks, and hitting me with his weapon.
And thats bullcrap.

10. You are always outnumbered. ALWAYS.
The game is not about swinging your weapon anymore.
It's about what the f**k is going on in your screen when those 8 enemies (that look the same as you except for that blue lantern, but it's covered in smoke) come and hit you from all the sides, creating a floating ball of "ow"s and "my head!"s.

[powdermaker]

Although there are some big issues with this game, I disagree with most of your points:

1. The tutorial tells you how to attack, the pictures in his speech show patterns to move your flyer in to fight well. A new player would not even encounter the need for throwing, picking up weapons, switching weapons, etc... until reaching ch. 2, where it is explained. It also tells you to press the "alt" key, which shows a decent reference sheet.

2. I agree that it's too large and obscuring, but never had too many problems with it.

3. I've never experienced this. Were you hitting the enemy in the armour? Were you at low HP when you tried it yourself?

4. You aren't a hero or a saviour at the start of the game, you are barely even an adult if I'm interpreting it correctly. The weapons get more impressive at a good rate IMO.

5. I haven't seen enemies moving super fast, except for the mini-sophit type enemies in Grim mode and the slave pits/hunt levels (which is balanced by their low HP and predictability), I haven't seen enemy choppers do that.

6. Choppers on the same team do not hurt each other, a fact that makes allies much less annoying. This also applies to enemy alliances.

7. Agreed, I circumvented that by having both a mouse and a trackpad working (in single mouse mode) with the mouse sensitivity cranked up in an external program, leaving the trackpad for more precise work.

8. Most levels you need to die in to fail, but the starting ones, as well as most of the slave pit levels end when you reach too low of HP.

9. Friendly AI could use some work, but at least they don't damage you when they hit your chopper.

10. Almost every game ever made has you being outnumbered. The point is that you are better than them, and can overcome the handicap through having a better character, as well as playing more intelligently.

[Uniqron]

Let me chime in on this a little:

3. Unfair physics.
Yes, I have to agree, stuff is totally broken in this game. Most other helicopters have soo much more health that you have. On top of that, hitting the enemies weapon always totally obliterates you. Bumping helicopters together also deals unfair damage to you, while the enemy walks away laughing.

But this is not as bad as hitting the environment. If you as much as brush a spiky stake or get hit by debris, you'll spin out of control. Simply flying into a wall at low speeds will instant kill you. Mash a enemy into it and it'll only deal them fair damage.


4. If i'm a hero/savior... why do I only get a rock flail?

Because you need to level up HARD at the beginning. If you don't farm money and fame early on, you'll never complete the game. This game strangely rewards the proficient players and severely punishes starters.

5. The game is not hard.
There is a difference between "hard but fair" and "unfairly frustrating".

The game seems to enjoy playing you, rather than the other way around if you are a starter. On the other hand, if you max out early and get the best stuff asap, you'll be instant killing any armored enemy time and time again.

AKA: This game is so poorly balanced, the gameplay suffers to the point were it is broken.

6. How idle enemies hurt you.

Correction: Everything on the screen hurts you. Even allies are horrible enemies, because if you get in their way, you'll crash into walls and debris and die.


9. Your friends are your enemies.

Indeed, see above.

10. You are always outnumbered. ALWAYS.
The game is not about swinging your weapon anymore.
It's about what the f**k is going on in your screen when those 8 enemies (that look the same as you except for that blue lantern, but it's covered in smoke) come and hit you from all the sides, creating a floating ball of "ow"s and "my head!"s.

You'll lose sight of your vehicle so often in big battles that it seems better to not participate and stick to one corner and swing your weapon at full speed at whatever comes your way. You'll get money for hitting / killing allies anyway, so why not. Actually, it's a good idea to kill everything you can early on because you'll need the cash to get upgrades / weapons.

11. Why is the "lose all your money and chances to succeed" aka skip level option ON THE SAME KEY!!!! as the "reconfigure and try again" aka armory option!? Mistakes here mean you'll have to restart, as losing ALL the money you have saved up at any point in the game means you'll never get the proper upgrades for the endgame.

12. You'll play at 800x480 resolution, no other options.

Sure there's something to say for oldschool graphics. But the era this game mimics isn't really something you'd want to go back to.
Even at 1920x1080 or above, the game seems to stick to smartphone resolutions, or at least in what is displayed. And enemies shoot your (instantkill) from outside of this area. How nice. I'd happily scale a bit more to actually see what is going on and to get rid of that huge hud obscuring the screen.

[Captain_Pain]

Here's one: My sodding mouse (integrated, laser, and ball) don't work with the blasted game and no one seems to have a solution, much less the devs.

[Bieeanda]

They lost me with the first mission. All of the above, and the arena is tiny with poorly marked, damaging boundaries. Oh, and having to click through dialogue I've already read is really terrible form.

It's really a pity, because the game has an interesting schtick and presentation.

[SOE]

Actually your allies ranged weapons can do damage to you, I have seen this, not to mention when they are armed with dynamite its the most colossal pain in the ♥♥♥ as they rain explosives all over me because they shot towards the enemy I'm fighting.

[vikeyev69]

1. The tutorial.
The tutorial at the beginning doesn't say anything useful. At all.
It just says "move your mouse to move". The end.
A new player would say: How do i pick up weapons? Are there tactics? Can i throw things? How do i switch weapons? What does that do?
For a real tutorial, you need to search on the internet. And that's bad if the ingame tutorial is near to useless.


Reading the second post on this thread I think we may have not been paying much attention, I had this problem as well, I didn't even know about pressing alt until the second poster mentioned it lol.



2. The HUD.
Besides the fact that there is no tutorial explaining what everything means, the question is: isn't it fun when you get r**ed by every single enemy in the lower left corner, and you can't do anything about it because the health HUD is on you? No, it isnt fun. You may laugh the first time, but then it gets annoying.
The HUD should be transparent when you go over it. Is that so hard to think of when making the HUD?



Annoying but not game breaking, plus it has a relatively easy fix, stay the f*ck out of that corner lol.



3. Unfair physics.
Here is a little example: Im standing still, the enemy slowly bumps my boulder. So slowly that he just moves it a bit, and doesnt get damage. It's ok, if the impact isnt too hard it shouldnt do damage.
But what if i do that? The enemy is standing still and i slowly... you get the situation. I get bumped all the way across the screen with stars on my flying machine and a quarter of my health of damage.
There are way more things about the physics, but i just wrote one in here.



I have to kind of agree and disagree at the same time. Although this is true, I like it like this, it adds to the difficulty and makes it more fun. Maybe they should add multiple difficulty options where on the easier difficulties these things don't happen, but on the harder difficulties they do and more so.



4. If i'm a hero/savior...
...why do i get a dumb rock as a weapon, when my enemies have f**king war hammers!?


As said by others, it's because you are at the start of the game, you get better and stronger weapons as you go along. Plus if you can disarm them you can steal their warhammers, just get them to low hp then slam your weapon into theirs and it will disarm them and you can steal their weapons.



5. The game is not hard.
There is a difference between "hard but fair" and "unfairly frustrating".
The enemies move at the speed of light, and in a straight line.
I need to make a zig-zag movement with the mouse to- oh too late he got me with his magical speed and perfect boulder accuracy.
But maybe there is a better way to kill them. But how can i know? It's not on the tutorial!
Oh, right. I need to read a wall of text on the internet.



As above I personally like it like this, adds to the difficulty for me, although I do wish I knew how to fire guns, they are basically just useless appendages to me. Maybe they need a more in your face tutorial.


7. Main menu lag.
When i hover my mouse pointer over the end of the screen, it scrolls it horizontally to the level selection or to the options.
Everything normal, right?
Sadly, no. The pointer lags and i control it harder. Not really a big problem, but seeing your mouse sensibility changing everytime is annoying.



I have never had this problem actually.


9. Your friends are your enemies.
Yeah. Everytime i see that bald bastard, it just means one thing: Death.
His role is taking damage, flying around the screen, bumping on rocks, and hitting me with his weapon.
And thats bullcrap.



lol yer, allied AI needs a bit of work done to it, my friends end up getting me killed all the time, bastards :mad:.

10. You are always outnumbered. ALWAYS.
The game is not about swinging your weapon anymore.
It's about what the f**k is going on in your screen when those 8 enemies (that look the same as you except for that blue lantern, but it's covered in smoke) come and hit you from all the sides, creating a floating ball of "ow"s and "my head!"s.

Again, I like this, they really do need to add in different difficulties for a large range of players to truly enjoy the game.

Personally I think this is a really good game, it is done quite well, but their are some annoyances and bugs that do need to be removed and some extra stuff added for more re-playability and to make the game all round better and to make it a lot more noob friendly.

[Nirruden]

My biggest complaints are:

1. They hid the Grim game mode.

This is easily the easiest farming opportunity. If you don't take the "hard" option the first time you get a choice, you missed the Grim mode, where I got two rubies in the first two hunts. This should not happen, as it's hugely punitive to new players. This is the easiest way to get geared up for the story mode.

Step 1: Go back and start a new game with a "test player". Unlock Grim mode by selecting the "hard" option on that first choice. Don't worry about cash, skip the levels if you have to.
Step 2: Exit your "main game" and select Grim mode.
Step 3: Use the "blade on a stick" naginata-looking weapon and kill lots of beasts. (You can use any weapon, but the reach and power of this oen are quite good.)
Step 4: Let the NPCs kill the boss for you while you distract the acid breath. Loot the gem.

Step 5: Repeat as needed.
Result: Lots and lots of money for basic weapons, gems for effects, and all for killing some relatively harmless bees, worms and sophits. Never worry about skipping any level, ever again, because you can always farm more cash in Grim mode by quitting to menu and selecting it.

2. The DPI detection, while accurate, does not properly configure a mouse in all cases.

YMMV, but when it detected my 1000dpi mouse as 1000dpi, I had issues with 'losing the plot' of my rotations due to the amount of swinging around I was having to do with the mouse. Dropping it to a lower value (game setting, not mouse) made the game feel far more responsive and controlled.

3. Mission objectives are not always clear.

In particular, there's a battle in the "slave fighter" section that has you unarmed against 3 foes with blades. you're never told you only have to survive for a period. I spent quite a long time trying to slam them into one another or the ground with body slams while avoiding the blades. After a few tries, I just survived long enough to pass the mission, and presto, I won. /sigh

It's not a bad game, but there's a few rough edges that should've been filed off before release.

[Redtide]

Honestly, the majority of my rage for this game are the from the easily fixable little things and one big problem.

Little things like objectives for the early stages being totally unknowable. Am I supposed to live as long as possible? Kill a certain number of enemies? Keep my buddies alive? Nothing is made clear.

Another little thing that bothers me is the start of some stages are ridiculous. The stage I'm on now has one of those long worms spawned right next to me and if I don't dodge IMMEDIATELY, he stuns and then kills me before I can even respond. Starting conditions should be at least a little safe while you get your bearings. This combined with not knowing the objective is really painful early on.

Making the skip level key the same as the armory key is the worst. Oh, what's that? The game didn't recognize your last mouse click and know you have no money? Too bad. Start over.

The last little thing that irks me is the lack of real tutorials. There's some quick mentions of controls and things you can do, but never explanation why or when you should do them. For example, dual weapons basically just says combine and it's tricky to use. Yeah thanks, real helpful.

As for big things that I'm not sure can be helped, I feel like most of the areas that you fight multiple monsters are too cramped. When you get swarmed, if you miss one enemy it's richochet into a wall and then death because there's no room to swing your weapon unless you're in the center. The overuse of stunning mechanics also goes along with this. If you get touched by seemingly anything, including your "friendly" AI, it's game over due to stun. With some of the small areas to fight that I mentioned earlier, this becomes a matter of luck MORE than skill especially in some of the dark scenes where you can't even see enemies coming.

The fights in the arena where you take on challengers was extremely fun and exciting because it excluded all of my critiques above. You have room to fight, you can actually see your enemy, the objective is clear, you aren't getting completely swarmed every second, there's no "friendly" AI to screw you over, etc. In a perfect world, the arena battles would be the entire game for me because of the issues with everything else.

[arisaka]

Well, the maces can be some of the best weapons in the game.

[Omfg12333]

I have my fair share of complaints as well, but I don't feel the same way as the OP does. Most of my complaints are about arena mode.

My complaints:
1. The enemy chopper AI cheats like crazy. They never have to swirl their chopper in a circle to swing their weapons. Instead, the weapons just swing themselves magically. This is an extremely unfair advantage because the player can lose control by swinging a weapon, because the weight of the weapon affects the trajectory of the chopper.

2. The enemy chopper AI has perfect aim with all projectiles. Especially in Arena mode, the attachment that looks like 3 light arquebuses in a fan shape is ALWAYS locked onto you. They can shoot you with unnerring aim from across any map. They are not hindered by darkness or graphical effects. THEIR GUN CAN ROTATE INDEPENDENTLY OF THEIR WEAPON. ENEMY CHOPPERS WITH GUNS BUT NO MELEE WEAPON ARE CONSIDERED UNARMED.

3. They can shoot 15 explosive barrels from their guns at a time. They have infinite ammo. The explosive barrels are about as big as gems are, but without any glow. They do about 50 damage to the player if the player has no armor. THE EXPLOSIVE BARRELS CAN BE THROWN ACROSS THE MAP.

4. Many of the weapons are completely useless. There is no way to buy weapons out of sequence. Either you waste large amounts of money buying useless crap, or you salvage enemy weapons from the arena. Both options suck.

[CannibalBob]

I thought this game was incredibly fun! It was very satisfying landing that perfect hammer smash or slicing that sword perfectly along an enemy and watching him explode into shrapnel. My only complaint was I wish there were more options for controls - sensitivity, gamepad, WASD etc. I had to max out my mouse's DPI and crank up the mouse sensitivity in Windows, and I still wish it was more sensitive at times :p

[Kasofa]

Remember that higher DPI setting ingame = less sensitivity.

[kotekzot]

sounds like somebody is bad at the game.

[Pater-Brown]

Most of what here is mentioned never was a problem to me. I just got on without a tutorial, doing whatever could be done. And on my first attempt, I found only one level really difficult (where you start in a tunnel). Ok, on chapter four I took the easier option, the other one is really hard. But I never took a gold bulla, nor did I earn weapons or money through different game modes, still it was makeable in few days. There is only one point, which bothers me now, as I could have all gold and all gems and all…

13. weapons dissapear from the Hall. Bad mistake.

[Lism]

I thought the game overall was awesome, but I do agree with some of your points. D'you know you can turn on god mode by changing the "DOGMODE" (yes, dogmode) option to 1 in the settings text file?

[SFaPiL]

Oh my god... "the sunset path" mission in chapter 1 is so F*CKING ANNOYING!!

I'm supposed to protect chief Sayid, but my ally is a total tard and the taunting move (aka swing left&right fast) doesn't distract the enemy the way I had hoped.

Those damn bees go straight towards the worm/blimp and I can't fend off the bees without hurting the worm!

Not to mention that THERE'S SO MUCH CONFUSION ON SCREEN! I hit a bee hard? Shaky screen. I get hit? Shaky screen. Smoke screen when swinging. etc etc etc.

UGH... I was actually having fun when I chose the hard worm mission (2nd level)... but "the sunset path" part III? Oh boy does it suck right now :(

[EDIT] Nevermind, I finally manged to beat the level thanks to a walkthrough on youtube. I tend to like a fair challenge, but this game doesn't feel fair at all...

[matteyas]

I did my first play-through of this game in Russian, which I don't speak. Are you guys even serious? Man, I guess I've found the reason why games just keep getting dumbed down... it's because of you fools! ^^

There was some stuff that was utterly crap in the game, sure. I just can't even comprehend how someone would add the games difficulty to that list. It had some tough parts, it's just sad that they were so few.

[jcj64200031]

I've extensively played through the game, and I only have 3 complaints really.

1. the mouse dpi option doesn't work well, and often either leaves you overpowered or underpowered. if it's too high, you can't swing properly, and if it's too low, you have the power of the gods.

2. thrown/fired explosives from enemies. I don't midn the scattering explosive shots as much as the thrown explosive barrels, but they're still annoying. the major problem I have is when I go in for a kill, and right as I swing, they toss an explosive barrel in my face. Yeah, nice tactic there. rather than actually try to take me down fairly, you decide to act as a suicide bomber. I understand ships exploding when they die sometimes, but a barrel in my face just pisses me off.

3. stunning gems are OP. get a good and heavy flail, attach the largest stun gem as you can (it's the one that electrifies your weapon). set your mouse to the lowest in-game dpi you can, and watch the enemies fly. it sometimes hits them so hard, that on the open maps, they can become threats to your health because they are flying by so quickly that they can inadvertantly crash into you.

[lucifer6642]

Heavy Bladed Flail - Can't remember its name
Or the flail that looks like a circular saw blade
+
Large health regen gem
+
X-Box 360 Controller instead of mouse

Got me to 35 on both Grim & Arena

Equip, but not link, the sword that takes 3 small gems for extra oomph.

Now, if only I was as good at the hammerball game.

[sxdemon]

I actually can't even play the game. I try to move my mouse but in the game it's totally not responsive, while it's super sensitive in the menus. If I disconnect mouse and replug it, the game just doesn't read the state on it and I have to shutdown the game.

[SgtFrog]

How do I switch weapons? I got named a Hunter because I'm surprisingly good with the hammer they gave me, but the next level, I'm fighting swarms of these buzz-saw things with a rock! How do I switch back to my hammer?

[SgtFrog]

Also, you can use an Xbox 360 controller? How? Do I just plug it in?

[Kyle R]

There's a potentially great game in here, buried in a few bugs that drag it down. The biggest issue is the UI design - between a lack of options for screens with different aspect ratios, a low resolution, a cramped HUD, and a tendency to fill the screen with distractions (smoke, sparks, debris) it really feels like the UI is one of the enemies you fight when playing the game.

When it's on form, it's great fun, but I've gotten bored with the unbalanced difficulty in story mode and just play Arena now and again. The game doesn't have any difficulty calibration that adapts to your skill level - it's just hard and either you're that good or you get to do the same mission over and over.

Both of these things keep Hammerfight as a diamond in the rough rather than an indie gem, unfortunately.