Star Hammer: My Review

[Radon088]

Ok, So before I start there is one thing you should know.
This game is pretty much everything I've wanted from a space game for ages.

Ok, so now that you know that I drool over this game like an idiot just based on its mechanics alone... I do have a few complaints.

1. The RPG mechanics should be deeper.

The game makes a trifling effort at having RPG esk progression buts its very shallow and doesn't really appeal to me as a long time veteran of RPGs. Perhaps something more like a skill point system where you can allocate and spec, your captain and crew to your OCD wracked, heart's desire?

2. No customization on a ship by ship level.
This game has a great system for customizing what ships are in a fleet, what position those ships start in, ect. But they still don't feel like MY ships. They are cardboard cutouts of what they should be. Ever play Nexus: The Jupiter Incident? The customization of that game, while linear and limited, still managed to make me feel like I was responsible for those few ships. They were very much MINE and loosing one was unacceptable.

3. The story, is somewhat lackluster.
Ive only played the first few missions of the game so far. But the rocky start is really not saying good things about the rest of them. Whats my problem? Well to put it bluntly, the MC is an over aggressive idiot, The Military is fine with you not following orders to go do whatever, the antagonists are yawn inducing (not in their battle mechanics but their concept.)
This game could really shine if the writing was kicked up a couple of notches. Give us a real space opera, that's what the system feels like it was built for.

4.The art
Ok, the ships are wonderful, (if a bit on the low end for this day and age) but your 2D art? (which I don't have a problem with you using) Is just kind of lazy looking, its muddy and the characters look more like impressionist art than people. This was one issue I really agonized over whether to put down or not. I'm sorry for insulting someone's art like that but, it really should be top notch if your going to use it in a game.

So there you gave it all of my complaints.
If you think it doesn't paint a very nice picture of this game... well your right. This game feels like it was created by a very small group with highly limited resources. I STILL RECOMMEND picking this up however. Lets get these guys some money so they can either patch up this game with the five star content it needs, or deliver to us a great title in the same vein in a few years.

[Firefox440]

I do not understand because you say how the 2D art is bad. I have seen many games and I do not see the 2D art from Star Hammer.

For me the main problem from some people, it is how they live too much in the Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Galactica, Wing Commander, in fact at other universe where there are a lot of additional work and it can be used for a game or other stuff. But when you make your own universe and you want paint it at a game, you must paint it starting from zero and you can not copy the work from others. This point makes games as Star Hammer a lot more difficult, specially if you think how it was not developed by a huge team of people, it was a game developed by less of 10 people.

By example, Nexus the jupiter incident was developed by a team of 30 or more people. However, even if the game could be modded (not from the begining), it was worse because the play options were not very good. Mainly the game rotate around a very coded campaign. At Star Hammer there are a full skirmiss section with a lot of options.