"Severely underrated..."

Hammer and Sickle is a game in a very select, and increasingly endangered breed. It is a Strategic Role-Playing Game. If it was Japanese, it would probably have 'Tactics' in the title, but if it was Japanese, it would be stripped of almost all its actual thinking elements in favor of garish 'cute' design, and horribly, horribly unbalanced. Still, this game may be called a "Strategic Role-Playing Game", but I think the "Tactics" moniker is more appropriate.

This is a game first and foremost about taking a very small, (and depending on how you play, possibly even only a single) number of people up against between 10 and 30 people... at once. The battles are very difficult, and one can very easily lose a character to a single shot from sniper hiding from an angle you didn't expect, forcing you to restart from the last save point. This makes the difficulty level extremely important, as at Hard Mode, you can only save when entering or leaving a map. This also means you really have to curb your gung-ho tendencies for camouflage, cover, and ambushes. It has a frustratingly high learning curve, but it only makes it so much more glorious when you finally come up with winning strategies.

Strategies aren't nearly as linear as some reviewers would try to claim, as well. A character can very well solo almost the entire game, provided they make sure to always fight in their most favorable conditions. (Which is to say, under cover of darkness, from extreme ranges, or to just never let the enemy know they are there in the first place, depending on your character.)

The ultimate sticking point of the game is its wonderfully fully destructible environment. You can blow holes in the floors of buildings to fire at the stunned enemies on the floor below, make a new path into a seemingly impregnable barricaded building by blowing through a boarded-up window, or simply demolish a tree an enemy is using for cover. This, however, comes at a steep price in clock time as the numerous checks the game has to make regarding line-of-sight account for the rather slow turns. One map, in particular, has a problem with civilians that have the bizarre tendency to stumble blindly about in the middle of your raging gunfights.

Graphics: Umm... 6?
OK, nobody came here for the graphics, but still, while the attention to detail in the backgrounds is laudable, the character sprites are just... subpar.

Music: 2
Fortunately for me, I always turn the music off, and play my own music over any game I play anyway, but it's not often as necessary as it is in this game. The music is just BAD, let's leave it at that.

Sound: 7
I'm sure we've all heard gunshots before. At least there's quite a variety of them, and Nival apparently did their homework on the noises each individual gun might make.

Voice Acting: 6
Many of the voices are passable. You don't really expect much from most games, anyway, but a few are annoying. The hammer soldiers that I SWEAR are female when giving death screams are one. Why do they even yell out ANYTHING when they've had their head blown off, anyway?

Story: 4 to 9
Yes, that's a score of somewhere between 4 and 9. You see, as this is a spy game, and your actions can change the plot, how much of the story one uncovers is mostly up to the actions of the player. This means that if you rush in like Ranbo, slaughter everything, and then look for clues as to where to go next, you're likely only going to find a map of where you might find your next clue, and the story will make almost no sense. Sneak around, make the right friends, and talk to people, and you might find a little more interesting backstory. The multiple play routes leave you curious, but since you always wind up going through most of the same maps, it unfortunately doesn't encourage as much replay as the game obviously tries to. (It even has a 'High Score' option on the main menu...)

Gameplay: 9
It'd be 10, but for the bugs. This is what those who buy this game paid admission for. Yes, it can have quite a bit of delay, especially in maps with several buildings, but you can't find a more thoroughly cathartic tactical wargame coming out any time soon.

Final Score: 9... because the gameplay is all that matters.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/16/06