If the books, movies, and games were all true, the Cold War was one of the hottest wars the world ever witnessed. Innumerable secret missions and close calls have happened in the course of the years after World War II and before the major American fronts in Vietnam. In fact, Americans were so busy in Europe - according to historical fiction - that it's amazing we had time to accomplish anything back on the home field. One take on that chilly period of history is that of Nival Interactive's Hammer & Sickle.

Hammer & Sickle, as the name might suggest, takes a Soviet point of view. The Soviets select a man who was highly decorated in "the War" to tackle a series of missions deep into enemy territory. The missions are a series of stealth, action, stealth-action, and diplomacy-based expeditions into US and British-held lands in Europe. While this could be the turn-based strategy event of the year, instead it runs into a great deal of turbulence on the way.

The sound is very high quality. Effects ring out with clarity, and the music waxes and wanes in mostly appropriate times. However, the music doesn't fit - at all. One moment you're treated to sappy, slow elevator music and the next there is death metal blaring from your speakers. This change happens without warning, and never seems to stop being a shock. The weapons make great noises, which, as far as I know, sound fairly accurate. Then characters start to speak. And things were going so well...

The speech in Hammer & Sickle is simply embarrassing. Nearly every character in the game has an accent, which is as it should be if everyone in Europe suddenly learned to speak English as their primary language. The problem is, not often does anyone speak with an accent of the correct country, and the accents all sound as though the speakers have a nasty cold. The one exception is the tutorial commander. His voice is passably close to a Russian accent, but the majority of the voices are painful to hear. Worse, all of your characters will spout catchphrases when they perform a task or are hit in combat, which is ridiculously often. The characters seem to only know about ten lines of dialogue, so for the tens of hours this game will require, you get to hear the same phrases spoken by the same low-quality voice actors. The good news is, there is an option to turn these off. Sadly, this makes the game fairly quiet the majority of the time.

Visually stunning, Nival has outdone themselves with the graphics of Hammer & Sickle. The characters, the environments, and the effects are all perfectly rendered, and shine exactly as they should. The world is filled with so much detail, it truly feels as though the rooms were just abandoned, and that people really did live there. Explosions are powerful and look painfully hot. The physics are great, too. Walls crumble with precise accuracy, falling brick-by-brick to the ground. The world does an amazing job of convincing you it really is alive - and really will die soon.

So every game needs a plot, even if it's Doom or Painkiller simple. Hammer & Sickle went the opposite direction, opting for a long and complex plot that is hidden from the viewer's eyes. Overall, the story is about one man sent behind enemy lines to gather some information from a target and keep it from entering the enemy from receiving it. When you cross the border by sadly humorous ways, you travel to the outskirts of a city to find the target. Upon arriving, you walk up on five soldiers forming a firing squad to eliminate the target you're here for. So the stealth game has you take on five targets from ten yards or less with machine gun and grenades, then discover the target you were there for has somehow survived five shots. "They must have missed," your character quips. Then the real story begins, by giving you no plot for at least an hour's play time.

The combat can be so great. With action points to determine how much a character can do, per turn; you can have him or her climb to elevated ground (like a shelled building) and crouch at a window, aim for the enemy commander, and let loose a tide-turning shot. However, all this has a great number of obstacles. Just getting to your turn is one major problem. The time players have to wait for the enemy to take its actions is often even longer than a well-thought-out turn of your own. Then you have to wait for any bystanders or allies to take their turns before you finally get a crack at it. Some large-scale combats can make you wait fifteen minutes or more between each turn. Another disappointing thing is the RPG statistical customization. There are dozens of abilities and upgrades to each character, and they advance in clear and impressive directions. But somehow, all that customization doesn't really add to anything. There is almost no difference in a character with ten upgrades and a character with none.

There are many, many places this game succeeds. The visuals, the tone, the concept... these are all so great they could be the cornerstones for game-of-the-year material. Sadly, the rest of the game has so many problems that these amazing features end up being just enough to hold the game together. Turn-based, hard-core strategy nuts could find a great deal to love here, if they are patient enough to dig for it.

Our Final ScoreBad

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