The game I played most this week: Hammer Combat

3D Effects: Hammer Combat

So back in the mid-90s, you see, there was this controversial (and therefore highly popular) fighting game called Mortal Kombat.  (2D fighting games were kind of a big thing back then.)  The game used digitized sprites, which allowed for more realistic character animation, but everything in the game, including the fantasy-inspired backgrounds, tended to be garishly-colored and nausea-inducing after hours of game play.  In terms of design, the game was an unabashed and cartoonish blood fest, with large amounts of and gratuitous violence. 

MK was probably one of the first games to feature tons of combo moves, which you’d need to memorize if you were going to get very far into the game.  At the end of a round, opponents could be finished off by getting a “fatality” (which often meant getting impaled), turned into a crying baby (“babality”), and a few other moves.  The blood flowed freely in the game, and what made it popular was that it had a certain crispness that made you feel like you were really there, even though everything was exaggerated to absurd proportions.  Although the series eventually went 3D, the original two-dimensional version that existed during the series’ heyday looks pretty hokey by today’s standards. 

That original game, put out by Midway, was the inspiration for Hammer Combat, a game that goes for shock value but isn’t anywhere near as edgy or groundbreaking as the original Mortal Kombat was a decade ago.  (The developer’s site says the game has already been banned from Handango.  Neat! 

In a way, HC highlights some of the reasons why gaming on the Pocket PC is often frustrating.  On one hand, graphics are definitely getting better: most of HC’s graphics, including the characters and 3D backgrounds, are quite good and pretty well balanced.  (I do have to say, though, that most of the special effects, including the blood effect, are pretty lame and not up to the standards of the background and character art.)  However, the game’s interface is a bit limited and especially frustrating to those who played the original Mortal Kombat. 

Basically, your character can move left or right, jump, block, and punch.  You also get a special bonus move on top of that (a ranged attack for one of the characters I played), but that’s pretty much it.  You can configure the keys or even use onscreen controls, but take it from me that tapping buttons on a screen is not a satisfying way of playing this type of game.  While the two higher of the game’s three difficulty levels are challenging, all you really need to do is keep punching the character pretty quickly to take him out in most cases.  If you just keep hitting him fast enough, he won’t be able to move, and even if he blocks, your persistence will eventually result in him getting hit.  While the game doesn’t have any speed issues as such, the movement of the characters is stiff and has blockiness to it. 

Mission to Mission: Alpha Rebellion

Alpha Rebellion is an overhead shooter harkening back to the days of games like Raid on Bungeling Bay, Choplifter, Jungle Strike, and several other games.  The idea is to go from mission to mission, rescuing stranded soldiers with your tractor beam and taking out enemies with your cannons and bombs/missiles.

AR is a little more ambitious than most shooters and ends up being a little fussy.  The in-game graphics are just a notch above average, and the menus looks a little weak, but the game has a lot to keep the player busy.  The auto map feature gets the job done, but it’s way too small and cluttered: I almost needed a magnifying glass to see where I was and to identify enemy targets.  One problem the game has is in handling the three types of weapons your ship has.  You have to switch between the three types yourself.  While there are two ways to do this (through the onscreen controls and through the buttons), this isn’t always very convenient and especially when you’ve just picked up some troops and need to switch to your guns in a hurry.  Unfortunately, you can’t map a dedicated fire button to each weapon type, so you’re forced to toggle back and forth.  Since some targets need to be taken out with bombs and missiles, switching weapon types is essential.

Between each mission, you can upgrade your ship’s weapons.  Although the game doesn’t have a lot of ground targets, game play can be a bit challenging since enemies can fire at you before you can actually see them.  The game can be controlled with the stylus or directional pad, but I found the d-pad to be the superior input method since it allows you to directly adjust your ship’s speed.  Depending on where you are on the map, kicking the speed up or down is important when getting to hostages and dodging enemy fire.  Although the rules are simple enough, the game can be fairly challenging until you get the hang of juggling different weapons and controlling your ship.  I failed the first mission a few times until I learned how to juggle everything.

Thought of the Week— Stop That!

This week I downloaded two games (Hammer Combat and Raging Thunder) that (ugh) come packaged only as cab files and therefore require you to copy over to your device and click to install.  The problem with packaging a release as a CAB file is that you have to install the game directly to your system memory.  This is annoying because depending on what else you have installed on your device, you may not have enough memory to run or even install the game after you’ve copied it over.  Raging Thunder wasn’t too big, but Hammer Combat is rather large at 13 Megs.  I, for one, much prefer just having a PC-side executable install routine so I can choose where I want to install the program.

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Allen Gall's The Week in Games  Copyright ) 2006 by Thaddeus Computing Inc.