Hammerwatch - A thumb whacking good time

[Bjorn]

Hammerwatch is one of the games in the current HumbleBundle, which I had almost bought multiple times anyways since it has local co-op.  It's a Gauntlet style dungeon crawler.  There's progression through merchants, upgrading your basic attacks, health, mana and unlocking new abilities.  It supports up to four players with local, online and LAN support (though I don't think you can do both local and online simultaneously unfortunately).  It's not a roguelike, as the levels appear to all be fixed, but chest contents are randomized.  You do have a limited number of lives, run out, and you're starting over.  There are checkpoints to save your progress.  It's got 6 classes, all of which feel like they play nice and different from one another. 

 

It's really fun!  We played a few hours of it last night, and it really scratches that dungeon crawling itch.  I played solo for about a half hour, which was fine, but not nearly as good as co-op.  There's no inventory to manage, or loot to sort through, or boring quest dialogue to suffer through.  Just a couple of us running through a dungeon murdering things and exploring, finding secret passageways and manipulating some simple puzzles. 

 

The only really bad thing we hit was one spike puzzle, where we each had to manipulate buttons to change a spike pattern on a floor.  One of us got killed, and you respawn on top of a teammate.  The result was that we were completely stuck, there was no way to manipulate the puzzle to escape because we were on a dead end side of it, so we had to revert to an earlier save.  That was a bummer. 

[Irishjohn]

I grabbed the same bundle and Hammerwatch is the only game I've played so far. It's a great little game. That isn't meant to be patronising... I'm talking more about the time I spend on a session. I'm up the walls with work but it's cool to fire in a quick round of dungeoneering. Just played the priest so far. It's fun!

[Twig]

I'll play this with people. I have played it before. I've never managed to beat the first boss.

 

I like to play on the hardest difficulty though which is why I've never beaten the first boss. But I would play on lower difficulties maybe.

[Bjorn]

Surprisingly, they released a free expansion yesterday, adding a whole new campaign and some balance stuff.  I'm not familiar with it to know how big the balance changes are.  But I'm pretty surprised that they would release a free campaign during a HumbleBundle sale.  I mean, that's cool, but not what one would expect. 

 

 

I'll play this with people. I have played it before. I've never managed to beat the first boss.

 

I like to play on the hardest difficulty though which is why I've never beaten the first boss. But I would play on lower difficulties maybe.

 

The boss on regular cost us like a half dozen lives, I can only imagine fighting it solo on the hardest difficulty. 

[Justin Leego]

Will perch bundle for Hammerwatch alone

[Trip Hazard]

Local co-op? I'm sold. 

[Trip Hazard]

Started playing this today. Dead eager to get into the game so just hammering 'A'...end result is that I'm a paladin. He's fun, though! Got a lil' shield for blocking ranged attacks from the front, and a short range dash which can cut through enemies. 

 

I've just beaten the first boss, on normal, and am in pretty good shape, with 10 lives, and having purchased a lot of upgrades. From some preview vids I saw ages ago, I thought it looked a bit slow and boring, a bit tedious. But, it isn't. It's fast paced and the combo meter I can build up encourages me to take a risk and charge into a pack to keep it going and cause lots of damage (also, the fact you don't get XP for killing enemies means you really want to dispatch them efficiently and kill the spawners)

 

My thumb ached a bit from constantly pressing the attack button though. The auto-attack is slow as shit: I reckon I can do 3 times the number of hits if I hammer attack.

 

Some things I don't like: I wish buttons/switches etc stood out a bit more against the backdrop. And, I'd like it if some more of the puzzles were riddles instead of just humping around looking for buttons to push. But, so far, it's great!

[Justin Leego]

Yes, I started it today as well. Didn't get as far as you but Paladin'd it up and had a good time mashing A.

 

Anyone want to try out thee online multiplayer?

[Trip Hazard]

Yeah, that'd be good. Send me a friend request on Steam if you like: lesalanos

 

(It's a weird name...obscure reference to a Peter Kay sitcom)

[Justin Leego]

The Phoenix is rising..

[Bjorn]

We got through the original campaign yesterday.  Continued to be loads of fun until the end.  My only real complaint in the general design is that the levels get a bit large late game, particularly with having to backtrack to get some treasure rooms.  It's pretty common to find a switch, hit it, have no idea what it changed, and then have to just run around the level until you found something. We ultimately used a guide to find a couple of the secrets in the last Act, as we just didn't want to spend 20 minutes running around levels.

 

Then we immediately started the expansion.  And, I think I like it even more than the original campaign.  The levels feel better designed, and there hasn't been as much backtracking so far (we've competed 4 levels).  It changes things up some, more than I expected.  Fewer doors (no bronze doors at all).  More little hidden areas behind broken walls, but fewer switch puzzles.  More inventive and evil traps (which I like).  Instead of finding merchants in the dungeon, you have a hub you can warp back to from each level.  You find ore that you can give to merchants to upgrade their store level, so you decide what upgrades you want access to earliest.  Overall, I'd say they learned a lot from designing the original campaign, and it shows in the expansion. 

 

Fuck the first boss of the expansion though.  That shit is terrible.  Like, bad enough I'd expect it to be patched to be made easier, because it is a nightmare. 

[Trip Hazard]

The Phoenix is rising..

 

Obligatory "Garlic bread?!" Man, that got old fast. 

[Bjorn]

We beat the expansion campaign this afternoon!  It's much shorter than the main campaign, about half as long.  One tip, you don't get enough ore to fully upgrade all the stores.  We finished it with the four stores at levels 4/5/4/1 (off/health/def/combo), and I think we found all the ore.  The movement speed bonus from the health merchant might be the most valuable upgrade in the game.  I'm not sure we could have got through the second boss without it.  We actually tried a few times, and then backed off to town to spend the money we had.  Upgrading movement speed made him much easier. 

 

This time we switched and my wife was the priest.  We aren't good enough to get through either campaign without one of us being the priest.  I'm sure there are lords out there who can, but it ain't us. 

[N1njaSquirrel]

I hate to be 'that guy', but I really didn't enjoy Hammerwatch. It might not have 'clicked' with me, but I found the whole experience really dull and flat. Even when I played it with a friend, I found it to be pretty dull, the general gameplay routine of crowd control and then attacking the next biggest target got stale quickly. I also really dislike the 'but it's so much better with a friend' argument. Everything is better with a friend, even Boarderlands. Doing things with friends is always going to be enjoyable to some degree. How it stands up as a single player experience is more important, I think. And it doesn't stand up well at all. 

[Bjorn]

I also really dislike the 'but it's so much better with a friend' argument. Everything is better with a friend, even Boarderlands. Doing things with friends is always going to be enjoyable to some degree. How it stands up as a single player experience is more important, I think. And it doesn't stand up well at all.

 

And I would make the opposite argument, if a game is designed with co-op in mind (which I think Hammerwatch was), then how it plays with others is the most important part.  To me, that's like saying "Sure, Mortal Kombat is fun with friends, but it's that single player campaign that really matters."  Just like some games are designed around PvP, some games are built to have co-op as the main event and it is the single player campaign that's the add-on.

 

Also, I strenuously disagree that everything is better with a friend.  Diablo 3 was just as shitty with other people as it was alone.  I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I know that I've played games that were actually worse in co-op, usually due to some terrible design decisions.   Fable 2?  Fable 2 co-op was shit, that's for sure. 

[dibs]

Also, I strenuously disagree that everything is better with a friend.  Diablo 3 was just as shitty with other people as it was alone.  I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I know that I've played games that were actually worse in co-op, usually due to some terrible design decisions.   Fable 2?  Fable 2 co-op was shit, that's for sure. 

Well now, wednesday night EuroDiablo would beg to differ!

[N1njaSquirrel]

And I would make the opposite argument, if a game is designed with co-op in mind (which I think Hammerwatch was), then how it plays with others is the most important part.  To me, that's like saying "Sure, Mortal Kombat is fun with friends, but it's that single player campaign that really matters."  Just like some games are designed around PvP, some games are built to have co-op as the main event and it is the single player campaign that's the add-on.

 

Also, I strenuously disagree that everything is better with a friend.  Diablo 3 was just as shitty with other people as it was alone.  I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I know that I've played games that were actually worse in co-op, usually due to some terrible design decisions.   Fable 2?  Fable 2 co-op was shit, that's for sure. 

 

Sure, but if it was designed with co-op in mind, why give you the option to play it single player? When I load up a game, I'm always under the impression that it's a single-player experience, unless specified otherwise. I thought the same when I loaded up hammerwatch too. Idk, maybe I'm just an anti-social gamer.

 

I also think fighting games are kinda different, in terms of single player vs multiplayer. I certainly play a lot of fighting games single player too.