This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Matthew Call.

Hammer & Sickle is the latest game from CDV and Nival Interactive, makers of Silent Storm. In a refreshing change of pace, the game is designed as a turn-based strategy/role-playing hybrid. H&S puts players into the shoes of a Russian spy in West Germany in 1949, just as the Cold War is picking up steam. This spy has a mission – find out why the West (i.e. the United States) seems to want to wipe out Russia with nuclear weapons, and determine if war can possibly be averted. Unfortunately, while the game has an innovative concept behind it, annoying bugs and a half-finished feel spoil what is otherwise an original take on the turn-based strategy genre.

While there is a lot to dislike about H&S, there are some fairly good aspects of the game, which are unfortunately not enough to redeem it. For starters, the graphics are decent, given the standard graphics of turn-based strategy games. Houses and other buildings look fairly detailed, and each soldier type on the screen is unique and easily recognizable. Clutter is visible on desks and shelves and adds a lived-in feel to the buildings. An overhead view is utilized to show players the battlefield, which enables gamers to take in the entire battle at once, which is crucial in turn-based strategy games. The in-game camera can zoom in and out and rotate as needed, allowing players to get a view on any situation from multiple angles.

The sound is also moderately well done, with full voiceovers for the cutscenes. Russian comrades speak English with B-movie Russian accents, which fit nicely with the title’s overall mood. Sounds are also clear and distinct, from the rattling of machine guns to the explosive punches of hand grenades. Unfortunately, the music is lackluster and often doesn’t fit with the genre and time period of the game.

The gameplay shifts from real-time to turn-based, depending on whether or not enemies are nearby. In the turn-based segments the game allots players a certain number of action points which can be spent on moving, changing positions (walk to crawl, for example), and using weapons. Once the player’s action points are spent the enemy has a chance to move and spend his action points in a similar fashion. As the player progresses through the game, more characters are added to the squad so it’s not just a one man show. Eventually up to six comrades will help the player to dispatch pesky American soldiers and other enemies in the name of Mother Russia.

Six customizable character classes such as soldier, medic, and scout help to cater the game to different styles of players. If desired, players can even fully customize their spy’s stats from the ground up. A skill tree is integrated into the game that enables players to spend gained skill points on new abilities, which adds a nice role-playing aspect to the strategy elements.

By far the best feature of Hammer & Sickle is its setting. Recently the World War II era has been overdone in almost every genre, from shooters to strategy titles. It’s refreshing to see a game tackle a new setting, and the Cold War has not been prevalently featured in games as of late. In addition to the setting, H&S is played from the perspective of the Russians, who were the mortal enemies of the West during the Cold War. This perspective creates an interesting good-guy, bad-guy complex which makes H&S significantly more entertaining.

The single biggest problem the game has is its interface, path-finding in particular. At times I would click on a part of the screen only a few feet from my character and my character would take a tour of the entire town before ending up where I wanted him to go. When there are enemies in the area this is not only annoying, it becomes a show stopper. There are also significant bugs in the game. At times characters or items will disappear completely, but somehow still manage to attack the player’s character. Since this isn’t Star Trek, but rather Germany in 1949, things shouldn’t “cloak.” My computer is running the latest NVIDIA drivers, so graphics issues shouldn’t be prevalent in the game. This could be resolved with a patch in the future, but for the time being is a major issue.

Training levels are available at the start, but are not implemented very well. Each lesson begins with a narrative, spoken by your Russian commander, who tells you how to complete an action in the game, such as running or shooting. These are often followed by a lengthy text description of how to accomplish the designated task. These text descriptions are far too lengthy to read through, especially when you’re staring at the twentieth one in a row. Maybe that’s the action gamer in me, but shorter, on-screen cues would have been much more helpful. The first time a player attempts to do the actions in the tutorial it can be a bit confusing. On-screen cues and snippets of text to walk the player through each step should have been used instead of the confusing and lengthy pages of text.

The game is also incredibly difficult, even on “easy.” Although there are three different difficulty modes to choose from, anyone who isn’t a turn-based strategy buff will have a hard time with the game on the easiest setting. Fortunately, there is a custom difficulty setting available, which enables players to tweak various aspects of the game and as a result significantly decrease the difficulty.

Hammer and Sickle takes an interesting concept and hammers it into the ground with a ridiculously high difficulty level and several issues and bugs which should have been resolved before the game shipped. Unless you are a die-hard fan of turn-based strategy, you should look elsewhere for your gaming fix. However, if you are the patient type and really want a game set in the Cold War, Hammer and Sickle does deliver a slight amount of entertainment. Choose wisely.

Slow and frustrating, non-strategy gamers beware!

Not terrible, but nothing jaw dropping, either.

Decent voice work, but terrible music.

Frustrating beyond belief until you get the hang of it, then it is still frustrating.

No multiplayer or unlockables leaves very little incentive to play through the game twice.