Sony PSP Review: Hammerin’ Hero

Button mashing. Side scrolling. Bosses that take forever to beat, if you stick to the pattern. You’ll find all of this and more in the latest smash ‘em up title from Atlus, Hammerin’ Hero. The game combines everything you’d complain about in a next-gen game, throws it in a well packaged pot with vibrant graphics and gives you a nostalgic title that urges you to play on.

First and foremost, Hammerin’ Hero is a button-mashing game from start to finish. There is no underlying strategy. No bells and whistles. And, Hammerin’ Hero makes no apologies about it.

You begin the game as Gen, a carpenter with a giant hammer that is almost the same size as he is. Once the game begins you will begin to smash your opponents over and over through twelve levels of gameplay. Gen has two attacks, one is a standard swing and the other is a hard attack. Occasionally, you will also get to unleash a special attack.

As you progress through this title you learn different occupations from sushi chef to baseball player. But, the game remains the same. Even as a sushi chef, you’ll just bash your enemies over and over with one hard piece of raw fish. The feel is very much a throwback to the days of 16-bit platformers. Hammerin’ Hero tries to add some variety to gameplay by allowing you to make a bento dish that allows you to change occupations once per board. Sometimes the bento dish can go awry causing some unexpected results. But, again, nothing inherently changes as you swap mallet for baseball bat t smash your enemies.

Hammerin’ Hero boasts superb anime style visuals. You may find yourself feeling hungry every time you boot up as Gen, and not because of the in-game bento boxes from your wanna-be love interest Kanna. Gen looks very much like the character image for the Japanese fast-food chain Teriyaki Boy. The settings provide crisp 2D backdrops. From time to time a pedestrian will air their grievance with your malicious enemies. When this happens, you can smash their dialogue bubble, and the pedestrian will join in the action throwing everything but the kitchen sink at your attackers. After each stage, you can check your collection and those pedestrians will have left thank you messages for having helped them out.

I could have used some more variety in the settings. My favorite, by far, was the baseball setting where you button-mash the villainous umpire. I would have liked maybe an office scene where you knock down a suit-wearing CEO or a giant nerd with pocket protector, but that’s just me.

The major draw back to Hammerin’ Hero is the repetitiveness of your enemy attacks, that is augmented by their lack of AI. They just rush at you and fall victim to your smash attack. The boss fights are the coolest enemy interaction. But, you’ll quickly realize that the bosses follow old school pattern based attacks. All you’ll need is a little patience and you will gradually wear the boss down into submission.

There is a Multiplayer feature, which is hardly worth discussing. It suffers from severe lag, and gamers have no real interaction with one another. This is really upsetting and one of the reasons why the PSP is on its way out. The system was built with multiplayer capabilities as a selling point, but the actual games have never been up to par.

Although the music isn’t anything to rave about, the voice over is very good. Also, purists can play with the original Japanese voicing which is always a treat.

Overall, Hammerin’ Hero is a game designed for people who simply love platformers and are looking for a throwback to the old days. Despite heavy button mashing, this game will provide you with a lot of smash ‘em up action, with a vibrant backdrop and cool voice over. Unfortunately, with a weak multiplayer and no worthwhile unlockables, there is no reason to play this game after you have beaten it. The game would have benefited from a few extra levels to beef up gaming time, but it’s still a fun time and that counts.