You know, I did not realize that Radiohammer was a iOS/Android game over a year before its 3DS release earlier this month until about an hour into the game, when I reasoned that it would fit very well on a mobile game. Anyway, the concept is simple and overall well executed, but it’s the type of game that’s intended for a niche genre, which is fine. It also helps it’s only $6, although it’s even less than that on other platforms.
I played Radiohammer on a new 2DS I just got last week, which is just as well because Radiohammer has no 3D support. For a game that has a right-to-left side-scrolling design, with intended 3D depth, it’s a bit odd and unfortunate that 3D visuals are not supported. I think this could have helped immerse the player at least a little bit more because most of what you’re doing in Radiohammer is timing your button or screen taps to enemies that are running at you from right to left, usually with two simultaneous levels of depth (foreground to background). Distinguishing placement of these enemies can be a little bit fatiguing at times.
What I found more persistently tiresome though was the repetition and music. Granted, I’m not a rhythm game fan in general, and I have hardly played any game like this since Elite Beat Agents and some recent stints with DJ Hero and Donkey Konga in the last year. I am however a fan of some electronic music, like breaks, but the music in Radiohammer, at least as far as I have played to at this point, is pretty tepid — serviceable for the sessions while you play, but not memorable. The game’s story mode is split up into three chapters, each featuring a different DJ tasked with clearing out a certain area across the course of fifteen stages and a boss fight. These must all be unlocked in order, and the group of songs available per chapter is fairly limited, so expect to hear some tracks several times as you tap your way through.
Some stages are really short, others combine multiple tracks at you and the stage can last several minutes. A basic life meter and a Perfect-mode (not the right term I’m sure, but that’s how I remember it) meter are situated in the top left of the HUD. There is a specific hitbox that you have to cater your taps to to achieve ratings of Perfect, Great, Good, Bad, and outright miss. Missing hits docks your health, and as you would expect there are times when the enemies are coming out you in a flurry, so you can quickly get out of sorts if you’re not careful. Fortunately, at almost predictable moments, behind your character will appear a gift box. If you tap the giftbox (or press Left + Y) you get some health back instantly, however if the box is green then you lose health. Meanwhile if your combo is going well enough that you fill up the Perfect meter, the visuals change suddenly putting you in this brief bonus mode where every hit you make counts as a Perfect, which goes towards your final score and rating based on one to three stars. The more stars you get the more you unlock, including Trophies/Achievements that you can view from the main menu.
Perhaps the coolest part about Radiohammer are the boss fights, although there are only three as far as I know (two that I have faced). These are challenging but very creative, and in some vague way remind me of the creative bosses seen in Dynamite Headdy. They’re cool to see and encounter, I just wish the number of stages leading up to their encounter were cut in half as trudging through the same enemies on the same backgrounds with the same music gets tedious long before you get to them. Still, as a $6 rhythm game with a really quirky “story” and addictively simple mechanics, Radiohammer is a pretty strong option for fans of the genre or those that are curious to check out said genre. With that, let’s get to the summary…
