Topic: The Magic Hammer

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Here's my review, thought it a little long so I put it in its own post.

Despite the flood of "minecraft/Terraria clones" on the pc market, (as people have come to call them) the 3DS has been rather void of these types of games. There are only 2 others that I know of: Battleminer and Cube Creator, the latter of which is only single player.
It is nice to see these games (even if it's a very token style of game - look at something that's super popular, and copy it) coming to the 3DS too.

The Magic Hammer is... for lack of better words, a little rough around the edges. It definitely gives the "indie beta" vibe, albeit an almost finished one. What do I mean by that? I mean that whoever was doing the beta testing didn't pick up on a couple of things that would annoy anyone who has a decent amount of experience with different games.

The game dumps you into a village with little instruction except to "talk to the village elder". You sort of have to guess who this is, as the game characters lack, well, character. They look as bad as early 20th century LEGO figures. Anyway, the story is a rather bland interpretation of the King Arthur fable where you have to retrieve a hammer from a stone. You waltz off with the hammer with not much more than a "wow" from the other NPCs, you can then do what you want.

The magic hammer is the tool you use to hit enemies and dig up blocks as per standard minecraft convention, and the controls are fairly decent for doing so. You have your third person camera which makes it easier to fight since the circle pad/d-pad turn your character and you can see around you, while mashing the attack key while facing a block still allows you to mine it in this view. The second view is first person, where your circle pad/d-pad control movement while the circle pad pro or ABXY keys if you don't have a New 3DS, control looking. (Theres also the touch screen pad but as if that wasnt painful enough to use for the third-person Monster Hunter) in this mode you can't jump (although you can walk up one-block slopes) but you can attack/mine with R and place blocks with L since you have a crosshair.

Block interaction is minimal, all blocks are static and inert except the doors, and water, which you can't dive below surface level, and spreads like the evil minecraft classic water.

But that's not 100% the point of the game. The idea is to run around the world finding these "boneyards", killing a set number of zombies and skeletons in them to cause a boss to appear. After defeating the boss, you gain a new hammer ability (So far I've gotten the ground slam, spin attack, and fireball moves) or a level up for your pre-existing ones. After defeating a set number, The Magical Hammer tells you he has enough power to send you to the fire dimension. Don't expect anything fancy though - all he literally does is change the skin of all the blocks in the world. No new world, no new mobs or anything. Just now all the blocks have had a fresh coat of red or reddish paint. Groundbreaking stuff.

There's a level up system for your inherit stats, and a pet system too, which is nice. It's nothing fancy though. You buy bait, find an animal in the overworld, walk up to it and "buy" it with bait (each animal type has a different bait quantity required to tame)

I played 4 hours in multiplayer (which is 2 players tops, although you can play local or online, I haven't tried online yet) and although it was sort of fun, I had a couple gripes that I hope get ironed out in a patch.

• All the towns are the same. Although the buildings are in different spots and are of different types, there's just the same 6 NPCs. Elder who says one of four hints, potion seller (one for mana, one for health), eccentric collector, (gives you a random mcguffin, then asks for another type of mcguffin. You need to visit multiple towns before you have a chance of picking up a mcguffin another collector is asking for) bait seller, and miner (becomes your "pet" for 1000 gold, instamines any gold and diamond blocks you walk near which can be handy)
  Oh, and a guy who buys soul blocks which sometimes drop from skeletons.
• There are no variations in biomes. Just rolling hills and the odd lake, town, and boneyard to break up the monotony. Good for building, not so much for exploring. But that brings me to my next point.
• Important locations are too far apart, with no new stuff in between! You need to beat 3 boneyards I think to unlock the next hammer ability. But towns outnumber boneyards 3:1, and the distance between these town/boneyard emplacements is just... well it's a minute or more's travel. And that just adds up.
• STOP SPAWNING BANDITS NEAR ME. They spawn, immediately aggro to you, walk to you and start attacking you. You kill him. 40 seconds later, another one spawns. They're not a threat with their 2dps versus your 12dps and 100+ hp, just a constant annoyance when you're trying to build (there is a creative mode though)
• So little feedback that you are being injured from behind in first person view in multiplayer. You can hear the sword clangs but with little volume drop-off over distance you might think its the other player until you check your healthbar.
• Dropped coins and pickups, despite being massive, have tiny hitboxes and really fast despawns.
• Pets are impassable and can't be shoved. Combine with above for when they sit on top of a recently defeated enemy's pickups
• Health and Mana bars only show the first 100 of their respective resource. This means that the graphical bar for a player with 125/190HP sees the bar as full.
• Not really a gripe because it's an optional feature, but I implore you to turn off auto camera. I didn't, and the bossfights were pretty nightmarish due to the camera. The third person camera constantly turns to face nearby enemies, making it impossible to kite bosses without accidentally shoehorning yourself into a dead end because you couldn't see where you were going.
• Bossfights and Boneyard fights are quite samey, the hammer abilities freshen things up but deal too little damage per mana seeing as mana regenerates as slowly as health does.
• Walking into NPCs engages their conversation. Vendor's default cursor location is over "yes" and B does not cancel out of a conversation.

All in all, a fun game for kids and it's pretty cheap, but I can't give it a strong reccomendation. 5/10.