Super Hammer Review

When crime is rampant and the streets of the city are literally filled with bad guys, who do you want to save the day? According to Xform Games' new endless runner, Super Hammer, you call on The Hammer.

Super Hammer is a fast-paced endless runner that adds shooting mechanics to the proceedings and puts you in control of the man himself, The Hammer. As this sunglasses-wearing bastion of badassitude, you'll run through the streets, subways and rooftops of the city, all while wiping out the legions of bad guys strewn throughout.

The controls in Super Hammer, like in most endless runners on iOS devices, are fairly simple. You'll slide your fingers left and right to move The Hammer across the three available lanes. Sliding up will cause The Hammer to jump forward, with guns blazing, just like Max Payne. Sliding your finger down makes The Hammer slide forward, pointing his guns toward the sky. And tapping the Fire button lets The Hammer unload his weapons on the many bad guys that litter the streets.

A number of power-ups are available for you to buy and equip in the Armory. On your runs, you'll pick up fat wads of cash to use in the Armory for weapons, weapon slots, costumes and boosts. Thankfully, it's relatively easy to build up a huge stash of money, allowing you to buy most of the best items in the Armory within just a few runs.

Such power-ups include a costume that enables auto-fire, a jetpack that automatically flies you to the 3000M mark, a destructive bazooka and items that help you recover after hitting an object or falling off a building. Just to be clear, using all of these items won't make the game any easier, but they do help give you a boost so you can get relatively farther than if you were just running with your default pistols.

The runs themselves aren't anything to write home about, but they do keep you on your toes. You'll run through city streets, a subway system and on rooftops, cycled over and over. Along the way you'll be blocked by barricades, boxes, gaps, bad guys and the occasional item box or two that can be shot open to reveal hidden power-ups. A little more variety in the environments would have been nice, but at least the experience is a fairly smooth one.

Some issues I had with Super Hammer was getting it to run well on my iPad 3rd Generation with Retina Display. For some reason, it would crash every other time I tried to play it. I've had no problems running it on my iPhone 5, so maybe an update is in order?

At the end of the day, Super Hammer is simple, moderately fun game that can get pretty addictive depending on how you feel about endless runners. The items are fun to collect and seeing yourself uppercut bad guys with a shoryuken-like move and then slide towards them with a shotgun in hand is pretty awesome. The character models are serviceable and are reminiscent of a cel-shaded style, but are ultimately nothing memorable.

Still, the action suffices and the price of admission is only $1. Couple that with the fact that there are no in-game purchases, and I'd say that we have a worthy time-waster on our hands, even if it isn't the best endless runner one can find in the App Store.

App Store Link: Super Hammer for iPhone & iPad | By Xform Games | Price: $0.99 | Version: 1.0 | 32.1 MB | Rating 12+