Then again, maybe "brawler" isn't the right word -- Hammerfight is, to briefly summarize, a ship-versus-ship combat game where you swing boulders, hammers, swords, and other melee weapons around your steampunkified™ flying machine solely by moving the mouse. The faster you swing, the more damage your weapon does.
Hammerfight is now availble on Steam for $9.99, which would be awesome if the game weren't so goddamned frustrating.
I was planning on reviewing Hammerfight, but I doubt I'll be able to; the game seems to have absolutely no idea how difficult it is, and takes great pains to throw you in ludicrously unfair situations at every turn without bothering to include any sort of actual difficulty curve.
The moment you start up the game, you will be kicked in the balls. It only gets worse from there, as the game forces you to play through escort mission upon escort mission upon escort mission, while also forcing you to fight against literal armies of much stronger enemies wielding much stronger weapons who can maneuver with remarkable dexterity while your ship seems to control as if it were made of dark matter and loaded down with ball bearings. And this is on the easier of the two campaign modes.
But, I dunno, maybe the game gets better later on. The basic idea is pretty cool, at least.
Contest:
4:40 PM on 10.29.2009
| 
if i ever hear steampunkified™ uttered in real life i think my head will explode.
Three little tips:
a) Start a new game and in the very first mission there is a dummy enemy you should attack. Do not attack him but just fly arround, get used to the controls and try to attack his boulder - do that several times and then start completing missions. After a while you will have access to another modes where you can do your training.
b) Not sure if this is still working, but in beta builds it was possible to chance mouse sensitivity in configuration file.
c) If some mission is too hard for you (except the final battle I think) the game will offer you skipping that mission (it will cost you all your gold)
Such a shame. This game could have been better, especially if it had support for the Novint Falcon device.
Seriously - it gets easier with practice. There are some extremely difficult levels, yes, but mostly you get pure pleasure.
It was quite difficult at first but I've finally gotten the hang of it and unlocked the armory to get new weapons and the odds seem a lot more fair now.
"The moment you start up the game, you will be kicked in the balls" - Anthony Burch, Destructoid
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41100/
But yeah, £2.50. They really took an obscure reference for that Steam page, didn't they?