If you’ve watched Park Chan-Wook’s 2003 film Oldboy, you should remember the bloody three minute fight scene that takes place in a corridor in which Oh Dae-Su gets rather nasty with a hammer. Well, it’s now a NES-style freeware game.
Made by UK-based artist DavidDraws, Hammered is a simple 2D brawler with a retro aesthetic. All you can do is move left and right, and kick, as well as use your hammer. It lacks the flow of the fight scene it’s based on, instead being a rigid and very tough brawler, but it’s still worth a few minutes of your time.
As you move closer to vengeance by moving to the right, you’ll have to fight through waves of enemies, splatting their innards across the walls and floor in gory displays. The hard part is that you have to be quite close to each enemy to hit them, but they will hit your health down quick if you let them get too close.
You do get health pickups after you’ve killed a few enemies, but it doesn’t go very far, and it’s almost certain that you’ll be dead within no time.
I’ve played it a few times and barely lasted a minute, achieving what I imagine is a very poor high score. If you reckon you can do any better, then please, be my guest and play Hammered for free in your browser on itch.io.