"Virtue and a Sledgehammer" reviewed: The hammer hits the wrong spot
"Virtue and a Sledgehammer" leaves me feeling perplexed. The story about a dysfunctional family offers some intriguing approaches. This is contrasted by the clumsy assertion that AI is crap.
I am walking through the Spanish pampa with Pratelle and her sledgehammer, smashing houses, androids, and memories. All of this in a great PS2 aesthetic. Sounds weird? It is. "Virtue and a Sledgehammer" tells fragments of growing up and loss. Of what it means to be human and why artificial intelligence is crap – at least that is how I understood the game by Deconstructeam and Selkie Harbour.
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Heavy topics, processed with little text and context. This works in parts. For example, when the game reveals more about the characters seemingly in passing. But in the end, the sledgehammer comes down.
Therapy? Better a sledgehammer
"Most people choose therapy. You choose the brave option. A sledgehammer." That is how the game greets me – alongside an obligatory warning that mentally unstable people should stay away due to the plot.
I am thrown straight into the action. In third-person perspective, I control the protagonist Pratelle through her home village. Somewhere in the Spanish countryside. After years, she returns with the sledgehammer and smashes her way through her past. I like this image of direct confrontation. I have the impression the game wants to hammer its message into me. But that is not the case – at least not in every respect.
I know almost nothing about Pratelle and her family and nothing about why she returns with the hammer. In fragments, I learn that the relationships with her mother Merche and her older sister Nina are at the center. The father? Only mentioned in passing. It seems to have been difficult.
I learn this by hammering on white, crystallized memories. They trigger flashbacks. Besides these, there are red counterparts. They initially show only short images. Only when I have smashed enough of them does the game release a full memory. The white ones are mandatory for progress, the red ones optional. If I want to unlock all memories, I have to search for the latter by smashing buildings and exploring every corner of the world.
The themes in the memories are anything but forced upon me. I often have to read between the lines – a break with the sledgehammer. Over time, I learn that Pratelle's relationship is not only complicated with the village and her mother, but that the one with her sister has also been shattered over the years. There is, for example, a scene where both, as teenagers, lead a supposed groomer astray. For Pratelle, this leads to remorse, while Nina urges her to continue. Another time, it is less subtle. Pratelle is supposed to choke her older sister to the brink of death so that the latter learns what the "ghost" is – an abusive relationship.
I only learn certain things by carefully following the androids' speech bubbles. When one attacks and calls Pratelle a "fucking dyke," it is another piece of the puzzle of her motivation. As a lesbian, she probably had a hard time in rural Spain. Again, this is a stark break from the sledgehammer. That is precisely why this one short interaction remains in my memory.
Hammering, walking, hammering
As in every walking simulator, I can interact very little. Besides walking – I cannot run – I only interact with the sledgehammer. I can charge its attacks. With a short press of the button, I push attacking androids back. If I press a little longer, I destroy walls or humanoid robots. And if I press really long, I can additionally smash larger androids or those crawling on the ground.
Sounds like fun? It is – at least for the first ten minutes. I can basically smash everything with the sledgehammer that I could in reality. But I walk around for about three hours in search of Pratelle's past. That becomes repetitive at some point. Added to this is that the controls feel sluggish and, unlike other walking simulators, I am forced to interact more if I want to find all the memories. At some point, I get fed up with it. It gets toughest shortly before the end, when I have to climb a mountain path for five minutes without interacting. For all my love for the great PS2 look of the game: That is simply superfluous and boring.
The hammer comes at the end
Over time, I also learn why the inhabitants are androids. Nina has digitized the "ghost" of humans into artificial intelligences and transplanted them into the robots. Yep, from Pratelle's processing of the past, the game shifts from one second to the next to the complex question of what it means to be human. Interesting in itself, but the authorship of Deconstructeam leaves no room for interpretation, but takes a clear stance.
They choose the term androids and not cyborgs. So these are no longer humans inside the robots, as would be the case with a cyborg. They are robots with artificial intelligence. The humans on whom these intelligences are based are dead – Nina killed them. The game degenerates into a polemic against AI. A profound examination does not take place, and a "choice" at the end of the game is only one on paper. Thus, it says in the credits: "Our time is poisoned by artificial intelligence."
There it is again, the sledgehammer.
I wish the game had stuck to what it does well: the contrast between the sledgehammer and the fragments. AI can and must be critically questioned, but simply saying "AI is crap" is clumsy.
"Virtue and a Sledgehammer" will be released on October 27, 2026, for PC. Devolver Digital provided me with the game for the review.
In a nutshell
A hammer without a delicate touch
Pro
- fragmentary storytelling with space between the lines
- strong contrast between sledgehammer and subtle themes
- authentic PS2 visuals
Contra
- clumsy, unreflective message against AI
- The gameplay becomes repetitive after a short time
- sluggish controls
- Completion forces a blunt search of the environment
- The characters' backgrounds remain too thin in places
From big data to big brother, Cyborgs to Sci-Fi. All aspects of technology and society fascinate me.
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