Having in the past only reviewed Doctor Who related items for my 10,000th post all that time ago at some point last year, I had planned on reviewing other stuff to do with time travel in games and general media. But that idea got kicked in the head and developed amnesia for several months and then fell off my critical spectrum with my job becoming finicky and stressful. So with a new job and the idea suddenly recovering from amnesia, I was going to start with Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox, but then I was at a car boot sale last week and was hit in the face by a massive bout of nostalgia when I saw a dusty copy of this game on a table.
[HEADING=2]Hogs of War[/HEADING]
Hogs of War is exactly what it says on the tin. A group of pig like beings, or hogs if you will, are taking part in a large group based fight, or war.
Hogs of War is a turn-based tactics video game developed by Infogrames Studios and published by Infogrames Europe, released for the PlayStation and PC in 2000, to utterly quote the Wikipidia page.
Being a PS1 game and now 11 years old, there are the obvious issues with various parts of the game. So let's go through the obvious points;
Graphics:
If you are trying to compare Hogs of War to say... any other modern day game, firstly that's very unfair, but secondly the game you are comparing it to is going to loose! Other than being hit with the obvious issues of being PS1 era graphics, the game is colourful and very easy to navigate, controlling your little piggies over the hills and islands of the various maps. The 3D is obviously the basic "rounded blocks" as I like to call it, 3D that is only just 3D on the basis of only just not being 2D.
It also gains 10 million billion points because it plays flawlessly on my 60GB PS3.
Controls: [img_inline align="right" Caption="Yes! It also has jetpacks!"]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2d/Hogs_of_War_Screen.jpg[/img_inline]Having never played the PC version then I cannot account for the PC controls but I'm guessing that there were no issues since the PS1 controller has no issues and a keyboard should make things easier in theory.
Anyway, turn based combat based around selecting a weapon you need using a button to open a menu, 3rd person aiming and a bottom hold power gauge for grenades and bazookas. No control/gameplay hybrid issues arise until you start trying to use jetpacks, which I will cover in the next section.
Gameplay:
3rd person, turn based gameplay with a set time to make your moves, collect weapon drops, select your weapon, aim[footnote]3rd person firing for non-rifle weapons, 1st person for sniper rifle, machine guns etc[/footnote] and fire. Which actually works pretty well as a device to keep gameplay flowing as it forces you to hop to it when doing your thing.
You start with a team of 5 pigs (3 for the starting couple of missions) each pig gets their turn in order from top to bottom based on your team selection pre-parachute drop, your pig takes a turn, then the enemy pig, then the next pig of yours, then the next of theirs etc etc until you start from the top again. Multiplayer levels allow for manual pig selection but I will cover that later. Your pigs start off as Grunts on the campaign and as you earn promotion points for winning and for achieving bonus objectives like not loosing any of your team or collecting promotion drops during the battlefield. Assuming you win in the end of course. [img_inline align="right" width=350 Caption="I regret nothing!"]http://distrib.vologda.data.cod.ru/photos/6/8/3/w400_ac104e5ce72183ab871d5e5e46460386.jpg[/img_inline]
Once you start on the promotion path then your piggies choose their specialisation.
There are four main class types; heavy gunner that specialize in long range heavy weapons like bazookas, mortars and rocket launchers, engineer that specialize in explosives like grenades, mines and TNT, espionage that don't appear on the mini map and use sniper rifles and camouflage and finally medic that can heal other units in both close and long rage.
But honestly, the medic is just there for the tactical option and you loose the firepower of one pig because he's too busy running about the battlefield healing up your scattered pigs then you deserve it when he gets all the bullets and explosives within a 3 mile radius drawn straight towards him like he's got his own personal black hole generator!
Some maps have vehicles. These vary in usefulness and are only really good for hiding in and running down enemy pigs in a turn based combat game is hilarious as once you chop off half their health with the might of your tracks, the recipiant piggy just stands there looking sorry for himself.
Jetpacks were probably a good idea during the planning session as a way to catapult your way accross the map at unreasonable speeds by strapping a stripy rocket to your back, but since if you press nothing after launching the rocket then you shoot up into the air in the direction you were aiming and crash back to earth and loose a chunk of your health. Thus you have to detach from the rocket in mid air and parachute directly downwards. Great in theory. However, being 3rd person, the camera doesn't let you look down so you have to rely on the mini map so you don't land on a minefield or right into enemy territory!
Campaign:
The "story" for what of a better word, is just a cutscene at the start of the game and basically disappears after that. The idea is that you are trying to capture an island called Saustralasia which contains the areas Hogshead, Saustralia, Trottsville, Bellyopolis and Arstria. And yes, see the map provided and just have a guess where "Arstria" is located! You play as thinly veiled modern day countries with piggy names. Basically, the choices are Britian, France, Japan, Russia, America and Germany. [img_inline align="right" width=350 Caption="Appologies for it being in Russian, but obscure pictures of 11 year old games are hard to find!"]http://s49.radikal.ru/i123/1006/50/d0d826c560b2.jpg[/img_inline] But really, the teams' only difference are their colours and it it doesn't matter because they are all voiced by Rik Mayall!
I'm going to go off the path a little here and praise Rik Mayall as much as I can get away with. Rik Mayall is the greatest video game actor in the history of video games as a whole. Every single line of dialogue in Hogs of War is solid gold and never gets old after all 30 odd missions, especially when your timer is running low and Rik starts yelling at you to get a move on, and if I ever made a video game then Rik Mayall would voice every single character and be the narrator! If you are unfortunate to not know who this man-god is, then I suggest you watch "The Young Ones" as soon as possible.
Conculsion:
Pros:
Peerless voice acting.
Colourfull maps and characters.
Fun gameplay.
Entertaining weapons.
Cons:
Not available on PSN
Sequel canceled 2 years ago.
The jetpack.
Final Verdict:
Hogs of War is easy to get hold of for PS1 and if you haven't yet played it then I hope this review has convinced you otherwise. Avoid it on PC though unless you run Windows 95 as it takes mind crushing levels of work to patch it to work on Windows 7 and even then it chugs along.
[sub]Aside: This entire review was done on my iPad. We'll see how well that turns out eh?[/sub]
