Games You Should Buy

Some games can be summed up with breathtaking succinctness. Various publications may well waste their time with lucid prose and detailed analysis of their content, but there is little to really be gleaned from these beyond what is found beside the score. These games are in increasingly short supply in the games industry, with 10 – page spiels becoming a more common phenomenon – can you imagine anyone spending 10 pages extolling the virtues of Space Invaders, finding relevant tactical information about Sensible Soccer, or even writing walkthroughs to some of the first beat-em-ups?
Games of such staunch loyalty to their genres do still exist, however; nobody can blame the reviewer who tells of Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training being “Enjoyable maths and English puzzles”, Mercenaries 2 as “Blowing shit up”, or Jimmy White’s Snooker as, well, “Snooker”. These games do exactly what they’re supposed to do, delivering to loyal genre fans but rarely offering any innovation or major surprises in content.
Do not, under any circumstances, be coerced into thinking that Hogs of War falls under this category. A game of such magnificence is let down massively by the caveat of “Its Worms, in 3D”. While Worms is a game of instinct – do you have enough time to ninja rope over to that weapons crate, before wildly firing into that crowd of enemies? – Hogs of War is an intensely tactical affair which will have you pausing the game for some quick maths on several occasions.
Worms is a game which rewards quick thinking and quicker trigger fingers. Hogs of War rewards patience and single-minded adherence to a well thought-out plan. We played through the single player campaign co-operatively with friends, and extensive debates on the use of tactics were not uncommon. Experimentation proved fruitful – the tunnel vision of AI soldiers is exploitable to a fault and the “gas and pass” game plan which we put to use (when pinned back to a few pigs hopelessly out-gunned and out-numbered, bear in mind that once gassed by poison grenades, enemies will do nothing to counter their slow death if everybody on your team is able to hide themselves) brought us many an unlikely success. The quality of Hogs of War by no means belittles that of Worms – both games are good alone and great with friends – but they remain different enough for preferences to be justified, and we set up camp firmly in Hogs of War’s side of the divide.
And even if it wasn’t for all that, another important aspect sets Hogs of War apart from Worms, or just about any other video game for that matter. This game is funny. Today’s technology allows for thousands (oh vague cop-out figures, we do love you) of lines of speech to be pre-recorded into a game and spewed forth as the situation calls for, but the likes of Fable or Fallout cannot begin to charm as much as Hogs of War’s old school general of the main campaign, who’s morale boosting attempts include lines like “I am gob smacked! I thought this was a suicide mission!” The same is true for the friendlier voice of the multiplayer game, who occasionally admits to finding players overwhelmingly attractive. The visual style, too, is disarmingly racist in a “Never mind Uncle Nick, he’s from a far simpler time” kind of way. Thus, the French are portrayed as cowardly soap-dodgers, the Russians as treacherous sneaks, the Americans ignorant war-mongers, and the Brits as insulted prudes. “See,” says Uncle Nick with a sense of satisfaction, “at least I’m honest about our guys, too.”
And in this way Hogs of War really is the perfect summarization of what Playstation, as a brand, is. It’s staunchly un-PC but undeniably endearing, it knows what it’s there for but isn’t afraid to think outside the box, and most importantly it stands for all things good, clean, and fun.
It’s a bit like Worms, right, but 3D, you know?