Game Reviews

Hooga

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Hooga
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It's not often that a man with more hair on his back than Robin Williams has on his entire body is deemed suitable to star in a game.

Hooga – both the name of the game and aforementioned mountain of a man – is no great bastion of sophistication.

He's an appropriate hero for game that lacks that a sophisticated edge. The ingredients for an entertaining title are all there, but the elements never really gel.

Feature fix

Hooga comes with the kind of abilities you'd expect from any platform game: jumping, a Sonic-esque mid-air spin attack, and even the ability to glide through the sky for short distances by using an outfit as a parachute of sorts.

You can also call on the kind of arsenal familiar to any cave man with rocks, spears, and so forth available for a severe lobbing when needed.

You spend most of your time running and jumping, traversing the game's prehistoric stages by leaping over falling pathways and jumping on top of monsters that patrol the wilds.

Ridding yourself of these beasts is the main challenge, with health benefits awarded for combo attacks if you can time your midair assaults with precision.

Fighting talk

Much of the appeal relies on the variety such tasks offer up, and it's fair to say Hooga is more than a little repetitive on this count.

Whether you're taking on something Jurassic or one of the game's blood-thirsty plants, bouncing up and down repeatedly on a series of familiar foe soon gets dull. The game isn't helped by predictable level design either.

Hooga essentially splits levels – which range from jungle style outings to barren wasteland affairs – into sections of platforming (avoiding obstacles and leaping between ledges) and combat. Rarely are the two mixed.

You're history

There's a general lack of fluency and sheen throughout. Boss stages, for instance, are a question of repetition rather than dexterity. Indeed, it's hard to summon any sense of satisfaction when you clear a level.

Hooga never really offends, but, by the same token, it doesn't really excite either.

Though you might think flooding a game with prehistoric beasts would make for a memorable experience, Hooga is bizarrely uneventful, and serves as the perfect example of an adventure that merely goes through the motions rather than one that makes waves of its own.

Hooga

Ultimately a little bit of a plain Jane, Hooga hits all the right notes, but doesn't necessarily play them in the right order
Score
Keith Andrew
Keith Andrew
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font. He's also Pocket Gamer's resident football gaming expert and, thanks to his work on PG.biz, monitors the market share of all mobile OSes on a daily basis.