They say Team17's wondrous
Worms is due on iPhone 'imminently' (actually,
it's out - ed). I can think of a certain group of hogs that won't be especially pleased by such news.
IUGO Entertainment's strategic turn-based shooter borrows heavily from the exploits of those elongated, earthy friends of old.
To be clear, this is no copy, but
Star Hogs is from the same family as
Worms, despite its more futuristic setting.
Casting aside
Worms's trademark cheeky take on mindless violence in favour of a far more traditional portrayal of galactic warfare,
Star Hogs is a space opera that hands you the controls of anything from a solitary spaceship to a fleet of four craft, charging you with a splendidly simple goal: obliterate the enemy's ships with any of the weapons at your disposal before they obliterate you.
Combat takes place in turn-based battles where, whether you're partaking in a one-off round with progress limited by a ticking clock or a bout in the game's full-on Campaign mode, you're given a set amount of energy to expel within each move.
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Just how you use this energy is up to you, but everything you do - from merely navigating around the map to firing your weapons - sucks it up dry, making every turn a balance between positioning your ship or firing at your foe.
Protecting your own armada is also key, as your ships are every bit as vulnerable as those in your sights. Each craft starts off with a full bill of health, the aim being to protect those under your control for long enough to eradicate your adversaries before they have a chance to knock you out of the contest.
Your rival, too, plays within the same confines and has an identical aim. Control passes between your ships and those of your foe in order, whether it's a one-on-one tussle or a four-man assault.
But even choosing your line of attack, or indeed defence, isn't your only quandary. There's every possibility that, even if you make the right move, you'll squander any opportunities that present themselves.
When firing missiles, combat is a matter of combining the angle of your shot with the power behind it, so that it hits the enemy dead on and wipes hundreds off his health in one short burst.
Of course, there's no guarantee you'll get either element right - the force behind the shot proves especially difficult, and often reverts to trial and error. But this is where one of
Star Hogs's smart innovations comes into play: every shot you take is 'ghosted' both in terms of angle and power. This means that when you come to take a follow-up shot, you know exactly the combination that proved so successful the first time around.
This ghosting relies on you hitting your target at some point, however. Just how much a partial hit or even a total miss damages your long-term chances of winning the fight depends on how you defend yourself from counter-attacks (while your ships can naturally take flight, at the end of each move they drop back down to the space floor, which itself provides protection, but can be eradicated with weaponry) and the difficultly level you're playing at. Set to its easiest, the enemy fleet is just as capable of making one blunder after another as a first-timer.
Those with a knack for galactic warfare will swiftly find themselves slipping into a rhythm, however, and
Star Hogs's 32 mission Campaign mode is fully equipped to take them on, enabling the upgrading of both the ships themselves and the weapons on board as you move from one challenge to the next.
Even this facet poses difficult questions. The various ships on offer are weighted differently, some coming with a bias towards weaponry, others specialising in technology upgrades. Just as in battle,
Star Hogs is awash with decisions, and it will be easy for some to immerse themselves in micro-managing every detail
But, success breeds success in
Star Hogs, and once you've tasted victory it's very hard not to plough on from one round to another, expanding your control and generally sharpening your tools for smarter and smarter victories.
Anyone who falls foul at an early stage might well lament
Star Hogs's lack of character when compared to its inspiration, but those who have a penchant for pounding the hell out each other in a round of 'star wars' won't mind opening this whole new can of worms.
