Reviewing stuff is something that I have been into for a long while. While I now write reviews of just about any medium, be it video games, cinema, music, or even literature, I initially stuck to video games only. This is quite logical seeing as my love for writing these blurbs began as soon as I started reading my first gaming magazines. I would initially write bizarrely fanboyish reviews on Nintendo games on pieces of paper using a pencil, even going as far as copying the entire layout of my favourite zine at the time, N64 Magazine (drawn screenshots included). After a while, my focus shifted to the internet and I discovered the big gaming websites, such as the one you are on right now. Seeing as my writing skills were obviously still very limited (I must have been like 10 years old at the time), I had little choice but to copy the stuff I read most. Still being a rampant Nintendo fanboy at the time - I even remember sending an angry e-mail to Game Revolution for rating Tomb Raider higher than Super Mario 64 - my reviews were basically just declarations of love to whatever N64 game I was into at the time, with a snarky comment about Sony thrown in here and there. I also switched from Dutch to English because that's the language most of the reviews I read from that point onwards were written in.

I'd like to think that now I write reviews with a little more depth, and that I even might have developed my own styIe, but this isn't something that I developed overnight. I'm still learning new stuff every day, and apart from having had to develop a more mature view on video games, I've also had to improve my English constantly as I'm not a native speaker of it. That I've at least made progress in both of these areas will be attested to by this cute artefact I found lying around in some drawers one day. Because while many of my earliest reviews will have been lost forever (probably for the better...), it turns out I printed out some of my reviews and video game-related articles a good few years ago. Judging by the fact that the documents contained both a review of the first Need For Speed Underground and a preview article of the "Nintendo Revolution" (codename for what turned out to be the Wii) and "the next Xbox" (the 360), they must have been written around 2004, when I was 15-16 years old. Out of this rather extensive collections of articles, I have decided to transcribe a review I did on Hogs of War, the overlooked PSX cIassic. I did not edit it, leaving all the dodgy reasoning and spelling/grammar errors in tact. My motivations behind publishing this, apart from it being good for a laugh, is that we often do not realise how much we learn over the years until we look back and see where we started. And this is where I started:

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Hogs of War



Hogs of War was released in 1999 for the PSone. This is no ordinary wargame, seeing as you don't fight with/against common soldiers. The soldiers are pigs! This fact contributes to the originality of this game, and makes it stand out from the crowd. It's also not ordinary because this game is fine melange of the shooting-, strategy- and RPG genres.

This is how it works: You can choose from 6 different nations: France, Germany, Russia, USA, Great Britain and Japan. It doesn't matter which team you choose, seeing as the only things unique about the teams are the uniforms, the names and the voices. For the rest they have the same abilities in combat. Once you have chosen your team, you go on a training mission. In this mission, a funny voice (Rik Mayall) guides you on a map and lets you learn the basics of the game. After you're done, you go on a campaign of 25 missions.



In combat, you fight another nation, controlled by the CPU (except in multiplayer), and you take turns in attacking. Per attack, you can shoot/slap/stab etc. one time. After that, your enemy gets to attack, and the last team standing wins the mission. The missions require thought-out tactics, and it's pretty challenging. Although the game itself is pretty easy, it's always a challenge to get as few victims as possible on your side. After you win a mission, you can upgrade one soldier of your army. If all your soldiers are alive after a mission, you can upgrade 2 soldiers (or 2 soldiers twice).

With upgrading your soldier pigs, you can make them choose a certain career path: Heavy weapon specialist, medic, engineer or spy. They all have weapons unique to their career, such as mortyrs, TNT and bazooka. After you upgrade a certain member enough times, they'll become an almighty commando, no matter which career path they have followed. This upgrading feature also requires some thinking. Would it be smarter to slightly upgrade all soldiers, or would it be more wise to make one super strong soldier?



You get the concept of the game now, but how has it been worked out? I can tell you one thing: The game lives up to the expectations I gave you with my explanation. The 3D worlds are varied and quite beautiful for a PSX game. This game will take you from rainy trenches to deserts to green hills. It's always a surprise what the next world is going to be like. After you've conquered island by island, and wonder: "So, that's it?", the answer is no. There also is an exiting multiplayer mode with many options. You can even use the army you've created in single player mode in a battle against your friends.



Many critics have called this game a 3D version of Worms, but it's much more than that. It's just top fun, and it pleases me to see that the makers of this game mainly focus on gameplay and fun. That, however, doesn't mean that the graphics and sound of this game lack. In contrary, the voices have been done by Rik Mayall, the British comedian who starred in shows such as The Young Ones, Bottom, and he even also appeared in the famous show Blackadder, with Rowan Atkinson. His voice talents give this game an even more humerous touch than it already had. He is good at immitating the accents of the many nations featured in the game.

As I said before, the graphics of this game are very good for a PSone-game. I played this game for the first time this November (2004), and the graphics don't annoy me, which is good for a game of 5 years old. The awesome 3D worlds really contribute to the atmosphere of this game. Walking through the mud in the rainy trenchwar-level is an awesome experience, and the other World War-ish locations are all very neat and they did a good job designing it for tactical battle.

All in all, this game is a fantastic choice for those who are getting bored of all the realistic wargames being released nowadays. Even if it's old, this is certainly a game worth playing. It wasn't an overhyped game so a lot of people have not played this games, and they are really missing out. If you're one of those people, I suggest you buy this baby soon, it shouldn't be too expensive.



It's a game that lasts. It's never boring to replay the single player mode, and the multiplayer does great at parties, I can tell you that. The keywords of Hogs of War are originality, tactic, fun and variation. It's one of the secret gems of the PSX. and guarantees for neverending fun. This is not just Worms in a 3D world, it's Hogs of War.

Report Card:
87/100
+ Pure fun
+ Funny voices
+ The different armies
+ Varied maps
- So-so graphics
- Music?


(Note: I couldn't find the old screenshots I used, so I just looked for similar ones on the internet to keep the layout more or less faithful to the age-old original.)
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And so ends a fascinating document, and a testament of how much I still had to learn when I was a 16 year-old adolescent who thought he knew it all. In my own defence, though, I remember I often was too lazy to re-read my own stuff, so I might've been able to do better than this at the time. In any case, maybe I should start playing this game again soon and write a new review. I promise it'll be better.