I remember a time when Scorched Earth was THE tank vs. tank multiplayer game. My how times have changed since then… or have they?

Star Hogs ($2.99 – On Sale; Free)

Fast forward to 2009 and the release of Star Hogs, and it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sure there’s now a space oriented theme and a campaign mode, but at its heart Star Hogs is Scorched Earth through and through – and that’s not a bad thing at all. I had a couple of issues with the controls, but otherwise this is the perfect example of how an old classic should be updated for modern audiences.

Presentation

The game looks good. I wasn’t completely blown away by the graphics, but there is definitely a nice polish to the visuals. The landscape has kind of a nice pebbly look to it, instead of the usual smooth or sharp edged terrains that are deformable. On the down side you don’t have the cave-ins and such that you get with some other games of this type, but it’s a nice change of pace visually. I do like the fact that when the final blow is dealt, the tank spins around and the gun pops off. That’s a cool visual element. The game also scales nicely, so that zooming out to get a look at the larger picture doesn’t necessarily prohibit you from discerning the details.

I will say that while you’re in the hangar, the large images of the ships look really nice. They even went the extra mile to allow you the ability to rotate the ships 360 degrees, which while completely unnecessary is a slick feature. I also think they did a good job with the interface, which has nice rounded windows E LK4X64 99R WFH and a bit of a futuristic look to it. The sound effects are pretty standard fare for a combat game. For some reason the sound of the homing missile locking on is particularly piercing to my ears, but everything else is fine. I am a bit surprised that I actually like the music. I’m not normally into the heavy metal scene (or at least that’s what I’m guessing the soundtrack is), but I rather enjoy the tunes that play in the background of this game.

Controls

While in the hanger everything is menu driven and pretty easy to navigate. Once you get out into the playing field you get to use some of the more advanced touch features, and for the most part everything works pretty well. To select a weapon simply click on it. I cover firing your weapon in more detail in the game play section, but the simple explanation is that you drag to set the trajectory, and press a button to fire. One thing I thought was pretty sporting of the developers was that when you select a weapon, it shows the last angle and power used to fire that weapon, where appropriate. I did find that setting the trajectory seemed a bit temperamental, but setting the power worked just fine. To move your ship there are three arrows: left, right and up. And one of these individually worked just fine, but I had some difficulties trying to move at a diagonal. You can also pinch and snap to zoom the playing area in and out, or drag your finger around when you’ve got move selected in order to pan around the map.

Game Play

For such a simple concept, there’s actually a lot to this game. The basic premise is that you control one or more tanks, and you must destroy everyone else on the battlefield. There are three modes: Campaign, Freeplay and Online. I’m not going to discuss online, mainly because I really didn’t explore that option as it wasn’t an interest for me with this particular game. Freeplay is basically a fully customizable one screen skirmish for 2 to 4 players. Players 2 through 4 can be either computer controlled (with easy, medium and hard difficulties) or human (played in hot seat). For each human player you can customize every ship that you’ll use in the game. Some arenas limit you to the number of players and / or number of ships (4 max per player), so the easiest thing is to pick the arena first, then the number of ships, and then start customizing the players. Once you’re actually in the game, the biggest difference between Freeplay and Campaign mode is that your turn is timed in Freeplay mode.

Campaign mode is rather interesting. You start out with enough money to buy a ship and some arms, and you must make your way through a number of stages, earning money to upgrade your ship with the latest and greatest technology. The first thing you’ll come to either appreciate or loathe about the level design is that most of the levels are curved. As a result, shots that might normally have hit the enemy, or at least come close, in a straight on scenario have a better chance of sailing off into obscurity as the projectile makes its way around the surface of the playing field. On the plus side, because every level is basically a bunch of debris floating off in space, you can use this to your advantage by knocking the enemy out of bounds rather than having to completely destroy them.

As is typical for this type of game, you select the weapon you wish to fire. If it’s a projectile weapon you drag your finger in a circle around your tank to get the angle you wish to fire at. Finally you press and hold the fire button until the desired power has been reached and let go to fire. Weapons such as the machine gun simply require you to select an angle and fire – the gun will keep firing until you run out of energy or release the fire button. Still other weapons such as mines are a simple matter of pressing fire to drop and then moving out of the way. One thing that’s a bit different from most games of this type is that your weapon capabilities are based off of energy and not quantity. You initially start off with 100 energy, and each weapon costs a certain amount of energy to use. It also costs you some energy to move your tank. Once your energy is depleted your turn is over, but at the beginning of the next turn you’ll have access to all of your weapons again.

Aside from the curved terrain and energy management, combat plays out much like it would in other games of this style. What really attracted me to Star Hogs, however, was how it deals with upgrades. As I mentioned before, when you start the game you select which ship you want to pilot. There are three choices, and each will ultimately offer a different playing experience. In addition to the three ships there are three types of options that you can upgrade: Arms, Hull and Tech. Each ships has a different number of slots available for each of the three option types, and when you start out the game you only have a certain number of those slots available to fill. To acquire more open slots for a particular option type, you must purchase the slots. You must also purchase the items that fill those slots. Lucky, when something better comes along, you can trade out old items to get some cash towards your new options.

Arms are your weapons, Hull is options that strengthen your exterior, and Tech covers a wide range of useful items, such as boosting the amount of energy you can expend. The trick to all of this is making good use of your money to play to your strengths, instead of just buying the next best thing to come along. You can pick up money during a fight as it is revealed by blasting away the scenery. You also get money at the end of a battle. If you lose you get a small severance pay. If you win your earning depend on how well you won. Also, the first time you beat a level in campaign mode it unlocks the next level as well as giving you some new toys that you can add to your collection if you have the cash.

I feel like I’m only scratching the surface of what’s available in this game, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t come here to read a book, so I’ll let you discover the rest on your own.

Suggestions

My main suggestion would be to tighten up the trajectory control a bit. It seemed pretty sensitive and sometimes was hard for me to adjust accurately.

Conclusion

I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical going into Star Hogs, but the game impressed me. Star Hogs looks good, it sounds good, and there are plenty of play options to keep you busy for a long time. The limited upgrade slots and the upgrade mechanism as a whole were nicely executed. I’m not a big fan of this style of combat game, but I could see making an exception for Star Hogs.