Super Turbo Action Pig Review

The number of clever anecdotes I could begin a game review with centered around a turbo-rocket strapped flying pig is overwhelming, so I’ll refrain from doing so. But for the three of you who continue to doubt the iPhone/iPod Touch’s capabilities…

Anyway, I can only assume because he’d grown tired of the old adage involving flying swine, one clever, little pig went all “Johnathan Livingston Seagull” and finally represented his fellow even-toed ungulates, proving us all wrong in an obviously well-designed attempt to make all things impossible, possible; only to use his newfound “Pork Power” to obsess over a menacing, evil simpleton named Butcher Bill. That said, I found this game eerily mirrors the reality we all face daily.

Super Turbo Action Pig is an endurance game, much like that cool helicopter-flying-in-a-tunnel game that was a PC hit (but oddly, never really made it to the iPhone, but I digress) where you pilot a rocket-strapped pig navigating his way through a minefield of flying cleavers, saws, mines and missiles (Missiles? Bill truly takes “butchering" to a whole new level), to avoid becoming sausage, so that he may defeat his nemesis and return to his herd to bask in the slop-covered glory of victory.

Super Turbo Action Pig boasts the following features:

Limitless endurance gameplay

Stunning 2D cartoon graphics and animation

Open Feint enabled

Achievements

Online leaderboards

Multiple skill levels

Play your own tunes

The first things I noticed about this game were its graphics and animation. While I hesitate to use “stunning” to describe the game’s 2D cartoon graphics and animation, it’s pretty accurate. This game is beautiful and plays smoothly.

Super Turbo Action Pig’s sound track and effects are very well-developed and interact like bacon and eggs. Individual sound effects are crisp, clever and clean. The sound of the spinning saws invoke a genuine concern for this poor pig’s safety and pressing options buttons elicits an “oink.” Butcher Bill even intervenes at times, laughing menacingly as he unleashes missiles at Super Turbo Action Pig.

Game play is simple and easy. The main screen contains a turbo-thruster, which players use to control the pig, a pause button cleverly shaped like a snout, a score indicator in the upper right corner of the screen and a “Golden Sausages” indicator in the bottom left. Players earn (providing you catch them) golden sausages per 100 obstacles passed. What happens when you catch all five Golden Sausages? I’ll leave that up to you to find out. The butcher’s on-coming assault of debauchery flies from the left, while Super Turbo Action Pig flies right-to-left.

The game has three modes, easy, medium and hard and players can adjust music and sound effects.

Playing the game can be frustrating, however. Players only have one life and are tasked with passing (at least) 500 obstacles. This can take forever on any mode and, once you die, you’re forced to start all over again. I would like to see future updates give players more obstacles/power-ups, a “multiple life” feature and even different modes, such as campaign modes, surviving waves/levels of progressive difficulty. These features, including the ability to save your advancement would add tremendous replay value to this title and keep players coming back for more.

Overall Super Turbo Action Pig is a well-developed, solid, pick-up-and-play experience, worth its “salt" (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Its quality animations, graphics and sound are enticing, but the monotony of its current game play can overshadow its overall appeal. If you like endurance challenges, Super Turbo Action Pig will prove itself a worthy contender in its genre, but it does have room for improvement. At only $0.99, Super Turbo Action Pig garners four golden sausages, out of five.