Piglympics
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| Piglympics

There are some ideas that are so good that you can't quite believe they don't already exist. Lemon Bakewell Tarts, for instance, were a recent discovery of mine; I love anything with lemon in, and I could also eat a planet's worth of almonds, so combining the two in sugary goodness is probably the closest I'll ever get to heaven on earth without getting arrested. Why did it take Mr Kipling so long to figure this out?

Needless to say, there will be a large proportion of people reading this right now that have had vivid dreams of taking a pen full of pigs to the Olympic games and seeing whether they sink or swim (literally, in some events). It'll surprise them to learn that, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no such realisation of their vision in the gaming world – until now, that is.

In truth, this might not be the first time a pig has ever taken to the track – I could easily slip in a joke about certain athletes having pig-like features here, but Pocket Gamer's lawyer is asking me to refrain – but it's certainly not a daily occurrence. That might change, however, as Piglympics more or less works.

This isn't a game that wants to change the world, or even take up much of your time. Consisting of five events – the 100m sprint, 110m hurdles, High jump, Long jump and Swimming – Piglympics is largely a case of hammering buttons. For all of the events, the base movement is running, which is achieved by tapping keys '4' and '6' alternately as fast as you can.

Further motions are then applied using the '5' key (from leaping over hurdles to clearing the high jump), which naturally, and rather awkwardly, sits in the middle of the other two buttons. This means that, while simply hammering '4' and '6' will see you sweep away in both the qualifying and final rounds of the 100 metres, attempting to clear hurdles in its sister race using the '5' key is no easy task. It is, in fact, the kind of manoeuvre only finger contortionists will be able to master.

Perhaps anticipating such problems, Mobile Amusements has made it possible to take charge of its trained trotters using the Zeemote JS1 joystick, negating such issues for many, but it's a shame that those of us without peripherals can't quite enjoy Piglympics for all it's worth.

But that's not the game's only fault.

On more than one occasion, I technically snatched a medal through dishonest means. No, I didn't pump my pigs full of steroids or skip an IOC drugs test. Instead, I raced straight through the takeoff board before I jumped (more to do with the difficulty of hitting the '5' key mid-run than anything else), theoretically voiding the jump. Piglympics, however, didn't notice, and casually handed me the gold medal as a reward.

That's not to say that I wasn't grateful, as winning some of the other medals proves far from easy. Swimming, for instance, seems to take place in treacle, making it incredibly difficult to build up any pace, even though the action required – switching from '4' to '6' and back again – is identical to that of the 100 metres. Such variety is needed, of course, as with only five events it would be incredibly remiss if two of them were indistinguishable.

But that's the nature of Piglympics; with just three competitors per event, and each event over in a matter of seconds, this is not a serious attempt to replicate the dedication or thrill of life at the track or by the pool. It's a quick-fire button-mashing brawl that's as entertaining as it is disposable. It'll make you smile for five minutes, and then you'll move on to something else, thinking about how smoothing over a few cracks could make the whole thing a lot better.

But then if you're expecting a game that pitches pigs against each other at the Olympic Games to change the world, you're probably living in a dream anyway.

Piglympics

Take some unexpected pigs, drop them on an athletics track, and what do you get? Five minutes of slightly flawed fun, that's what
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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.